The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring

by Mary Balogh

  “I think he is stirring,” she said. “And I am in the mood to play obedient wife, Perry. I am tired, I must confess. But do you mind leaving early? I am afraid I am spoiling your enjoyment.”

  “I am expecting a child too within the next two weeks, you know,” he said. “Has no one told you? I feel excitement too, and emotional turmoil, and anxiety, and fatigue. And, no, you need not look at me with suspicion. I am not teasing you. I have never been more serious.”

  16

  IT WAS AWKWARD TO HOLD GRACE IN THE CARRIAGE on the way home, Peregrine found. He could not just cuddle her against him as he could remember doing during the same journey late on Christmas Day. But by sitting sideways himself, he did manage to cradle her head on his shoulder and take some of her weight against himself. She was very tired. She held both hands over the bulk of her pregnancy. Perhaps he should not have allowed her to attend the wedding, after all.

  “I am glad we came, Perry,” she said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Was it not all very splendid?”

  “Very,” he said. “Are you comfortable, Grace?”

  “Mmm,” she said. “I think they are going to be happy.”

  “Do you?” he said, and wriggled her head into the warm hollow between his neck and his shoulder. He held her while she relaxed more against him and while her breathing became deeper and more even.

  He was thinking of his own wedding, in the same church more than two years before. He had been a married man for more than two years! It seemed impossible. And yet that wedding and the weeks that had preceded it could be something from another lifetime altogether. As he held his sleeping, very pregnant wife against him, it was hard to believe that she was the same woman as the quiet, dignified sister of his friend the rector, whom he had married to save from the humiliation of having to seek employment.

  He had cared for her then. He had thought he cared. And he had thought it such a simple thing, to marry her and to comfort her for the rest of his life. Even after she had told him her history, he had thought that it would be easy. And yet marriage had proved the most difficult undertaking of his life. It was impossible, he believed now, to be married and not become totally involved in the relationship. At least, it was impossible for him.

  Grace was now more dear to him than anything or anyone else in his whole life. She was a person now, a complex, dearly beloved person, not just the figure of respect and, yes, pity that she had been at the start. But even love brought its own complications, its own doubts and fears and dissatisfactions.

  Somehow, through two and a half difficult years, they had reached a plateau of harmony and contentment. Even love, perhaps. Certainly love on his part. But he could not be certain that this state of affairs would remain for the rest of their lives. Or even that he wished it to do so. Marriage was a living, dynamic relationship that must keep growing if it was to survive. They would have to want to be happy if they were to be so. That was what he had said to Grace earlier about Edmund and his bride. But the same applied to himself and Grace and to any married couple.

  They must want to be happy. He did. He wanted it badly enough to be prepared to work at his marriage for the rest of his days. Did Grace? He could only have faith that she did. There were no certainties when one was married. Because, however close one became to another person, one never became that person. That person was always a different being. It was a risky and a troublesome business, marriage.

  Would he do anything as rash as marrying Grace if he had it all to do again, knowing what he now knew? Would he choose to live if he could go back beyond his mother’s womb and have the choice? Foolish question! Life was worth living despite all its problems and dark times. And his marriage was more precious to him than anything else in his life had been, despite the uncertainties and the heartache. And the continued uncertainty and his constant terror for Grace’s life and that of their child.

  The carriage jolted to a stop before their front door.

  “Oh,” Grace said before he could kiss her awake, “I have been sleeping. And, Perry, I have been leaning on you and you have nothing against your back. You must be in agony.”

  “Worn to the bone. A mere shadow of my former self,” he said cheerfully, “as I was telling Edmund a little while ago. I will be very glad when this daughter of yours finally puts in an appearance, Grace. Perhaps I will be able to drag myself around again afterward.”

  “Silly,” she said. “Your son will take his own sweet time in arriving, I am sure. Why should he hurry when he has a father who will hold him and his mother so comfortably?”

  “Do you want me to throw you both from the carriage?” he asked.

  “No thank you,” she said. “The servants might think we have quarreled. Get down from here, Perry, if you please, and offer me your hand like the gentleman you pretend to be.”

  Peregrine laughed and vaulted out onto the cobbled driveway. He had noticed only recently that he could joke with his wife and she could hold her own with ease.

  ONE REMEMBERED THAT it was painful, Grace thought, lying on her side relaxing, waiting for the next onslaught of pain. One remembered that it was worse than any other pain one could imagine. And one knew that as time went on the pains became so frequent and so intense that one hung onto one’s sanity by the merest thread.

  And yet one did not remember. Not until it happened again. As soon as it did start again, one thought, Oh, oh, here it comes. Yes, this is what it was like. And one knew exactly why it was that nature, or God, arranged matters that women did not really remember.

  She did not know what time it was—late afternoon, perhaps? There was still daylight outside. It had been well before daylight when she had finally woken Perry, sure at last that this was no false alarm. She did not know where he was now. He had sat with her, holding her hand and looking as white as a ghost, until Doctor Hanson had arrived. Then both the doctor and the housekeeper had urged him to leave, and he had done so after Grace had smiled at him and told him that she would feel better without having him to worry about. He had not even grinned in response.

