The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring

by Mary Balogh

  “Well,” she said, “I say, let the Chinese plant their own flowers if they want them.”

  It was as if they had stepped out of one world that morning when they had left the inn at which they had spent the night and been transported in a matter of five hours into another world. Peregrine vaulted out of the carriage when it drew to a halt before his front doors, and turned to lift his wife down. He totally ignored the steps that the footman had lowered for their convenience. They were home and they were together and they had smiled at each other in genuine delight before the carriage had stopped completely.

  Almost, he thought as he held to her waist for a few moments after her feet touched the ground, and he smiled down at her again as if all the awkwardness and stiffness and unhappiness and all the efforts to pretend that everything was normal between them had vanished during the final stage of their journey. Almost as if they could revert immediately to the quiet contentment they had enjoyed here together during the first year of their marriage.

  “Happy?” he asked before releasing her.

  She nodded, though her lips were trembling. He might have folded her to him and kissed her and told her that he loved her and would keep her safe and at peace for the rest of her life if the coachman and the footman had not been bustling about with two of the servants from the house and his valet and Grace’s maid, all intent on emptying the baggage coach, and if their housekeeper had not been standing in the doorway, bobbing curtsies, her face wreathed in a smile of welcome.

  “That surprised we were, my lady, to hear just this morning that you were on your way home already,” she said when Grace moved forward to greet her. “And that glad. You go upstairs and wash yourself now. I have had hot water sent up already. And there will be warm scones and good strong tea in the parlor before you know it.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said. “It is so very good to be home.”

  And it was good, Peregrine agreed. He had never been a great lover of London and the fashionable world. Now the very thought of both was enough to make him shudder. He did not believe that he would ever want to go back there again or ever leave Reardon Park again.

  It was good to settle once more into the routine of their quiet life. It was good to wander in the garden and in the orchard and to see the beauty and the color with which his wife’s skill and imagination had surrounded them. And to see the promise of roses in the arbor. It was good to be back among his own books and to be able to relax in his own worn chair in the library and read to his heart’s content and watch again his wife quietly embroidering in the chair opposite his. Good to read to her again and to discover again that if he shared his thoughts and ideas with her, she would show interest and be perfectly capable of matching her intelligence to his.

  And it was good to be back among their friends again. News of their return spread quickly, and not an afternoon passed for several days without bringing with it at least one visitor. The rector apologized for his good wife’s absence, but he was delighted to announce that the latest addition to their family had arrived but three weeks before. Mrs. Cartwright lamented the fact that with both them and the earl’s family gone, life had been very dull but that perhaps now there would be a little more company again. Mr. Watson came to return a book of poetry he had borrowed before Christmas.

  Mr. and Mrs. Carrington were so much their usual selves that Peregrine could have laughed aloud at them, and did after they were gone and he was alone with Grace again.

  “Such a fine new gown, to be sure,” Mr. Carrington said with a shake of the head as he looked at Grace’s muslin dress. “I daresay you will not be talking to such rustics as us any longer, Lady Lampman, and we will be as dull as we have been since you all went away, you and Amberley and the rest of them.”

  “William,” his wife scolded. “The very idea! Lady Lampman will be thinking you are serious. Take no notice of him, my dear. William does like to tease.”

  “Well, I have a new coat,” Peregrine said, smoothing his hands down the lapels, “made by Weston, no less. And I have been seriously wondering whether everyone in this part of the world is not now beneath my notice. Of course, if I turn my back on all my neighbors, there will be no one to admire my superior appearance, will there?”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Carrington said. “So you need us, after all, you see, Lampman. And we need not be dull, you will be relieved to know, Viola.”

  “Well, really,” Mrs. Carrington said indignantly. “Your husband is every bit as bad as mine, Lady Lampman. You have my sympathy. But then he always was a dreadful tease.”

  “Viola gets awfully violent when she once loses her temper,” Mr. Carrington said. “We had better take our leave, my dear.”

  “Since we have been here an hour already, I agree we should,” Mrs. Carrington said. “But what he says is quite untrue, Lady Lampman. Me violent? The very idea!”

  Grace joined Peregrine in his laughter after they had left.

  The Misses Stanhope too were quite their usual selves. Miss Stanhope described for Grace exactly how they had decorated the altar at church for Easter, using the lace cloth she had made the year before expressly for that purpose, and how they had missed Lady Lampman when it came time to arrange the flowers. And Miss Letitia tittered at Peregrine’s compliments and declared that if she had a new cap every time dear Sir Perry thought she did, she would have a whole dresser stuffed full of them.

  Yes, it was good to be home again. Almost as if they had never been away. Almost. But not quite.

  There was something between them. It was hard to explain it, impossible to put it into words, hard even to grasp it in coherent thought. They spoke frequently and freely on all topics. And yet there was a constraint in their conversation, something that they avoided with such care that they could not even name that something to themselves. They could sit in comfortable silence with each other. And yet sometimes that silence became loud with that unspoken something. They went about together and enjoyed the friendship of their neighbors. And yet they watched each other, not out of jealousy or suspicion, but out of some emotion or fear they could not name.

