The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (52 page)

“It is from Gareth,” she said. “Lord Sandersford.”

“I see.” He stared down at the letter for a long and silent moment before handing it back. “It is for you, Grace. Not for me.”

She swallowed and took it into her own hands again. “Yes,” she said. And she knew that whether she opened it or not, he was there again. Gareth. Her past. The things that would always come between her and Perry. And she knew that Perry would never make her life easier by telling her what to do. And it was that very fact that made her love him so dearly. Perry respected her as a person. He would never dominate her as her husband, even to make her life easier and their marriage more enduring.

She turned, left the room without a word, and climbed the stairs to her sitting room again. And opened the letter.

He could not live without her, Gareth wrote. A lifetime punishment for a youthful thoughtlessness was too much to bear. She must come to him. Or he would come to her. He had struck up enough of an acquaintance with the Earl of Amberley the previous spring to impose on his hospitality for a few weeks. He loved her and he would not believe that she did not love him, though he understood she was trying hard to remain loyal to her husband. He had visited Jeremy’s grave almost daily since his return from London and wept there for the son he had never known and the love he had so carelessly thrown away.

The words blurred before Grace’s eyes. Could he not have spared her that? And was it true? Had he finally recognized that they had had a son together and that Jeremy had been a real person, quite distinct from either of them? But she did not want to know if it was true. And she doubted that it was. Had he written that only because he knew that that of all details would weaken her? Gareth crying at Jeremy’s grave! At their son’s grave. She shuddered.

And what was she to do? Write to tell him that she would not come and did not wish to see him again? He would ignore her denials, she was sure. Gareth would just not believe that her love for him was dead. Gareth had always got what he wanted.

And the dread grew in her that somehow, totally against her will, he would get his way again. He would exert his power over her once more, a power she had welcomed as a girl and willingly acquiesced in. She could never make a willing surrender to him again. She hated him. But hate is very akin to love. And he knew that. He had been quite undismayed by her hatred. She was terrified that her very hatred would draw her to him.

And away from Perry. She loved Perry. His gentleness and his laughter and his quiet affection represented all the goodness and peace that had been missing from her life until she was already in her mid-thirties. And she had begun to think that perhaps she could enjoy those things for the rest of her life. But always thoughts of Gareth aroused memories of her guilt and doubts of her own worth.

She did not deserve goodness and peace. She did not deserve Perry.

She was going to lose him. And in the worst possible way. He was not going to cast her off. She knew he would never do that even if perhaps he did sometimes
regret being married to a woman ten years his senior. And Gareth would not force her to go. Even Gareth would not resort to abduction. No, she would end up going quite freely to her own destruction. And she would do so in order to punish herself for a past she could never quite forgive herself for. It was inevitable. The prospect terrified her.

She was going to fight it. She was too strong a person to do anything as weak as destroy herself.

But she was very much afraid.

P
EREGRINE WAS DOODLING ON A SHEET OF PAPER
with a quill pen that badly needed mending. It scratched over the surface, setting his teeth on edge, and sent out occasional little sprays of ink to dot the page.

To be a man and a gentleman had always seemed to be an easy thing to accomplish. To have the courage to face life and live it according to one’s own moral principles. To stay within the bounds of law and religion. To treat other people with dignity and respect. To protect the weak and the innocent. It all sounded easy. He had never thought himself lacking in courage or principle.

But courage was not the question with him now. The question was what was right and what was wrong. What exactly was involved in treating another person with respect? In what way exactly was one to protect the weak? It was so easy to be a gentleman in the abstract, so easy to act the gentleman with the masses of people one met in the course of months and years. But it was not easy at all to know the right course of action to take with his own wife, with the person who mattered more to him than anyone else.

It had all started up again, this business with Sandersford. Just at a time when he had been hoping that perhaps
she had finally put the past behind her. Just at a time when everything seemed to be going so marvelously right with their marriage. Since Christmas Day and its wonderful, magical ending he had dared to hope that perhaps she loved him now with an undivided love, notwithstanding all the emotions and passions of her past. And it was so difficult to persuade himself to settle for less than love. Respect, loyalty, affection even, just did not seem enough to satisfy him any longer.