  Would it never be over? The pains had been crashing through her world at two-minute intervals for several hours, yet Doctor Hanson still said that she was not fully dilated, that the child’s head was not moving down. He was standing quietly at the window, looking out. The housekeeper sat in the chair beside her bed, bathing her face with a cool cloth every few minutes, chiding her gently every time she bit her lip, advising her to scream instead.

  She could not scream. If she did not hold on to the little control she had left, she would become demented. Soon now she would see her son. She must think of that. Soon she would hold him in her arms. Soon Perry would be able to come back. Was anyone downstairs with him? Had Lord Amberley come, as promised? Was Perry calm?

  Would it never be over?

  She concentrated every power of her mind on not giving in to panic as she felt the familiar tightening of muscles and descended into another wave of pain.

  “THIS IS RIDICULOUS! Damned ridiculous!” Peregrine slammed down his billiard cue onto the table. “There are some concerns that just cannot be drowned out by other activities, Edmund. It’s very kind of you to have spent a whole day desperately trying to entertain me. I appreciate it. But it can’t be done, you know. I am going out of my mind.”

  The Earl of Amberley sighed and laid his cue down beside the other. “I don’t know what else to do, Perry,” he said. “I have no experience at this sort of thing, you know. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go up there to her,” Peregrine said. “Dammit, Edmund, this is as much my child as it is Grace’s. It’s not fair that she should be going through all this alone while I am downstairs playing billiards, for the love of God.”

  “And enjoying yourself enormously,” his friend said ironically.

  “I’m going up,” Peregrine said. “There must be something I can do.”

  “It’s not allowed,” Lord Amberley said. “It’s not done.�
��

  “Dammit,” Perry said. “Would you stay away if it were the countess, Edmund? Grace has been going through this since five o’clock this morning. And that was only when she told me. It must have started long before that. Would you stay away?”

  “If it were Alex?” his friend said quietly. “No. No, Perry, I would not be able to stay away. Do you love Lady Lampman, then? I have often wondered since that nasty occasion when you dealt me a bloody nose. Not that it is any of my business to know, of course.”

  “You have doubtless earned my confidence after spending a whole day with me here,” Peregrine said with the ghost of a smile, “when you have a bride of no more than a week waiting at home. Yes, of course I love her, Edmund. More than my own soul, I sometimes think. What if she dies? God, what if she dies?”

  Lord Amberley gripped his shoulder. “She won’t die,” he said. “She’s not going to die, Perry. What can we do to take your mind off things? We never lacked for things to do when we were boys, did we?”

  “I don’t think climbing forbidden cliffs would help at the moment,” Peregrine said. “I’m going up there, Edmund.”

  But even as he said the words, the butler arrived to announce that dinner was served. And Peregrine went to the dining room and even succeeded somehow in swallowing a few mouthfuls of food out of deference to his guest, who ate as little as he did if he had only been alert enough to notice.

  SHE HAD TO push. The need, the purely physical need, was quite irresistible. And a voice was telling her to push. Quite unnecessarily. Her mind was no longer functioning. Only her body. She was pain, racking pain, the only instinct left in her the instinct of survival, the need to rid herself of the pain, rid herself of her burden. She could no longer feel the cool cloth against her face and neck or her husband’s hands gripping her own wet ones.

  And then finally, mercifully, the pain burst from her and she was free. Free to sink into oblivion, into a pain-free nothingness. She let go of the final instinct to live.

  “Grace!” A voice would not let her go. “Grace!” Not that it was a loud voice or a demanding voice. It was quiet and gentle. But it would not let her go. It was a voice that meant something to her, a voice she could not take with her if she went.

  “Grace,” it said, “we have a daughter. It is a girl. Can you hear me? No, you must not die. I won’t let you die. Please!”

  There was a baby crying somewhere. It was a sound she could not escape. It would not let her go. And there was a face in her line of vision. She must have her eyes open, then. She did not know who it was. But it was a familiar face. It was a beloved face. She wanted to see it more clearly.

  “Perry?” she heard a high, thin voice say a long time later. She closed her eyes with the effort.

  “We have a daughter,” he said. Her hands were coming back to her. Someone was clasping them. “We have a daughter, Grace. Can you not hear her? She is squawking enough to waken the servants.” He grinned.

  It was Perry, she thought. He was Perry. “A daughter?” she said, not sure quite where her mouth was or how she formed the words. “She is alive?”

  “Very much so,” he said. “I don’t think she likes being washed, Grace.”

  Her body was coming back to her. There was another involuntary contraction of muscles and a wave of pain and the soothing voice of the doctor telling her, or telling someone, that it was all over now, that very soon now she would be able to rest.

  “Look at her, Grace. Oh, look at her.”

  But she could not look away from him for the moment. Why was he crying? Was the baby dead? Was she dead?

  And then a little bundle of linen was being laid in the arms that did not yet belong to her, and she saw her child, quiet now, red and wrinkled, its face and head distorted from the recent passage of birth. Beautiful. Oh, beautiful beyond description. She could not go. She could not go and leave this child behind. Or that other beloved person. Where was he?