  They lived together as man and wife, and yet their lovemaking was somewhat less frequent than it had been before. And though they were both satisfied by each encounter and knew the other at least not repelled, they both wondered sometimes, entirely against their will. Grace wondered if he did not dream sometimes of a younger woman. Peregrine wondered if she pined for the man she had loved since she was a girl.

  And both remembered that they had made a marriage of convenience and that for the other it was still so. Each believed that love had grown on one side only.

  12

  AS THE SECOND YEAR OF THEIR MARRIAGE DREW TO its close, both Grace and Peregrine could reflect that it had been restored to the relative contentment they had known at the end of the first. Perhaps the only real difference was that now each of them knew what both had felt but not acknowledged the year before. And so there was a somewhat lesser contentment. It was not easy, each found, to love deeply when one believes that that love is not reciprocated. And yet each was thankful for the companionship, the loyalty, and the affection of the other.

  They invited Grace’s family to visit them for Christmas. The invitation was refused—the weather and therefore the roads were likely to be bad, and Oswald would be coming home from school for a few weeks. But they did promise to come later, perhaps in February if the winter turned out to be not too long and hard. Even Lord Pawley said he would come. He wished to see the grave of his younger son, Ethel added in a postscript to the letter she wrote Grace.

  Grace was pleased. The reconciliation with her father that had begun the spring before had not been completed, she felt. They had been very close at one time. The gap between them after their estrangement had been correspondingly wide. She looked forward to entertaining him in her own home, and she certainly could not visit him at Pangam Manor so soon after her last visit. There was still a bewilderment, a fear about her
feelings for Gareth. Not fear of him and what he might do to her, but fear of herself and a return of that weakness that had blinded her to his faults when she was younger and drawn her into a passion that had deprived her of all reason and morality.

  In the meantime there was Christmas to look forward to again. Decorating the church with the Nativity scene; caroling with the Mortons and the Carringtons outside all the village homes and some of the outlying cottages too; taking baskets of food to the sick and the poor; helping the Countess of Amberley organize a party for the children at Amberley Court; buying and making gifts for servants and friends and for each other; conferring with the housekeeper and the cook on the foods to be prepared; bringing inside armfuls of holly to decorate doors and mantels; commiserating with each other over scratched hands and pricked fingers. There seemed to be a hundred and one tasks to be done, all equally delightful.

  There was the usual party at Amberley Court on Christmas Day, beginning late in the afternoon so that each family would have plenty of time in which to enjoy its own company and open gifts and eat the Christmas goose before bundling up warmly for the carriage ride to Amberley.

  But they were not to enjoy the warmth of the blazing log fire in the Amberley drawing room for long, it seemed. Lord Eden and Lady Madeline, who had not had a chilly journey to endure a half-hour before, were all impatience to persuade the younger guests that a brisk walk to the beach, two miles away along the valley in which the house was situated, was just the thing to settle their Christmas dinners and make room for all the good things still to come at tea and dinner.

  Young people are ever resilient, Peregrine thought, settling more comfortably into his chair and feeling with some complacence that the heat of the flames was almost too hot on his feet. Walter Carrington and his younger sister, Anna, immediately leapt to their feet, eager to be on the way. And the four Courtney boys were no more reluctant. Miss Morton and her younger sister agreed to join the party when they saw how many young gentlemen there would be to escort them. And the rector’s two older children, bouncing before their mother as if they thought that such motion might mesmerize her brain and induce her consent, begged to be allowed to go along too.

  The Earl of Amberley grinned. “Sometimes,” he said, “being a host has distinct advantages. Especially when it is a chilly Christmas and a crowd of mad youngsters suggests a walk of a mere four miles. I must stay to entertain my wiser guests, of course. But don’t let me hinder you, Perry, my lad. Perhaps these young people will need the steadying influence of an older man.”

  “Oh, very steady,” Lord Eden said with a shout of laughter. “I am only five years younger than you, Perry, and I can remember some of the scrapes you and Edmund used to get into. You were quite my idol at one time.”

  “At one time?” Peregrine said, delighting the Misses Stanhope and Mrs. Cartwright with his look of mock horror. “You mean I have lost my reputation for daring and recklessness? This will never do. My coat and my hat immediately, if you please.”

  “Oh, splendid,” Lady Madeline said. “I was terrified that Dom and I were going to be the seniors of this expedition.” She smiled impudently at Peregrine.

  “May I come too, Perry?” Grace asked. “I like the thought of the exercise. I certainly feel the need for it.”

  “You mean you will do this quite voluntarily?” he asked. “Without being tricked into it, as I have been? You are quite heroic, Grace.”

  “Dear Lady Lampman,” Mrs. Morton remarked to Miss Letitia. “She does keep herself young for Sir Perry, does she not? I would not welcome such an expedition even if I could be taken in a carriage with a hot brick for my feet.”

  “It would keep a lady young to be married so late in life to such a handsome, cheerful gentleman as Sir Perry, though,” Miss Letitia replied with a sigh that might well have been one of envy. Peregrine had not failed to remark on the handsomeness of her new cap—and it really was new this time, a Christmas gift from her sister.

