by Mary Balogh
His eyes strayed to where Grace was dancing with Sandersford, his handsome face smiling down into her upturned one.
Damnation. Oh, damnation!
8
GARETH HAD TURNED ON THE FULL FORCE OF HIS charm. Grace recognized all the signs. There was his smile, of course, which had always been more attractive than almost any other man’s smile because of the whiteness of his teeth. And there was the very intense and appreciative look in his dark eyes and the way he had of crinkling his eyes at the corners when he laughed. And those eyes, though very direct, knew how to flutter down to one’s mouth for the merest moment, or up to one’s hair.
They had laughed about that deliberate charm when they were much younger. He had never used it on her then because she would immediately have accused him of being false. But he had used it on other girls, entirely for his own amusement and hers.
He was using it on her now, Grace saw as she danced with him. Except that now it was not a boy’s charm any longer, but a man’s seductive power. And he was a man now who knew the irresistibility of his attractiveness even more than the young Gareth had done.
“Well, Grace,” he said, “I came to town to look about me for a young wife. I came here tonight for that purpose. And it could be a successful evening. We are surrounded by young ladies, a dozen or more of them pretty, I would imagine. Yet I find I have eyes for no one but you.”
“Nonsense, Gareth,” she said. “You forget that I know this approach of yours from long ago. Are you trying to make a conquest of me? Did you think it would be easy? And would it amuse you to know that it was still possible?”
They were dancing close to the edge of the dancing floor, close to the windows. He drew her away from the other dancers and stood with her in the relative shelter of the long velvet curtains.
“You are right,” he said. “I was being less than sincere in my manner. And I have been lying, both to you and to others I have spoken to since arriving in town. I am not here to look over this new crop of beauties, Grace. What interest would I have in young girls who know nothing about satisfying a man’s needs and appetites? I came here because of you. You know that, do you not? You must have expected me to come. But if I am to be honest, then so must you. Don’t talk of my conquering you. There is no conquest to be made. Is there?”
He was Gareth, she told herself, looking up at him. He was that boy she had loved dearly for years as she grew to womanhood, the young man with whom she had been intimate for the span of a few days. He was Jeremy’s father. He had started her son in her. She had always expected that he would be her husband. She had always expected that there would be several children. And now he was powerfully handsome. He frightened her, suffocated her.
“No, there is not, Gareth,” she said, answering only his last question. “It is an impossibility. I am married to Perry.”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “A mere boy,” he said. “A pleasant-enough boy, I will admit. And it was decent enough of him to rescue you from an awkward situation after Paul died. But a boy nonetheless. And one who favors young ladies, as is perfectly understandable, Grace. Look at him now laughing with his partner. Do you believe he does not fancy her?”
Grace looked obediently. Perry’s fair head was bent to Lady Leila’s flaming red one, and they were clearly teasing each other or flirting. There was nothing unusual about the scene. But Lady Leila was indeed very youthful and dashing. And extremely pretty.
“You do not need to cling to him and be constantly humiliated by his roving eye, Grace,” Lord Sandersford said fiercely. “You have more beauty and more passion in your little finger than that young lovely will ever have in her whole person. But you need a man to appreciate both and bring them alive in you. Not a boy.”
“You speak as if you think me undecided, wavering,” Grace said, turning determinedly from the charming picture made by Perry and Lady Leila. “I am not, Gareth. My relationship with Perry, as I told you before, is entirely a private matter between him and me. And as for you, you are a part of my distant past. There is no question of resurrecting what there once was between us.”
“Oh, liar, Grace,” he said, his dark eyes gazing down intently into hers. “Are you trying to convince yourself? Ours was not a love that could easily die. I put the child in you, whom you claim to have loved so dearly because he was mine, Grace. That is a bond that cannot be shrugged off even in a lifetime.”
“And yet,” she said, “it was of so little importance to you that you married a wealthier woman even while that child was still inside me. Don’t talk to me of lifelong bonds.”
“I was a boy,” he said. “A headstrong, conceited boy. Let us not judge each other now from this distance of time, Grace. You were not blameless yourself. You knew the risks and the moral implications when you decided to give me a husband’s privilege.”
“I was foolish,” she said. “Foolish and irresponsible.”
He took one of her wrists in his hand. “Let us not quarrel,” he said. “We have both made mistakes, Grace—me in dishonoring you, you in allowing yourself to be taken, me in marrying Martha, you in marrying Lampman. Are we going to let those mistakes ruin what is left of our lives?”
“You have been widowed for many years, Gareth,” she said. “I have been married for one. What happened to the years between? If you had made such a mistake, if you wanted so badly to be reunited with me, where were you during those years?”
“I did not know where you were,” he said. He shrugged. “And I did not see you. It was seeing you again a few weeks ago that brought everything back to me and made me realize what a fool I have been.”
“I am sorry, Gareth,” she said. “You are too late. Fifteen years too late.”
“No,” he said, his hand gripping her wrist almost painfully, shaking it even. “No, I will not believe that, Grace. You are bitter. I can understand that. I did a dastardly thing to leave you alone with the child and the scandal. And it was remiss of me not to come for you after Martha died. But must you punish yourself as well as me? If you turn from me now, we will waste not only those years, but the rest of a lifetime.”
