by Mary Balogh
“No!” she said. “No, I was not being in any way critical, Perry. I was not, believe me.”
He took her gloved hand in his and squeezed it. “I am not sorry I married you, Grace,” he said. “If that is what you meant.” There was a small silence. “Are you ever sorry you married me?”
“No,” she said.
He waited for her to say more. She seemed about to do so. But she did not.
“That is good,” he said. “I suppose all married people sometimes wonder. But it is difficult to ask, is it not?”
“Yes,” she said. “I am not sorry, Perry. Truly I am not.”
He squeezed her hand. “We should turn around and walk back,” he said. “But it is relatively comfortable walking with the wind almost behind us, is it not? I am not sure I have the courage to turn around.”
“I think the only alternative is to go up over the cliff, then,” she said. “The tide is coming in fast.”
“And so it is,” he said. “I am sure you would have the energy to climb up, Grace, but you might find it a little too much to haul me up with you. Let’s turn back, then. Ugh! I knew it.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “I feel as if my breath is being blown back down my throat.”
“I almost wish we had chosen to spend Christmas Day alone,” Peregrine said. “I always feel most contented strolling with you. However, I suppose we must be thankful for so many congenial neighbors and friends.”
“Very much so,” Grace said. “And you cannot pretend that you are not going to enjoy the evening, Perry. Music in the drawing room and games and probably dancing. And plenty of conversation and food.”
He grinned. “Trust my wife to know me rather well,” he said. “Grace, you have holly berries for nose and cheeks. And brightly shining ones too.”
“I know,” she said. “I assumed that the wind was having the same effect on my face as it is having on yours.”
As the evening progressed at the house, it seemed that Grace was perfectly right. Peregrine turned pages of music for Miss Hetty Morton and Anna Carrington, whose extreme youth caused the other young gentlemen to ignore them much of the time. He played a hand of cards with the rector’s wife, Miss Stanhope, and Mr. Courtney, and a game of spillikins with the rector’s young children. He danced with his wife and any other lady who happened not to have a partner when the music began. And in a robust game of blindman’s buff, he was roundly accused of cheating when twice in a row he caught a tittering Miss Letitia despite his blindfold.
Grace was standing to one side of the pianoforte late in the evening when there was a general lull in the festivities following supper, browsing through some music. Peregrine was at the opposite end of the room laughing with a group of others at Mr. Courtney’s protestations that he would not be able to squeeze one more morsel of food inside himself until at least New Year’s Day.
“At least you know that you will not waste quite away,” Mr. Carrington said. “You could lose two stone without anyone noticing.”
“William!” his wife said. “Oh, take no notice of him, Mr. Courtney.”
“Perhaps I should hire myself out to Arabs for desert crossings,” Mr. Courtney said good-naturedly. “Is there a shortage of camels, do you think?”
“Oh, do look,” Mrs. Cartwright said with a titter. “Look where Lady Lampman is standing.”
“The pianoforte must have been moved,” Lord Amberley said with a laugh. “The mistletoe was meant to be directly above the stool. No one seems to have noticed it just where it is.”
“I would wager Lady Lampman does not know it is there, the poor dear,” Mrs. Carrington said.
“Well, Perry,” Lord Amberley said, “what are you going to do about it?”
Peregrine got to his feet while most of the ladies smirked, Miss Stanhope blushed, and Miss Letitia clasped her hands to her bosom.
“Grace,” Peregrine said a moment later, “do you realize the great danger you are in?”
She looked at him, startled out of her concentration on the music. “I beg your pardon?” she said.
“Do you not see what is threatening right above you?” he asked.
She looked up in some alarm only to have the ceiling blocked from her view by his face.
“You are standing directly below the mistletoe,” he said. “You cannot expect me to resist such invitation, can you?”
And then he kissed her on the lips, quite lingeringly enough to satisfy their audience at the other end of the room. Peregrine heard a smattering of applause, a few giggles, and a “Bravo!” as he lifted his head and grinned down at his wife.
“Perry,” she said. “Everyone will have seen.”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “And you had better move from there, or I will be forced to kiss you again.”