  “Perry?”

  He was there still beside her, white-faced, smiling, crying.

  “A daughter,” she said. “She is alive. She is alive, Perry.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  It was not him laughing, she realized, but herself. Or was she crying? She could not see him.

  “Perry,” she said, “hold her. I want to see you hold her.”

  She could see him enough to know that the smile had disappeared. “I don’t think I dare,” he said. He reached out and touched one tiny curled hand with his index finger.

  “Hold your daughter,” she said. “Papa.”

  The little bundle was gone from her arms. Someone was murmuring gentle endearments. Someone with a familiar, much-loved voice. The baby had stopped crying. She could let herself go. Grace slid down the seductive slope toward an unknown destination that seemed far more desirable at the moment than any of those things or people who had made her laugh and cry and come back to herself a moment ago.

  “I AM SORRY, Alex.” The Earl of Amberley lay beneath his wife, her body cradled comfortably on his own, her head nestled on his shoulder, the single blanket, his greatcoat, and her cloak covering her. “I have failed you already and we have been married only a week.”

  “You have not failed me,” she said, turning her head and kissing his chin. “You have just been used all your life to retreating into yourself whenever there is a problem. You cannot easily change the habit of a lifetime just because you have a wife. You told me before we were married that you would have difficulty not excluding me from your life at times. And I told you, once I knew that you loved me, that I would not let you do so. So I followed you here. I was not even sure you would be here. I thought perhaps you were still at Reardon Park.”

  They were lying in a small stone hermit’s hut a mile or more from Amberley Court, long a hideaway of the earl’s. It was more than an hour past dawn.

  “It was terrible,” he said, one hand playing with his wife’s long dark hair, the other over his eyes. “All day yesterday and then all night after Perry had gone to her. I could not drag myself away.”

  “Is she really likely to die?” the countess asked hesitantly.

  “She was bleeding a lot,” he said. “I am sure Perry’s housekeeper would not have said so much if she had not been so tired and so worried. And the child was a long time coming. She is exhausted. And of course she is not a young woman.”

  “But nothing is sure?” she asked. “You did not talk to the doctor or Perry?”

  “No,” he said. “Neither of them would leave her. Alex. Alex, it is a cruel life for women.” He hugged her to him.

  “I think it is rather sure,” she said after a pause. “Will you mind, Edmund? Will you be very embarrassed?”

  He groaned against her hair. “Embarrassed?” he said. “Oh, Alex, my love.”

  “But a child after fewer than eight months, Edmund,” she said.

  “So,” he said, “the world will know that we were lovers before our nuptials. Shameful indeed! I just wish you had not raised the subject at this particular time. I’m afraid for you, Alex.”

  Later that same morning the rector’s wife met the Misses Stanhope at the church door with the news that the rector had been called to Reardon Hall.

  “The child?” Miss Letitia asked.

  “A girl, and doing well,” the rector’s wife said.

  “Lady Lampman.” Miss Stanhope’s voice broke a silence that none of the three seemed wishful to fill. Her words were a statement rather than a question.

  “She had a hard time, poor lady,” the rector’s wife said.

  Miss Letitia fumbled for her handkerchief only when a tear dripped from her chin onto the frilled ribbons of her cap. “Poor dear Sir Perry,” she said. “He is fond of her.”

  “She was married from our house,” Miss Stanhope said.

  The Misses Stanhope paid a call on their friend Mrs. Morton and she on Mrs. Courtney and Mrs. Cartwright and Mrs. Carrington. But they were mournful visits. There was no joy in the afterno
on’s gossip. Though, as with most gossip, it greatly exaggerated the negative.

  Mr. Carrington found his wife in tears.

  “Why, Viola?” he said. “What is this? I have not pinched you in a week, is that it? It is just that having passed my fiftieth birthday, I thought perhaps it was time to grow a more dignified image, dear. There was no implied insult to your charms. Dry your eyes now and come and be kissed.”

  “Don’t tease, William,” she said without any of her usual outrage. “It is Lady Lampman.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Lost the child?”

  “No-o,” she wailed. “The child is well. But she is dying, William, or passed on already. The doctor has been at Reardon Park since yesterday morning, and the rector was called there this morning. Oh, the poor dear lady. She has been good for Perry, has she not? Oh, don’t just stand there, William. Hold me. Please hold me. Poor dear Lady Lampman.”

  IT WAS A cold, gray, blustery November day with almost nothing to recommend it to the senses. Two warmly clad figures made their way slowly along the lane leading from Reardon Park, the lady leaning quite heavily on the man.

  “It feels so good to be outside again, Perry,” Grace said, lifting her face to the cold wind.

  “We must turn back soon,” he said. “You must not overdo it and exhaust yourself or catch a chill, you know.”

  “It is so wonderful just to be alive,” she said. “Is it not, Perry? Do you not feel it?”

  “It is very wonderful to have you alive,” he said. “I almost lost you, Grace.” He covered her gloved hand with his own.

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “You kept me alive, Perry. It would have been so much easier at one point to die than to fight back to life. But you would not let me go.”