“Those years have not been wasted for me,” Grace said. “I spent four of them with Jeremy. I have spent one of them with Perry. It is too late for us, I tell you, Gareth. Our love has long been dead. It is a thing of the past.”
“You lie, Grace,” he said. She knew from old experiences that his temper was rising. His jaw was set and his eyes even more intense than they had been. “Are you convinced by your own words? Are you content to go through life with the beautiful boy, watching him flirt with every pretty young girl he sees, knowing that he will be amusing himself in private with more than a few of them? Can you tell me that you love him, Grace? That you think him worth fighting for? Humiliating yourself for? Tell me that you love him, that he is everything in the world to you as I once was. And still am, I firmly believe. Tell me and I will leave you alone.”
“No.” Grace was glaring back into his eyes. He was as overbearing as he had ever been. They had had not a few fights in their younger days, sometimes very physical fights. “I will tell you no such thing merely because you demand it of me. And I will tell you nothing that concerns Perry. Nothing. My feelings for him and his for me are none of your concern. None, do you understand me?”
“You cannot say it, can you?” he taunted. His eyes strayed to her lips. “You cannot tell me that you love him. Because it is not true, Grace. And cannot be true. He is a boy and you are a woman.”
“Shh! Oh, please hush. People are beginning to notice.” Grace, angry and dazed, was aware suddenly that Ethel was standing directly in front of them, a look of deep mortification on her face. “Please,” she said again, opening her fan, waving it slowly before her face, and attempting to smile, “you must not quarrel here.”
Lord Sandersford released Grace’s wrist and smiled with practiced charm. “Ah, a timely reminder, ma’am,” he said, inclining his head. “Grace and I
were merely having a friendly difference of opinion. Just like old times.”
Grace noticed for the first time that the dancing had stopped. All the occupants of the room were not looking at them, she found, glancing about her in some trepidation. But Perry was making his way toward them, his face rather pale. He was smiling.
“This dancing is warm work,” he said. “Would you care to come with me in search of some lemonade, Grace?”
“Yes, I would,” she said, reaching for his arm, for a haven of kindliness and safety. Reaching for home. “It is hot in here. Are you enjoying yourself, Perry?”
“My feet might be worn down to stumps by the end of it,” he said, his eyes twinkling down at her, “but it is all in the cause of enjoyment, so I will not complain.”
“We will go riding in the carriage tomorrow, then, instead of walking, and you may have a soft pillow beneath your feet,” she said, patting his hand and letting her fingers linger there, absorbing his warmth.
PEREGRINE FOLLOWED GRACE into her dressing room later that night and stood leaning against the door, watching her remove first the plumes and then the pins from her hair. She had refused to have her maid sent for at such a late hour—or such an early hour, she had amended. He strolled across to the dressing table and picked up her brush as she shook out her hair.
“I think Priscilla did remarkably well for her first appearance,” she said. “Ethel succeeded in finding her a partner for every set. And it was kind of Lady Madeline to take such an interest in her, was it not, Perry?”
“Her friendship can do nothing but good for our little niece,” he agreed. “Madeline has been a very popular young lady since she first came here. She could have married—and well too—twenty times over in the last three years, I daresay. Sit down, Grace. I’ll brush your hair for you.”
She sat obediently and closed her eyes as he drew the brush through her tousled hair and continued with the conversation about the ball and the fortunes of their various friends. And he watched her face in the mirror. It was flushed with tiredness.
He did not want to remember it as it had looked earlier that evening when he had finished dancing with Leila and glanced over to where she was standing against the windows with Sandersford. He did not at all want to remember how animated and wildly beautiful she had looked and how very handsome her companion. They had been very deep in passionate conversation, clearly oblivious to everything around them.
He did not want to remember, or how distressed Ethel had looked when he had met her eyes. Or how she had hurried across to them and said something that had perhaps saved them just in time from drawing public attention. Or how Grace had looked at him as he came up to them, her expression bewildered and remorseful. Or how she had gripped his arm afterward and touched his hand and chattered on about trivialities for all of ten minutes, quite unlike the Grace he knew.
He did not want to remember. He gazed at her reflection and tried to see her as a woman ten years his senior, a woman too old for him. A woman more suited to a man of her own age. Like Sandersford. But he could not see that older woman. He could see only Grace, his wife, looking tired and rather lovely with her red gown and her dark hair silky and straight down over her shoulders.
He set the brush down quietly, and she opened her eyes and smiled in the glass. She looked at him questioningly. The obvious next step at such a late hour was to undress and go to bed. But he had never been in her dressing room before when she was disrobing. He had never seen her without either her clothes or her nightgown.
“You will need help with all those buttons,” he said. “Let me undo them for you, Grace.”
She stood up a little uncertainly and turned her back to him. She bent her head, shaking her hair forward over her shoulders.
“I think someone must have thought up the idea of so many buttons down a lady’s back to ensure high employment among female servants,” he said. “You could not possibly manage without a lady’s maid, could you?”
