by Mary Balogh
“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.”
11
IT WAS FORTUNATE, BOTH GRACE AND PEREGRINE 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.
And yet she had not wanted him to touch her. She had shrunk from his touch. She had decided to stay with him but would not let him touch her. And so there was no triumph at all, no joy in her decision. She had not been able to break her marriage vows, but her heart was with the man she had rejected that night.
And what could he do about it? He could not encourage her to leave him, to walk away from her marriage and plunge herself into the middle of a scandal. He could not do that. He must respect her decision as he had sworn to himself that he would do, no matter what that decision was. And so he must keep her with him as his wife, knowing her unhappy, knowing that she must force herself to remain close to him, to remain his wife in every way.
He loved her. He had been prepared to let her go if she found that Sandersford was essential to her happiness. He had been prepared to keep her if she decided otherwise. But he had not even considered that matters might be this way. He was not at all sure that he was prepared to have her person only, knowing that her heart was elsewhere. She had never been wholly his, of course. He had always known that a large part of her was in the grave with her dead son and her dead lover. Or at least, that was what he had always believed. He had not known until recently that that lover was still alive. But he had always believed that at least he could bring her comfort, perhaps contentment.
And what was he to do now? Was he to live with her in silence for the rest of their lives? Without touching her? He could not do so. He loved her and wished more than anything for her happiness. But he was no saint. He was very human. If she had left him, he would have taught himself somehow to cope with her absence. But she had not left him. And so she must remain his wife. He must somehow carry on with his life as if these two days had not happened. Unless she cringed from him openly as she had done the night before. He would not be able to bear that. He would not be able to touch her if that happened again.
Peregrine reached out as Priscilla chattered on and touched the back of Grace’s hand with his fingertips. She looked down at his hand and then rather jerkily across to look somewhat below the level of his eyes. She said nothing and looked away again almost immediately. But she did not remove her hand.
She had been sleeping, or pretending to sleep, when he had gone into their bedchamber the night before. It had been very late. He had wandered outside long after all the other guests had either taken their leave or gone to bed. And he had gone into the library on his return indoors, knowing by the sliver of light beneath the door that his host was there.
Sandersford had not looked surprised when Peregrine had walked in without knocking. And he had not risen. He had been sitting slouched down in a leather chair beside the fireplace, an empty glass dangling from the hand that was draped over the arm. He had not been foxed exactly, but Peregrine had guessed that he had had more than the one drink. He had regarded his guest with mocking eyes.
“Ah, the outraged husband,” he had said. “Where is your glove, Lampman? You need a glove to slap in my face if the thing is to be done properly, you know.”
Peregrine had walked right into the room and taken the chair opposite Sandersford’s. “I have no wish to fight you,” he had said. “I only want to ask that you leave Grace in peace now that she has made her decision.”
Sandersford had laughed. “You find you can be generous in your triumph, do you?” he had said. “You fool! Do you think that Grace has chosen you? Do you think that she does not love me? Do you think that I could not take her away from you? Do you believe that I will not do it one day? You are a mere boy, Lampman, trying to understand the emotions of a woman.”
“She is my wife,” Peregrine had said. “Both duty and inclination dictate that I protect her from harm and from harassment. I have stepped back to allow her to make her own decision about you because I know that in the past she loved you and bore your child. Now she has decided, I hope the matter is final in your mind too.”
“Do I detect a threat?” Lord Sandersford had asked.
“No,” Peregrine had said, “only a plea for decency. Did you once love her, Sandersford? Do you love her now? Leave her in peace then. You brought ruin and pain enough into her life once. Make some atonement now.”
Lord Sandersford had leapt to his feet, his hands in white fists at his side. “By God,” he had said, “if it were not shameful to whip a puppy, Lampman, I would whip you now. What do you know of Grace and me and what was between us? By what right do you judge me and lecture me, you sanctimonious fool? She was mine once. I had her body and soul, do you understand? A
nd you think that she is yours now because she accepted your legal protection after the death of her brother? Do you think you have ever possessed her? Do you think she is yours? She is mine. She always has been and always will be.”
