by Mary Balogh
“You have not changed at all, Gareth,” she said. “You are as selfish now as you were as a boy. You want! That is all that matters, is it not? You do not know or care what I want.”
“Tell me, then,” he said. “But you must be honest, Grace. You will not get away with saying what you think you ought. The truth! What is it you want?”
“I want things to remain as they are,” she said. “As they were before I met you again, Gareth. I don’t want change. I was happy.”
“Things cannot remain as they were,” he said. “ ‘Were’ is past tense, Grace. You have met me again. And you ‘were’ happy. You are not now. Are you?”
“No,” she said.
“Then something has to change,” he said. “But you cannot go back, Grace. We can never go back. Only forward. You are unhappy because you know yourself married to the wrong man. You are unhappy because you have come alive again after fifteen years. And you know that you still love me. And always will. Tell the truth now.”
“How can I love you?” she said. “How can I love you, Gareth? I stopped loving you a lifetime ago. I hate you. No, not that. I am indifferent to you.”
His face was angry, she saw in the moonlight. “Liar!” he said. “We will have the truth spoken, Grace. The truth at last. You hate me, perhaps. I will accept that. You are not indifferent to me.”
“How could you do it,” she cried suddenly, her eyes kindling. “How could you do it, Gareth? You knew you were my whole world. You knew you had ruined me, that I could hope for no other husband. And you knew I was with child. You knew. And you had said that you loved me. Many times. And you expect me now not to hate you?”
“No,” he said. His eyes were burning into hers. “No, I expect your hatred, Grace. Tell me more.”
“I carried him alone,” she said. “I bore him alone. I had a hard time giving birth to him, and there was no one at the end of it all to rejoice with me. You were not there, Gareth, when my son was born. You were married to your heiress.”
“Yes,” he said.
“He was a bastard,” she said. “Jeremy was a bastard. My father never looked at him, yours never acknowledged him. He was a nonperson. A beautiful, innocent child. He was your son, Gareth. Your son! You never cared about his existence. Or his death. Or about me. I hate you. I hate you!” She raised both fists and pummeled at his chest.
He did not defend himself. She was surprised to see him looking exultant when she glanced up, distraught, into his face.
“Now we are getting somewhere,” he said when she finally stopped punching, the sides of her fists resting against his chest. And he took her by the upper arms and lowered his head and kissed her.
She could have pulled back. It was several moments before he moved his hands from her arms and encircled her with his own. But she did not pull back. He was so very unmistakably Gareth, though she had not been in his embrace for fifteen years, though he had been little more than a boy then and was now a powerful man. His embrace was all confident demand, his mouth pressed to hers with a fierce urgency, his hands boldly exploring her body. There was the familiar taste of him, and smell of him, that could only be Gareth.
She felt her knees weaken as she sagged against him. She felt fear at the evidence of his arousal, dread at the seeming inevitability of her own response. She fought to think of something else. Someone else. Perry.
“Grace,” he whispered against her mouth, “my sweet love, I want you. God, how I want you! Lie with me here. Now. Follow your heart. Give me your answer here with your body. You will never be sorry. I swear it.”
She pushed against him and felt as if her heart would pound through her ribs and burst from her body. “Gareth,” she said, “I do not love you. I do not want you. I hate you.”
“Yes,” he said fiercely, “I did a dastardly thing to you, Grace. I have no defense. I knowingly deserted you for wealth. And our child. And I was too ashamed to seek you out afterward. But I never stopped loving you. I cannot go back and amend the past. I wish I could, but I cannot. I can offer you only the future and my devotion for the rest of our lives.”
“And yet,” she said, “you would destroy me again. You know that I am married. You know that I have been happy. And you know that I want none of you. And yet you persist in forcing yourself on me.”
“That is unfair,” he said quietly. “You know why you were invited out to Hammersmith, Grace. Yet you did not refuse the invitation. You know why you were brought out here tonight. Yet you came freely. And you did not fight my kiss a moment ago. You are afraid to admit the truth.”
“No,” she said. “The truth is that you are evil, Gareth, that you cannot resist the urge to try to seduce me again. I want none of you. I want you to leave me alone.”
He laughed softly. “Grace,” he said, “you are such a coward. You used not to be. Is your marriage worth fighting for?”
“Yes, it is!” she cried.
“Why?” he asked. “What is good about it?”
“We are friends,” she said. “We do things together. We are content together.”
“Friends! Content,” he said mockingly. “What a yawn, Grace. Is he good in bed?”
“What!” Her eyes snapped to his, shocked.
“Is he good?” he asked. “Does he satisfy you? Does he have you often? Ever? Or is this just a very maternal sort of relationship for you, Grace?” His eyes were mocking. “I cannot imagine the laughing boy being particularly skilled in sexual passion. And you need passion, Grace. I know. I have had you, remember?”
“You know nothing of my marriage,” she said. “Nothing. It is the most valuable thing in my life. Yes, it is worth fighting for.”
“And yet,” he said, “you are out here arguing the matter with me. Happily married ladies are not tempted by former lovers, Grace. Why did you come?”
“I don’t know,” she said after a pause. She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” he said. “You love me, Grace. You don’t love the boy. You merely feel sorry for him. You need not, you know. He will be quite happy to be released to the company of the sweet young creatures he favors.”
“I love Perry!” she protested.
“So!” He laughed gently. “Perhaps I should kill him, Grace. Would you like me to play jealous lover? I notice that he does not do so. And I would be very surprised to have a glove slapped in my face by Sir Peregrine Lampman. I doubt that his knees would keep from knocking together as he did so.”
“I hate you, Gareth,” she said. “I hate you. I only wish I could be indifferent. You were right to say that I am not. I find that old wounds have not healed, after all. They are raw and festering again. But there is no love in me for you. None! We have talked. It is what you wished and what I felt necessary. Well, it has been done. And it is finished now. I want you to leave me alone.”
“Never,” he said. “Not until you can tell me that you have no feelings for me whatsoever. And I know that day will never come, Grace. I love you, and I mean to have you.”
“No,” she said, “you do not love me, Gareth. If you loved me, you would wish for my happiness. You would leave me alone with Perry.”
“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.
PEREGRINE 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.
“YOU 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.”
ETHEL 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.”