“And what about gentlemen and their tight coats and elaborate neckcloths?” she said.
“Touché,” he said with a laugh, opening the lowest button.
The silk gown was lined so that there was no need of a shift worn beneath it. Peregrine put his hands lightly against her shoulder blades and moved them up to her shoulders. He slid them down to her waist and up under her arms to cup her full and naked breasts. He bent his head to kiss her shoulder.
Grace brought her head back to rest against his shoulder. She held her gown with both hands beneath her breasts. He continued to kiss her one shoulder, to fondle her breasts, to tease her nipples with his fingers until he knew her aroused, though she made no sign.
He wanted her as he had wanted her increasingly since their marriage. He could never have enough of her, of her shapely body, the special fragrance of her, that special something beyond each individual attraction or even the sum of those attractions that made her Grace. And he needed her, as he had come to do more and more each day since he had first taken her as his bride to his home and she had become its quiet mistress and his companion and lover. The thought of life without her was terrifying. Those two nights at inns on the journey to London had been bleak experiences indeed, even though he had known that he would have her again at the end of them.
And now was he to lose her altogether? Was she going to leave him for Sandersford? Was she going to overcome that temptation and stay with him and die a little and be gone from him anyway? Peregrine quelled his panic, felt the desire in his wife’s breasts, and turned her in his arms.
And he kissed her hungrily: her eyes, her temples, her ears, her throat, her mouth. He reached out to her with his tongue, something he did not normally do. His lovemaking usually concentrated on making what he did pleasing to her. But he was losing her, and he was protesting his loss, and he was too agonized to be gentle.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said against her mouth, and stooped down to lift her into his arms, the gown still clutched to her waist. But when he set her down beside the bed, he stripped it from her and sent the rest of her flimsy undergarments to join it on the floor. She closed her eyes as he laid her down. Her color was high. He had never unclothed her before, even between the bed-sheets. He had touched every part of her with his hands and his own body, but he had never removed her nightgown entirely.
Grace lay on the bed, her eyes closed, resisting the urge to reach out for the blankets to pull over her. She waited for Perry to undress himself and come to her. Her desire for him was more of a pain than a pleasure. There was an ache and a throbbing in her throat that could easily have her wailing and clinging to him if he did not come soon.
The evening had been an agony: Gareth and all the turmoil of her encounter with him, all the anger and the uncertainty. Her outrage that he should suggest a renewal of their love. Her conviction that he was in her past and that her feelings for him could never be rekindled. Her fear that perhaps after all he would exert his power over her, that perhaps a man one had once loved, a man one had given oneself to, a man whose child one had borne, could not after all be shrugged off. Her guilt at not having told Perry the truth and the nightmare of seeing that lie grow greater in magnitude with every passing day. Her fear that somehow Gareth would have his own way, as he always had, and force her into loving him again and not loving Perry any longer.
And her terrible fear of losing Perry, of seeing an end to the most peaceful and the loveliest year of her life. If her love for him did not fade, then surely his for her would. There was her memory of watching him at the ball, gay and smiling, dancing and talking with ladies of his own age and younger, teasing them, enjoying himself. And Gareth’s words about him, blocked from her memory, large and loud in her memory.
She wanted to be at home. She wanted to be at Reardon Park with Perry in the dull routine of the quiet days that had given her more happiness than she had known in her life. She wanted to be there now and forever. And she probably never would be there again. Even if they
went there physically at the end of the Season, it would probably never be home again. They would never be happy there again.
She was glad of the unaccustomed fierceness of Perry’s lovemaking. She was glad that when he joined her on the bed he did not spend many minutes caressing her gently with his hands and his mouth, as he usually did. She was glad that he came down directly on top of her, that he came between her thighs and thrust up into her without any prelude. And she was glad that he lay heavy on her, not easing his weight onto his arms as he often did, moving deeply and ungently in her.
She relaxed and lay still for him, as she always did, and kept her eyes closed, and waited for that ache to be quieted. He would take it away for her, she knew. Perry had never failed her. The pain would go away, the throbbing, and her fears would be put at bay again—for a while, anyway.
And he came to her deeply, as he always did, and she held her intense satisfaction private to herself, as she always did, and turned in his arms as he lifted himself to lie beside her and pulled the blankets warmly around her naked body. And she raised her mouth for his drowsy kiss and moved her head to a position of comfort on his arm and closed her eyes.
And she discovered that the ache she had been feeling was not after all a physical thing and had not therefore been eased at all by the beauty of what he had done to her body. The magic was going away faster than she could learn to cope with. Perry could no longer blot out the pain for her.
And why was there pain? When had she allowed herself to come back to life again?
DESPERATION COULD NOT restore anything, Peregrine was thinking, holding his wife to his side, his head resting on the pillow, his eyes closed. His taking of her tonight had been an utterly selfish thing. He had not made love to her. He had used her for pleasure, for reassurance, for forgetfulness. He had wanted her naked beneath him, and he had wanted to bury himself deep in her to assure himself—and her, perhaps—that he owned her, that she was his, that no other man could possibly have any claim on her. Sandersford had possessed her for a few days in the distant past. He had had her for more than a year, and he had married her.