  The young people, together with Grace and Peregrine, were soon on their way, striding energetically and noisily along the valley through which a stream flowed to the sea. Anna Carrington, who had decided five years before, at the age of ten, that she was going to marry her first cousin, Dominic, when she grew up, linked her arm through his and tripped along at his side, and reminded him of the birthday she had celebrated less than two weeks before and of the fact that in another year she would be finished with the horrid schoolroom for good and would be almost grown up.

  “And will dazzle not a few gentlemen when you are finally let loose on society, Anna,” he said good-naturedly.

  “Oh, do you think so, Dominic?” she said eagerly. And she added ingenuously, “And you too?”

  “You are already dazzling me,” he said, “with those rosy cheeks. No, don’t frown and look offended, you goose. They look very becoming.”

  Madeline walked with Howard Courtney and chattered determinedly about any topic that came to mind. Howard had had a painful tendre for her for years, and though she had told him almost four years before that she could never look on him as more than a friend, he seemed unable to meet her without flushing and becoming tongue-tied. If only he were not such a throroughly nice person, she thought with an inward sigh, she could perhaps despise him and feel no sympathy for him at all.

  Walter Carrington took Miss Hetty Morton on his arm, reflecting glumly on the fact that she was not even quite as old as his sister and no foil whatsoever for his advanced eighteen years. It was a great shame that Miss Susan Courtney had been away at her aunt’s since the summer. She was growing up fast, and she was such a very pretty and timid little thing.

  The older Miss Morton was proud to have the others see that she walked with two gentlemen, both her arms occupied. It was true that they were only two of the younger Courtney boys. And it was true that she had been privately annoyed to see that child Anna monopolize the attention of Lord Eden again. But even so, it was gratifying to know that there were two gentlemen eager to accompany her. It was something to tell Mama later.

  Peregrine held Grace’s arm snug against his side. They both wore woolen scarves wrapped twice about their necks. “You are a marvel,” he said. “There are not many married ladies who would prefer a brisk walk in the December air to a cozy chat by the fire.”

  “The sea and the beach are at their loveliest in the winter,” she said. “And you know I love the outdoors, Perry. I just hope these very young persons will not feel inhibited by my very elderly presence.”

  He grinned. “I would wager you could outwalk and outwork all of them put together, Grace,” he said. “Your nose distinctly resembles a cherry, by the way.”

  “No, no,” she said. “This is the Christmas season, Perry. A holly berry would be a more appropriate comparison, surely. Not that I can see my own nose to judge, of course. But I can see yours.”

  “Touché,” he said with a laugh. “Ah, look, there is the sea already. The tide must be almost full. What a pity. I like to see the wide beach when it is out.”

  “But this sky looks splendid reflected in the water,” she said. “Look, Perry. Lots of heavy gray clouds scudding across the sky with the sunshine behind them. And the sea looks like silver. Molten silver.”

  Peregrine laughed. “Most people would say it is a nasty dull day and cold into the bargain,” he said. “You have a lovely creative mind, Grace. A poet’s mind.”

  The valley opened out onto a flat golden beach with steep cliffs either side. But now, almost at full tide, not a great deal of the sand could be seen. They all walked out until they were almost at the edge of the incoming water. Anna squealed as Lord Eden threatened to pick her up and hurl her into the closest breaker.

  “Shall we stroll along at the edge for a while?” Peregrine asked. “I don’t think we are likely to be trapped against the cliffs yet. And if we were, we would merely have to climb up.”

  “Gracious,” Grace said. “Is it possible?” She gazed up the almost sheer he
ight of the cliff. “I suppose it is something you did during your boyhood, Perry. And something that was strictly forbidden, I presume.”

  “Right on both counts,” he said meekly. “It looks as if we were both rather reckless and disobedient young people, Grace. We deserve each other, don’t you think? And we dare to stroll sedately along the beach here, avoiding all those noisy, frolicking youngsters, for all the world as if we never dreamed of behaving in such a riotous manner when we were their age. We are frauds, my dear. Should we turn back, do you suppose, and confess to them?”

  “Oh, Perry,” she said, “you speak as if you are an old man already. Do you not long to join in with their high spirits.”

  “Join in?” he said. “Good Lord, no, Grace. I am no boy, my dear. I have been a sober married gentleman for almost two years.”

  “Is that what I have done to you?” she said.

  He looked down at her, eyebrows raised. “Made a married gentleman out of me?” he said. “Yes, certainly.”

  “I meant the sober part,” she said.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I distinctly remember laughing at least three times only today. But not frolicking, Grace. That would be somewhat undignified at my age, would it not?”

  “I am sometimes afraid that perhaps you crave young company,” she said.

  “And you do not think of yourself as young, I presume,” he said. “Do you think that way, Grace? Because I like to tease young girls, perhaps? But I like to tease the older ladies too, dear. Miss Letitia Stanhope would be severely disappointed if I did not pretend each time I see her that I think her cap to be new and most charming. I like women. It is so easy to please them, to make them happy. In a quite superficial manner, of course. But I like to make people happy. You do not think I flirt, do you?”