Peregrine had kept his seat. But his face had paled. “I will not engage in such an argument,” he had said. “As if Grace were a possession to be wrangled over. Did you ever see her as a person, Sandersford? Did you ever consider her feelings? Did you ever wonder when you left her with child what she felt, what she suffered? Do you have any idea now of the torment you are putting her through? Leave her alone now. Do something decent in your life.”
Lord Sandersford had brought himself under control. He had refilled his glass with brandy, not offering any drink to his guest, and resumed his seat. “You are the torment in Grace’s life, not me,” he had said. “Do you not realize that she sees you as a boy, that you have become the child she lost? She will not harm your good name by leaving you. She will not risk hurting you. She has chosen rather to renounce the great passion of her life. But it will not be forever, Lampman. She will see soon enough that you are indeed like her child, a growing man who has to be given up to a younger woman. Do you think I have not seen your preference? And Grace will see it too. You have not seen the last of me. I will come for her when the time is right.”
“I had hoped,” Peregrine had said, “that you were not quite the scoundrel you seemed, Sandersford. I had hoped that perhaps there was some explanation for your treatment of Grace in the past, or at least that you would have outgrown your total selfishness. I had hoped that if she rejected you tonight, you would accept her decision and decide to put your love for her before your own selfish desires. But I see it is not so. I am sorry. Good night.” He had got to his feet and made for the door.
“What?” Lord Sandersford had said, sneering. “No threats to kill me if I ever come near your wife again, Lampman?”
“No.” Peregrine had turned back to him. “No threats, Sandersford. I can see no good coming from violence. And I feel no compulsion to prove my masculinity to you or anyone else. Only if you harass her, if you force yourself on her against her wishes, will I be forced to take action against you. Not otherwise. Good night.”
“You are a coward,” Lord Sandersford had said with a laugh. “A lily-livered boy beneath my contempt, as I suspected when I first set eyes on you.”
“Strangely,” Peregrine had said before letting himself quietly out of the library, “I find myself incapable of being wounded by your opinion of me, Sandersford.”
GRACE’S HAND HAD turned beneath his, Peregrine noticed as he smiled ruefully at Priscilla and admitted that he could not answer her question because his mind had wandered shockingly over trying to list mentally all the young gentlemen who had been slain by her and Miss Stebbins in the past few weeks.
“A long list,” he said. “Twenty-four already when your question jolted me back to reality. And I cannot now remember if I had included Mr. Paisley on that list. I think not. Twenty-five, then.”
Both girls laughed.
Grace’s hand was lying palm-up beneath his fingertips.
IT WAS NOT easy, they both found, to pick up a marriage after such an emotional crisis, to piece it together again, and to continue with it. The events of the past weeks inevitably left their scars. And their uncertainties. Neither was quite sure how the other felt. Each wondered if the other was reluctant to continue with the marriage at all. But those same events had left a shyness, an awkwardness, that made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to talk openly about their feelings.
But the marriage did continue. After an almost silent journey from Hammersmith, they endured a dinner at home during which they made labored conversation, and an evening at Mrs. Borden’s, when Peregrine turned in relief to his friend the Earl of Amberley for conversation and Grace almost forgot her woes in her fascination at a conversation with a portrait painter. And later that night Grace, lying cold and rigid with tension in the bed she had shared with her husband since their arrival in London, discovered that they were still to share it.
She knew that he had misconstrued her shrinking from him the night before. She knew that he had been deeply hurt. But she had been unable all day to explain to him that it was from herself she had shrunk, not from him. How could she explain when doing so would mean referring again to all those matters that she wished to put behind her? And how could she simply tell him that she loved him? Perhaps he would not wish to hear it.
They had married for convenience, he had said the night before. The words had stung. She had not been able to shake them from her mind all day. And they were true, of course. Simply true. They had not been spoken out of any desire to hurt or to set her down. They were true. She had known all along. She had not loved Perry any more than he loved her when she had agreed to marry him. It was only since—and so gradually that she could not say when it had happened exactly—that he had come to mean all the world to her.