But his hopes had been dashed again. That damned letter! Peregrine set down his pen and leaned back in his chair, one hand over his eyes.

Had he acted in the right way? He had found himself quite unable to break the seal of that letter. It was addressed to his wife. It was from the man who had once been her husband in all but name. The man she had loved. And still had powerful feelings for, even though he did not know the true nature of those feelings. He had not been able to open that letter and read it, even though she had brought it to him herself.

And so he had given it back to her. Was he mad? Was he a man? His wife’s former lover had sent her a letter in secret, undoubtedly a love letter, and he had permitted her to read it, encouraged her almost. He had refused to interfere. Should he not have torn it to shreds and gone after Sandersford to ensure that he was never again inclined to interfere in the sanctity of his marriage?

But he could not. He could not play the high-handed husband. He could not keep a wife with him by force. He could not present a veneer of respectability to the world and have a festering sore of a marriage in private. He would rather lose her than keep her against her will.

But she had brought the letter to him, unopened. Why? Was she pleading for his help? Did she want him to take the burden of the problem on his own shoulders?
Had he let her down? Was he forcing her into a course of action she did not want to take?

Why could they not talk about it? A huge silence seemed to surround the topic of Sandersford and everything he had been to her, and was. Why could they not speak of it, know each other’s mind and heart? There are some things too deep and too painful for words, he concluded. He could face the prospect of losing Grace if she should ever decide that she must return to the lover of her past. But he could not face bringing on the moment, hearing the brutal truth from her lips in response to a question of his. He was a coward, then?

Peregrine reached the door of his office just as it opened and Grace came in. She held out a written sheet of paper to him.

“I have read the letter,” she said. Her voice was quite toneless. “And I have written a reply.” She held his eyes with her own.

He took the letter from her hand and folded it into the creases she had already made. He did not look down at all while he did so. “Then you must send it,” he said. “Grace, why did you bring me his letter? And your reply? Do you need my help?” He bit his lip when tears sprang to her eyes.

“I did not want to do anything behind your back, Perry,” she said.

He lifted one hand, changed his mind about laying it against her cheek, and set it on her shoulder. “May I help, Grace?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I wanted you to read the letter or tear it to shreds and forbid me ever to be in communication with Gareth again,” she said. “That was foolish. You would never do anything like that, would you, Perry? For it would not solve anything but would certainly ruin our respect for each other.”

“I want to stop your pain,” he said. “I want to take it
on myself. But I can’t. That is one thing we can never take away from another person.”

“He wants me to go to him,” she said. “Or he will come here for me. I have written back to say that I will not go and that I will not see him if he comes here.” She had her eyes tightly closed.

Peregrine’s hand squeezed her shoulder unconsciously. “Do you love him, Grace?” he asked. Every blood vessel in his body seemed to be throbbing.

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t love him. I hate him.” There was a pause. “But there is something. I think perhaps I belong with him. I think perhaps I don’t belong with you, Perry. I have wanted to do so, but I am afraid that I don’t.”

He could feel the pain of her first sob tearing at her as she put her hands over her face. He could feel it because he shared it. He gripped both her shoulders bruisingly, not even realizing that he did so, and bent his head forward. He could not even pull her against him to comfort her and himself. She did not belong in his arms any longer.

It had happened then, his mind told him quite dispassionately. It had happened at last. It was too late now to unask the question. He had asked it, and she had replied. It had happened.

He whirled around suddenly, grasped a porcelain figurine that happened to be within his reach, and hurled it toward the fireplace. It smashed satisfyingly against the mantel, and the pieces tinkled noisily into the hearth.

“Damn it!” he said between his teeth. “Damn Sandersford. And damn you, Grace.”

