The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (48 page)

“Ah,” he said, “but you said you are content with him, Grace. Or
were
, rather. Contentment is not happiness, or the past tense the present. You will be happy with me one day. I promise you that.”

“So,” she said unhappily, “nothing has been settled. I have wasted my time coming out here with you. I am still not free of you, am I?”

“Grace,” he said, passing a hand beneath her chin, “you never will be, my love. The sooner you realize that, the sooner your past contentment can give place to present and future happiness. No, nothing has been settled. You will be seeing more of me.”

She gazed at him in despair. “I thought my punishment was at an end,” she said. “Now I see that even in this life I cannot escape it for long.”

He laughed. “A strange punishment,” he said, “to give in to your own love and to come to the arms of the man who loves you.”

Grace turned without another word and began to stride back toward the house.

Lord Sandersford followed silently some distance behind.

P
EREGRINE BECAME AWARE
that Lord Sandersford had returned to the house as he stood drinking lemonade with Priscilla and a small group of the younger people. But several minutes of anxious watching and much smiling
and teasing did not bring Grace into his view. At last, when the dancing had resumed after a break, he left the drawing room as unobtrusively as he could and went upstairs to their room.

At first he thought she was not there. The candles that were burning on the mantelpiece showed him an empty bedchamber and a darkened dressing room at either side. But he looked into Grace’s dressing room anyway. She was sitting in the darkness, facing away from him.

“Grace?” he said softly, and moved across the room to stand behind her and lay a gentle hand against the back of her neck.

Apart from dropping her head forward, she made no response.

“Do you need to be alone?” he asked. “Shall I go away?”

“Perry,” she said. Her voice had the weariness of years in it. “Lord Sandersford is Gareth. Jeremy’s father. He did not die, and I knew it all the time. I lied to you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You knew?” Her hands were twisting in her lap, he could see. “And you have not confronted me? You have not thrown me out?”

“Thrown you out?” he said. “You are my wife, Grace.”

“My former lover is still alive,” she said. “You would not have married me if you had known that, would you?”

“What difference would it have made?” he asked.

She put up her hands to cover her face. “I have been outside with him tonight,” she said. “You must have seen us go. He did not force me to go, Perry. I went freely right down beside the river with him. I think we must have been gone for half an hour. He wants me to go away with him.”

He lifted his hand away from her neck. “Yes,” he said. “And are you going, Grace?”

She shuddered. “Perhaps you will wish me to,” she said. “I have dishonored you, Perry. I have not been unfaithful to you, but I have done what I have just said. And I listened to him.”

“Grace.” He moved around to stand in front of her and squatted down on his haunches. “I can understand that seeing him again after all these years has put a severe strain on your emotions. I can understand that perhaps your feelings for him have been revived. I know that perhaps now you feel trapped in a marriage that was made largely for convenience. But I know you better than you seem to think. I know that you have not been unfaithful to me without your telling me so. And I know that if you leave me, you will not do so lightly and you will tell me quite openly what you must do. You have not dishonored me. I will not have you feeling the burden of that guilt.”

She was rocking back and forth, her hands still spread over her face.

“Do you love him still?” he asked, his voice tense despite his efforts to remain calm. “Do you wish to go with him, Grace?”

“I want to stay with you,” she said, her voice so full of misery that his sense of relief was short-lived. “I want to stay married to you, Perry.”

“Then you shall do so,” he said, reaching out a hand to cover one of hers.

But she drew back from him. “Perry,” she cried, “he kissed me. He held me and he kissed me, and I did not fight him off, though I would not lie with him as he wished me to do. I let him kiss me.”

Peregrine swallowed awkwardly. “Are you quite sure you wish to stay with me?” he asked.

“Yes!” Her voice was fierce, though she still did not take her hands from her face. “I want to stay. But you surely cannot wish me to, Perry.”

“You are my wife, Grace,” he said. “You will stay with me if you wish to do so.”

“Perry.” She dropped her hands and looked up at him finally, though their faces were mere shadows in the darkness. “I hate him. I did not think I would after so long. I would have expected to feel nothing at all. But I hate him as if it all happened yesterday.”