There was no reason whatsoever to expect that the same thing had been happening to Perry. And she had no complaints. He had always treated her with the utmost gentleness and affection. He had shown understanding and respect for her feelings and her personhood in the events of the past few weeks. There was nothing to complain of. But, oh, it hurt to hear him say the bald truth with no conception whatsoever that their marriage had become for her far more than a thing of convenience.
She did not believe Gareth. She did not believe that Perry craved younger women and that sooner or later it was inevitable that he take a mistress. She did not believe that. She knew Perry a great deal better than Gareth did, and she knew that he was faithful to her, and would remain so. But was there some unhappiness in him, some longing to be able to look at a younger woman with desire, perhaps? Was he bound by a marriage that could never bring him real happiness even though he would never be unfaithful to it?
She could not ask him. There was no way of knowing the answer. But she was terrified that her behavior of the night before would drive a wedge between them so that their marriage would never bring them anything else but misery and entrapment.
It was with some relief, then, that she watched him come from his dressing room into their bedchamber on their first night back in town. She watched him with large and wary eyes as he crossed the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and touched her cheek with his fingertips. His face was more serious than she had ever seen it.
“You said that you wish to remain married to me, Grace,” he said. “It is what I wish too. But I cannot contemplate half a marriage. If my touch is abhorrent to you, you must tell me now and I will have to make some arrangement whereby we can live separately. I will not touch you against your will.”
“Your touch is not abhorrent, Perry,” she said, and she reached up to take his hand and bring the palm against her cheek. “And I do not want half a marriage either.”
He searched her eyes before rising to put out the candles.
But Grace was not sure half an hour later, as she lay awake beside her husband, not quite touching him, that their lovemaking had brought them any closer together. She had been unable to relax, unable for a long time to respond to his hands and his lips, which had slowly and patiently tried to gentle her. Memories of Gareth’s demanding, searching hands and mouth the night before kept intruding and making her feel unclean again. She had had to keep herself tense in order not to shudder.
And Perry had come to her eventually before she was ready and had hurt her, though she had shown her pain only by tensing yet again. It was only toward the end, when he had buried his face against her hair and she had known that he knew, that she had felt herself come finally to meet him, so that she had held him to her and leaned her head against his and swallowed a lump in her throat. He had moved away from her after a few minutes and not put an arm beneath her head as he usually did.
She did not think he was sleeping. He was too still to be asleep.
“Perry,” she whispe
red. She touched him lightly on the arm.
He turned his face toward her.
“Perry,” she said, “do you really want to stay here any longer? Are you enjoying the Season?”
“You want to go home?” he asked.
“Yes.” She could not read his tone. “But only if you do. We have accepted several invitations for the next few weeks.”
“Then we will spend tomorrow morning penning our regrets,” he said. “Will the day after tomorrow be soon enough, Grace?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, Perry, it seems so very long since we were at home.”
“Too long,” he said. He leaned forward to kiss her on the lips and then turned over to face away from her.
And so their marriage had resumed, Grace thought as she lay awake and knew only much later by his deep breathing that Perry slept. It was better than she deserved, better than she could have hoped for the night before. But there was an emptiness that was remarkably like pain lodged somewhere in the region of her stomach. And even the fact that they were together and had just made love and that they were planning to return home together in two days’ time had not taken away that emptiness.
She was frightened.
“OH, PERRY, DO look. Oh, the flowers!” Grace sat forward on the carriage seat, her face close to the window as it had been for the last two miles, though there had been no possible way that she could see Reardon Park for all of that distance. But she had seen it now: the square classical house, the trees, and the late-spring flowers that he and she had planted together the year before, all in full and glorious bloom.
Peregrine moved closer to her and looked over her shoulder. “Home,” he said. “One glimpse of it is worth more than a thousand days spent anywhere else in the world. I am afraid I will never be an adventurer, Grace.”
“Me neither,” she said. “Oh, Perry, I could cry.”
“That would be remarkably foolish,” he said. “You would not then be able to see the orchard, which is about to come into view. And the servants would take one look at your face and think you were sorry to be back. The flowers do look splendid, Grace. There are so many of them that I am afraid we did not leave any to grow downward to bloom in China.”