by Mary Balogh
“I will prove to you that you still love me,” he said, grasping her arm in a painful grip.
“I have done a great deal of wrong in my life,” Grace said, “but I have atoned and will atone. It is hardest to forgive oneself for the dead, but I have done it. I took Papa to see Paul’s grave yesterday, and he told me that he admired Paul more after their quarrel than ever before in his life. So maybe there was some small good in their quarrel, after all. And I have forgiven myself—finally—for Jeremy. I was wrong to lie with you, Gareth, but Jeremy was not wrong. And I have looked back and seen that what Perry once told me was right: it is never wrong to give life. I devoted myself to my son utterly while he lived. And I was not neglecting him at the end. It was perfectly acceptable to send him off with a governess. Ethel had done so with Oswald and Priscilla. I was not to blame. He lived as happy a life as I could give him. I have forgiven myself.”
“The child was part of me,” he said. “You can have me to love instead, Grace. For the rest of our lives.”
“No,” she said. “I do not quite understand why you pursue me now, Gareth. You never did love me, and I am no longer young. I think it must be the challenge. Had I returned home destitute and broken after Paul’s death, I think you would not have afforded me a second glance. But I was married when you met me again, and happily married, to a man whose youth must have challenged your masculinity. I think that must be it. But I do not really care. Whatever your motive, you have failed. I have no feelings for you at all, not even hatred.”
“You are not happily married,” he said fiercely. “To that boy, Grace? Nonsense! You feel a mother’s concern for him. You are afraid he will be hurt by your leaving. He will survive, never fear.”
“One wrong which I have been longest in forgiving myself for,” she said, “was marrying Perry. Guilt over that has haunted me for almost two years. And I allowed you to fan it. Only recently have I realized that in fact I did no wrong and that there need be no guilt. I love Perry with all of my being, and though I have made him suffer because my guilt drove me back into your power for a long time, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make him happy. Perry married me freely and has not failed in his affection for me and his kindness toward me even during this past difficult year. Perhaps he should be married to a younger woman. But the fact is that he is married to me and has shown no sign of being sorry it is so. You cannot destroy my marriage, Gareth, or even spoil it any longer. You have no more power over me.”
“Liar, Grace,” he said. “Oh, liar.”
“Yes,” she said, “you will have to convince yourself that I am being untruthful. I am not sure that you are able to cope with failure, Gareth. But then I have not really known you for sixteen years. Perhaps I do you an injustice. Perhaps you have a stronger character than I think.”
“I love you,” he said. “That is the strongest fact of my life, Grace.”
“Then you must prove it by leaving me to my happiness,” she said.
He still held to her arm. His eyes smoldered into hers. “I could win you if I wanted,” he said. “I could make you admit that you love me, Grace. And I will do so one day, I do assure you.”
She shook her head. “Tea will be ready,” she said. “We must go inside. I am not going to ask you to cut short your visit to Lord Amberley, Gareth, or to stay away from me in future. I know I would waste my breath to do so. But I will tell you this: it will not matter to me in the future how often you put yourself in my way. It simply will not matter.”
He looked searchingly into her eyes for a few moments before releasing her arm. “Do you know, Grace?” he said. “If you had been like this at the age of one-and-twenty, I think I might have married you, after all, and be hanged to all the money that Martha brought me.”
They walked side by side and in silence back to the house.
14
PEREGRINE WENT OUTSIDE TO SEE THE COURTNEYS on their way. They were taking Priscilla with them, on the request of Susan, who appeared perfectly delighted to have a fashionable young lady to befriend. Mr. Courtney assured Ethel and Martin that Miss Howard would be returned to them safe and sound before bedtime.
Lord Amberley and his mother did not stay much longer. They rose to leave as soon as their guest came back indoors with Grace.
“You have a lovely garden,” Lord Sandersford said.
“I can bear to look at it now,” Lady Amberley said with a smile for Grace. “But don’t expect me to come anywhere near here when all the daffodils are in bloom. Or later, during the summer. I shall be just too envious. Lady Lampman will have at least twice as many flowers as anyone else within five miles, I do assure you, Lord Sandersford.”
Lord Amberley shook hands with Peregrine and bowed to Grace. “We may expect you all to dinner, then, the day after tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes.” Grace smiled. “That will be very pleasant, my lord.”
She went outside with her husband again to wave the Amberley carriage on its way. But there was no chance to talk. Martin had come out behind them.
“You are fortunate to have such pleasant neighbors,” he said. “Do you feel like a game of billiards, Perry?”
IT WAS GOOD to have visitors, Peregrine thought hours later. One was forced to live and function, to carry on talking and eating and doing. Even when one felt like curling up in a corner somewhere and ceasing to live, or like lashing out with one’s tongue and one’s fists at everyone who had the misfortune to cross one’s path.
She had asked him to invite Sandersford to his own home, and he had meekly complied. And she had asked Sandersford to step out into the garden alone with her, and they had been out there for almost half an hour. While her own husband sat inside conversing pleasantly with their other visitors. Was he an utter fool? Was she making a fool of him?