He nodded sadly and got to his feet. He held out a hand for hers. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go out of this darkness.”

But she shrank from his hand. “No,” she said, “don’t touch me, Perry. Not yet.”

Because she was feeling guilty and soiled. Soiled by Gareth’s touch. Soiled more by her own moral weakness in going down to the river with him quite freely and in allowing him to plead with her to go away with him, and in allowing herself to remember and to feel a fearful sort of attraction to him again, and in allowing him to kiss her and hold her intimately and explore her with his hands as if he were still her lover. Because she had not washed herself and scrubbed herself and made herself clean for Perry. And because she knew again, seeing him stand there before her, that he was the very best thing that had ever happened in her life past or present, excepting only Jeremy. And she had nothing good to offer him in return. Not youth or beauty or vivacity. Not honor. And not even total fidelity since their marriage.

She could not put her hand in his. Not yet.

His hand closed on itself and dropped to his side. He stood before her for several moments as if he would say something. Then he strode from the dressing room and from the bedchamber.

“Y
OU FORGOT THAT
Sandersford was to show us the stables this morning?” Martin asked Peregrine when he joined him in the morning room the next day.

“No.” Peregrine looked over the top of the morning paper and smiled. “No, I did not forget.”

“Well,” Martin said, lowering himself into the chair next to Peregrine’s, “you did not miss much. The stables themselves are impressive, but not many horses are kept here since it is not Sandersford’s principal seat.”

Peregrine closed the paper and set it down on the table at his elbow.

“Grace is well?” Martin asked. “I have not seen her this morning.”

“Yes, she is well,” Peregrine said. “Just tired after a busy day, I imagine.”

Martin looked at his brother-in-law, looked away, coughed, and picked up the discarded paper. He looked uneasily to the door to see if anyone else was about to enter. “I can’t understand why you will allow it,” he said at last. “It’s none of my business, of course.”

“No,” Peregrine said, not deeming it necessary to ask his brother-in-law to clarify what he was talking about, “but you are her brother. I understand your concern.”

“You know who he is, of course?” Martin said. He did not wait for an answer. “He was always a scoundrel, with too many good looks and too much charm for his own good. One of the takers of this world. And Grace could never see it. She was besotted.”

“She is not an impressionable girl any longer,” Peregrine said.

“Well,” Martin said, “you will be fortunate if he doesn’t take her from you as he took her from her family when she was a girl. I would look to it if I were you. Not
that it is my business how you choose to deal with your own wife, of course. This is deuced awkward. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No,” Peregrine said, “I am not offended. You love Grace, I see, and I can only honor you for that. Perhaps I do not handle matters as other men would. Perhaps my methods are entirely wrong. But I will tell you this, Martin: I love Grace, too, and if you will pardon my saying so, I will add that I love her many times more than any brother possibly could. She is my wife, you see. And together she and I will work out this situation.”

Martin coughed again. “Sorry to have mentioned it,” he said. “I thought it just possible that you did not know who he is or that you hadn’t noticed what has been going on.”

Peregrine smiled. “You must be pleased with Priscilla’s success,” he said. “And what about your son? Because I have never met him, I sometimes forget that I even have a nephew as well as a niece.”

“Young fool,” Martin said fondly. “He is just like we all were at his age, I suppose. Pursuing pleasure and getting into scrapes are of far more importance than studying and making an educated man of himself.”

E
THEL HAD LINKED
her arm through Grace’s and drawn her out from the breakfast room onto the terrace. “The sky is awfully heavy,” she said. “I do hope it is not going to rain again. Yesterday it seemed that the weather was going to change for the better.”

“Yes,” Grace said. “But I always console myself for bad weather with the thought that we would not have such very green grass and such lovely flowers if we did not also have so much rain.”

“Well,” Ethel said, “I hope at least that it will hold off until we have returned to town this afternoon.”

“Yes,” Grace agreed.

“Grace,” Ethel said on a rush, “I am very concerned about you. It is none of my business, of course.”