He stood facing away from her, his hands in fists at his sides, appalled by the echo of his own words. There was perfect silence behind him. She had stopped sobbing.

He was surprised by the calmness of his own voice a few moments later as he moved forward to nudge together the pieces of porcelain in the hearth with the toe of his boot. “You will be wishing to leave, then?” he asked, and turned to her.

She looked at him with reddened, frightened eyes. “Leave?” she said. “Leave here? You are asking me to, Perry? Oh, God, has it come to this, then? But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be with Gareth again. I want to be here with you. I want to be safe with you. But I have told you that I do not belong with you any longer. And you hate me now. How could you not? Oh, God, what is happening?”

“Perhaps we are both being hysterical,” he said, turning and walking back to the desk, rearranging the objects lying on its surface, putting some distance between them. “I don’t want you to leave, Grace. And you do not want to go. Not yet, anyway. You seem unsure of your feelings. Stay then until you are.”

“That is unfair to you,” she said.

He laughed rather grimly as he crumpled the sheet of paper on which he had been doodling earlier. “What, then?” he said. “I don’t want you leaving me, Grace, when you are not even sure that you wish to do so and when I do not wish you to go. And I suppose I must be thankful that you have been honest with me. You might have hidden that letter.” He turned to look at her. “Stay with me. Stay at least until you know you can no longer do so. I know you will tell me when the time comes.” Was his voice as cold and abrupt as it sounded to his own ears? he wondered.

“When?” she whispered. “Are you so sure, then, of my final decision? Is it inevitable, Perry? And could you bear to have me stay permanently after all this?”

He smiled suddenly, unexpectedly, and just a little
grimly. “Let us not be morbid,” he said. “I think my head is going to explode into a thousand pieces if I don’t get it into the outdoors immediately. Come for a walk with me, Grace. Look, it is trying to snow out there.”

“I can’t, Perry,” she said.

“Yes, you can.” His smile had taken a firmer hold of his face. “We will take a brisk walk along the lane. I must have you with me to make beauty and poetry out of those heavy gray clouds and all the bare branches. No, you are not to cry again. I forbid it. Absolutely. Shall I send someone up for your outdoor things, or will you go yourself?”

“I’ll go,” she said.

So, Peregrine thought, completing the unnecessary task of tidying his desk after Grace had left, life continued on, did it? Tears dried, wounds were bound up, and life continued. Only in grand tragedy did a catastrophe happen in one sweep. In real life it came in a series of small agonies. And perhaps in the end it never came at all. Or perhaps it did. But regardless of the outcome, life continued. Life had to continue.

He glanced uneasily at the porcelain pieces on the hearth and pulled the bell rope to summon a servant.

T
HE NEWS THAT
Grace’s father and brother were coming to stay at Reardon Park with the latter’s wife and daughter created a stir of pleased anticipation in the village of Abbotsford and the surrounding areas. These people had discovered the year before, of course, that Lady Lampman was not as alone in the world as they had once thought but that she did have family members whom she had visited with her husband. But to know that those people were coming was a great salve to their curiosity and a boost to their social expectations, which
tended to lag during the winter, once Christmas was over.

The added news that Lord Amberley was to entertain Viscount Sandersford at about the same time added an extra buzz of excitement. Was he an eligible gentleman? Mrs. Morton asked Mrs. Carrington. Mrs. Courtney, present when the question was asked, privately lamented the fact that her Susan was still away at her Aunt Henshaw’s and not like to be home again until April.

The Earl of Amberley himself was surprised by the news of the imminent arrival of an uninvited guest. His acquaintance with Lord Sandersford was of short duration and was not by any means an intimate one. But his sister reminded him that the viscount was a neighbor of Lady Lampman’s brother and had known Lady Lampman herself all his life.

“To be sure,” he said. “I had forgotten. And he had them all out to Hammersmith for a few days, did he not, just before Perry and Lady Lampman came home? I daresay he wants to be a part of this gathering at Reardon Park.”