But, no, he would not believe that. Could not believe that. She would tell him. When the time came for her to leave, she would come and tell him first. He stood at the window of the bedchamber that had been his for the past two months and leaned his forehead against the windowpane. And he gave himself up to a rare moment of self-pity. And loneliness. He saw her every day, lived with her, talked with her, and was probably more lonely than he would be if she had left him already. Then he would be able to allow the healing to begin. Now he waited in anticipation of a wound that would tear him apart.
He turned at the light tap on the door and tied the belt of his dressing gown around him. “Come in,” he called without moving.
He watched Grace in silence as she stepped inside the room and closed the door behind her. She was not beautiful, was she? He could not remember ever thinking her quite so when she had lived at the rectory with Paul. Her face was too narrow, her eyes too large in comparison with the rest of her features. And she was not young. There was no youthful bloom in her face, only the character that seven-and-thirty years of living had carved there. Perhaps no one else in the world would look at her and call her beautiful. But everyone else would look at her with the eyes only. To him she was more beautiful than the loveliest rose in her garden.
She watched him from her large eyes. She wore a white silk robe over her nightgown. Her dark hair was loose down her back.
“Perry,” she said, “are you willing to take me back?”
“Take you back?” He looked at her in incomprehension. “I have never sent you away, Grace.”
“We have not been a married couple since Christmas,” she said. “Will you have me back again? Will you forgive me?”
“Have you back?” He frowned. “I have not put you from me. You told me that you did not think you belonged with me. I would not force myself on you, Grace.”
“I have broken his power over me,” she said. “I do not love him, Perry. I have not done so since months before Jeremy was born. But I have been afraid of him.”
“Afraid?” He took one step toward her. “Had he threatened you? Hurt you? Why did you not tell me, Grace?”
She shook her head. �
�I was afraid that he was my punishment,” she said. “My destiny, I suppose. I had been happy for a year when I met him again, and then I thought that perhaps I did not deserve happiness. I had done a great deal of wrong in my life.”
“We all have,” he said.
“I know.” She clasped her hands before her and looked earnestly at him. “I have come to realize that. And I cannot do anything to change the past. I can influence only the present and the future. And I do not wish Gareth to have a part in either. I have told him that. And I have told him that he may put himself in my way as much as he wishes in the future without in any way upsetting me. I have no feeling for him at all except indifference. I do not even hate him any longer.”
“You want to continue with our marriage?” Peregrine realized suddenly that he was holding his breath.
“Yes.” She moved her hands to clasp behind her. “If you wish it, Perry. I fully realize that perhaps you will not. I will return home with Papa and Martin if you would prefer it.”
“Grace.” He spoke her name softly, reproachfully. “You are my wife. And will remain so while we both live. I would not have divorced you, you know. You would have been free to go, but you would have remained my wife.”
She tried to smile. She grimaced instead.
“I have missed you,” he said softly.
“Have you? And I you.” But she held up her hands sharply in front of her as he moved toward her. “Perry,” she said, “I am with child.”
He stopped in his tracks and stared at her.
“It is true,” she said. “I called on Doctor Hanson this morning when Ethel came into Abbotsford with me. I thought that for some reason I could not conceive, Perry, but it is not so. I am able to give you a child. I think it must have happened at Christmastime.”
“Grace.” Peregrine felt as if he were looking at her down a long tunnel. “Is it safe?”
“At my age?” she said. “Doctor Hanson says that I seem perfectly healthy and that I should not have any great problems. You are pleased, Perry?”
He moved toward her at last and took her hands in a firm grip. “I will not forgive myself if you … if anything happens to you,” he said.
“Having a child is always a risk,” she said. “But women older than I am are giving birth every day, Perry. And it is not my first.” She flushed. “There is no need to be especially frightened for me. I am not afraid. This is something I want to do. I want to give you a child.”
“Oh, Grace.” He lifted one of her hands to lay against his cheek and turned his head to kiss the palm. “We men are selfish brutes. For the first few months of our marriage I confess I did worry a little. I thought perhaps you would not want all the burdens of motherhood again. But then I forgot the danger to you and concerned myself only with my own pleasure.”
“You are not happy, are you?” she said. “I thought it might please you to have a son. Or a daughter.”
“A son,” he repeated, “or a daughter.” He felt a buzzing in his head as though he were going to faint. “We are going to have a child, Grace. A baby.” He laughed rather shakily. “Of course I want a child. Oh, of course I am happy.”
He caught her to him then and held her, his eyes tightly closed, terror for his wife’s health and very life warring for control of his mind with elation at the knowledge that his child was growing in her.
“Perry?” She lifted her head for his kiss.
And, oh, it had been so long. His arms had been so empty without her, his bed so lonely. He had spent two months trying to condition himself to the probability that she would never occupy either again. But he had missed her. God, he had missed her. He wanted Christmas back again. He wanted it to be like that with her again. When they had started a new life in her.
He put her from him and swallowed. “You are with child,” he said.
“It does not matter.” She flushed. “Doctor Hanson talked about it. He said it does not matter until the last months.”
He touched his fingers to her face. “In our bedchamber, then,” he said. “Not here. I heartily dislike this room, Grace.”
She smiled and turned back to the door.