“That is what you used to say,” Grace said with the shadow of a smile, “and I used to agree with you wholeheartedly. I was a horrid girl, was I not? I can scarce believe that that person I remember was me.”

“He was a very attractive man,” Ethel said. “I used to think secretly that it was quite understandable that you would not listen to reason. And now, of course, he is even more attractive. But, oh, Grace, he has not changed.”

“No,” Grace said, “he has not. But I have, Ethel. And you need not worry about me. Or about Perry. You like Perry, don’t you?”

“I was shocked when I first saw him, I must confess,” Ethel said. “He looked so very young and was so very youthful in his manner. But I think you have made a fortunate match, Grace. Both Martin and I are very fond of him. And Priscilla, of course. And Papa.” She laughed suddenly. “Papa said, ‘That young puppy is more than my Grace deserves.’ I think those were his exact words.”

“Did he say ‘my Grace’?” Grace asked, looking at her sister-in-law with some interest. “That is how he always used to refer to me.”

“Yes,” Ethel said, “he definitely said that.”

“Well,” Grace said, “you are not to worry about me. I am not about to run off with Gareth. I hope never to see him again once we have left London.”

“I am glad,” Ethel said. “And Martin will be too.”

“Tell me what plans you have for Priscilla in the coming weeks,” Grace said with a smile. “You must be very pleased with her.”

“I am,” Ethel said. “And very glad that she has not settled her affections on any one particular beau. I was rather afraid that she might. We really do not want her to do that this year when she is so young. I don’t think I could face losing my girl for another year or two yet.”

I
T WAS FORTUNATE, BOTH
G
RACE AND
P
EREGRINE
thought, that Priscilla and Lucinda Stebbins were so talkative on the way back to London that their own silence seemed quite unremarkable. Priscilla, of course, was always in high spirits. This occasion was no exception. She had two days’ worth of new people and new experiences to exclaim upon, and weeks more of the Season in town to look forward to and speculate upon.

But even Miss Stebbins was unusually voluble. Did Priscilla and Lady Lampman not think Mr. Paisley handsome? Not precisely handsome, perhaps, but in his own way really quite well-looking? Gentlemen did not have to be tall in order to be handsome, did they? Besides, character was far more important than looks. And amiability. Amiability was important, did not Sir Peregrine agree? Mr. Paisley did not go into London very often, but he was planning to attend Lord Sandersford’s theater party next week. And she was going to ask Papa if they might attend too, since she was ever so eager to see Mr. Kean act. She had heard so much about him.

Peregrine recalled that Mr. Paisley was the thin, padded cousin of Sandersford’s late wife. He smiled indulgently at the eager, flushed face of Lucinda Stebbins, remarked that her presence at the theater might distract Mr. Paisley’s mind from Kean’s performance and that
therefore she might be doing him a marked disservice by attending herself, and he winked at her.

Lucinda giggled and blushed and was content for her friend to dominate the conversation for the rest of the journey home.

Peregrine himself was very aware of his wife seated beside him, her arm brushing against his occasionally when the carriage swayed unexpectedly before she had the chance to grab the strap with which to steady herself and keep away from him. And try as he would, he could think of nothing to say to her. And he could not bring himself to look at her because there would be nothing natural in his expression and he would be acutely uncomfortable.

They had not spoken, beyond the merest commonplace, awkwardly delivered and with no direct eye contact, since he had left her dressing room the night before. And they had not touched beyond the accidental contact of their arms in the carriage. He had slept in his dressing room. Or at least he had spent the latter portion of the night in his dressing room, slumped in a chair that was definitely not designed to be slept in, trying to empty his teeming and racing mind, trying to remind himself that it was good news he had heard in her dressing room. He had dozed fitfully, his head cradled uncomfortably on his arms, which he had spread on the high marble top of the washstand.

It had been good news. She had been alone with Sandersford for half an hour. She had talked with him, even allowed him to kiss her. And she had decided that she wanted to stay with
him
, that she wanted to continue with their marriage. It was what he wanted, what he had scarcely allowed himself to hope for in the past week.