Grace moved with some haste, and yet there was a warmth of feeling in her as he laid her hand on his arm and took her across the room to join their laughing neighbors. It was a warmth that had begun with their morning of gift opening and entertaining of the servants and had continued with the evening spent with congenial friends. If it could only be like this always, Grace thought, seating herself beside her husband and not removing her arm from his sleeve.
The carriage ride back home was a cold one, though they had a hot brick at their feet and a heavy blanket to wrap around their knees. Peregrine put an arm around Grace’s shoulders as soon as they were on the way, and she snuggled her head against him.
“Tired?” he asked.
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes. “I wish every day could be Christmas. There is something so very special about it, isn’t there, Perry?”
“Yes,” he said. And he moved one hand up beneath her chin to raise it, and kissed her.
It was rather absurd, Grace thought somewhere behind the fog of contentment and rising desire she felt over the next half-hour, to be sitting in the chill interior of a carriage with one’s husband of almost two years, both dressed in heavy winter garments, kissing for almost every moment of the journey, softly and slowly exploring each other’s mouth with lips and tongues, touching each other’s face with gloved fingers, murmuring to each other in words that had no meaning to the ear, but only to the heart.
Equally absurd, and enchanting too, to be taken directly to her bedchamber when she arrived home and to have her husband dismiss her maid and his valet for the night and proceed to undress her himself as he had done on one other occasion and to have him kiss her all the while and worship her with his hands and take her to the bed to make love to her over and over again until finally they clung together damply and drifted toward sleep from pure exhaustion.
And absurd perhaps to imagine that he loved her, loved her with all his being and for all time and not just because it was Christmas and everyone feels love and good will at that season.
“Perry,” she murmured against his warm and naked chest.
“Mmm,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
And they both slept.
PERHAPS CHRISTMAS WOULD have stayed with them even beyond the New Year if Grace had not received a letter from Ethel. Certainly the magic of that day and night did not fade in the days following Christmas, but bound them together in the warmth of a deeper affection than they had known before. But the letter did arrive, and it came to drive a wedge between them again.
Not that there was anything upsetting about Ethel’s letter. It was filled with news of the family, in which both Grace and Peregrine were interested, and hopes that the planned visit could be made in February or March at the latest, even though they were all suffering from colds at the moment of writing.
What was upsetting were the two enclosures. One was a separate note from Ethel, for Grace alone. The other was a sealed letter also addressed to her. It was from Viscount Sandersford, Ethel explained. She had not wanted to take it from him or send it in such clandestine manner to Grace. She was sure that Martin would blame her for doing so if he ever found out the truth. But Lord Sandersford had been very i
nsistent. He had told her that Grace would want the letter. He had told her that if she did not send it secretly, he must do so openly and doubtless upset Grace’s husband. Ethel did not know at all if she did the right thing.
Grace felt sick. She sat in her sitting room, Gareth’s unopened letter clasped in one hand. She did not want to open it. She wanted to pretend to herself that Gareth was dead. She did not love him. She wondered how she could ever have done so. She wanted to forget about him. But of course he was not dead and she could not forget. Whether she liked it or not, he was a very real part of her life. She had loved him; she had shared the intimacy, even if not the reality, of marriage with him; he was Jeremy’s father.
She sat for a long time with the letter in her hand. Then she got to her feet, strode from the room, and almost ran down the stairs. She opened the door to Peregine’s study in a rush, not waiting to knock first, and drew to a sharp halt when she saw that he was with his estate manager.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Excuse me, please.”
Both men jumped to their feet.
Peregrine came toward her, his eyes steady on her face. “What is it?” he asked. “Do you need me?”
“It can wait,” she said. “Please excuse me.”
But he held up a staying hand and turned to the manager. “Will you excuse us?” he said. “I shall come and see you later.”
The man bowed and left the room.
“What is it, Grace?” Peregrine turned back to her, concern in his face. “Something has happened to upset you. Was there bad news in Ethel’s letter? Your father?”
She did not answer but put Gareth’s letter in his hand almost as if it were about to scald her.
He looked down at it and turned it over in his hand. “It is sealed,” he said, “and addressed to you, Grace.”
“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.
13
PEREGRINE 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 ke
ep 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.”