Peregrine settled his wife’s head on his arm almost an hour later and made sure that the blankets were close about her. She was warm and naked against him. And relaxed. It had been as good as at Christmastime. She had made love with him, and he had felt her come to him at the end. He rested his cheek against the top of her head. And she was his. She did not love Sandersford, had not loved him for years. She wanted to continue with their marriage. And she was with child by him. They would have a nursery in their home. A son or daughter. Their child, his and Grace’s.
If the child survived. And if Grace survived. But he would not think such morbid thoughts. Childbirth was always dangerous, though it was also the most natural process in the world. He would not expect the worst. He would not feel guilt at having so carelessly impregnated a woman of close to forty years. As she had said, this child would not be her first, and women older than she were giving birth every day. Seven-and-thirty was not so very old. She was his wife. He had loved her. The child had sprung from his love.
And he would not allow the thought to poison his happiness that perhaps he had trapped her, after all, despite his wish to leave her free to decide her own future. She must have suspected the truth for the past month. She had found out beyond all doubt only that morning, a few hours before her confrontation with Sandersford. But she did not love him, she had said. She had been afraid of him, afraid that he was her destiny, and not wanting it to be so. She would not have wanted to go with him even if she were not with child.
It was so. She was his. Perhaps she even loved him, though she had never said those words and he had never asked her. He tightened his arm about her and pressed his cheek to her head. She lifted one hand to his chest and murmured something in her sleep.
ETHEL HAD BEEN shocked. “You are quite sure, Grace?” she had asked in the carriage on the way into Abbotsford.
“No,” Grace had said. “I am going to Doctor Hanson so that I may be sure. But I cannot think what else it can be. I am far too young for the change of life. And I believe it is true. There is a certain feeling in the mornings—not a biliousness exactly, not a dizziness exactly—that I remember from when I was carrying Jeremy.”
“Is it wise?” Ethel had asked. “I mean …”
“You mean that I am far too old to be giving birth,” Grace said. She flushed. “But, yes, it is wise. Perry deserves children just like any other man. And I want to give him a child. Just this one. There probably will be no more. It has taken two years this time. I love him, you see. And I want his child for me too, for purely selfish reasons.”
“I did not mean …” Ethel leaned forward and touched Grace’s hand. “I did not mean to insult you, Grace, truly I did not. I just never thought of such a thing, which is very foolish because you have been married only a short while and you are still quite young, so it is only natural that you would both wish for a family. I am happy for you.”
And during the carriage ride home, after they had paid a call upon the Misses Stanhope and the call on the doctor, Ethel took Grace’s hand in hers and squeezed it.
“I am so very happy for you, Grace,” she said. “I have been thinking of it all morning, and I have been growing as excited for you as if it were myself. Everything is all right between you and Perry, then? I have been terribly afraid … And Gareth at Amberley Court.”
Grace shook her head. “Gareth is my past,” she said, “my foolish past. Perry is my present, and he and our child are my future.”
“And yet Gareth has been invited for tea?” Ethel said uneasily.
“Yes.” Grace smiled at her. “I suppose there must be a definite ending to something that has figured so large in my life. My love for Gareth was a very powerful force, Ethel. And without Gareth there would not have been Jeremy. And Jeremy is still as important to me as Perry and this new child are to me now. Th
is afternoon will be the end with Gareth. Then I can start living my present and looking forward to my future.”
“Oh, be careful.” Ethel looked troubled. “Do be careful, Grace. That man frightens me.”
Grace merely smiled.
“Grace.” Ethel sat back in her seat and looked uncomfortable. “I have wanted to say this to you since last year. In my mind I have said it a dozen times, but it is so hard to do so when I am face-to-face with you.”
Grace looked inquiringly at her.
“I feel such guilt,” Ethel said. “I used to hate you, you know.” Her face was blotched with uneven patches of color. “You were so beautiful and so self-assured. And even when you had Jeremy, you bore yourself so proudly that I was furious with you and quite determined to hate him too. I couldn’t, of course. He was such a handsome child and so good-natured. But I was jealous. And I hated you for the time you devoted to him and Priscilla and Oswald too, when I was so frequently tired with those headaches I have always suffered from. And your papa always used to watch Jeremy so hungrily when he thought no one was looking.”
“It is all best forgotten,” Grace said, twisting the rings on her finger.
“Yes,” Ethel said, “but it must be spoken of first. Because I like you now, Grace, and I think we can become friends if there is no barrier between us. I was so wretched with guilt after you left. I thought of you with Jeremy gone when I still had my children, and with Gareth gone and Papa and Martin estranged from you. And I never had the courage to write. I wanted to, but I never could. And when you wrote and I knew you were married, and after you had accepted my invitation to visit, I wanted nothing more than to write again and tell you not to come, after all. I was too embarrassed to face you.”
“We do terrible things to our own lives and those of the people around us, don’t we?” Grace said. “So many years wasted, Ethel. But we must put them behind us. If we are to make amends, we must do so. For I have been at least equally to blame for the coldness there has been between us. How I hated you for having the respectability of marriage when I had been deserted and left with an illegitimate child. And we might have been sisters all these years.”
