The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (42 page)

“Yes,” she said. “Will there not be a great many other entertainments for it to conflict with, though, Perry?”

“We shall set the date now, then, and let our friends know as we see them,” he said. “I am expecting every day to see Edmund at White’s. It will be good to see him again and Madeline and Dominic. Sandersford must have made a spur-of-the-moment decision to come. He did not say anything while we were there, did he?”

“Not that I heard,” Grace said.

“Perhaps he is thinking of taking a new wife,” Peregrine said with a grin. “Did you know his first wife, Grace?”

“No,” she said. “He was living from home when they were married.”

He nodded. “Do you suppose Priscilla will get all the finery she has set her heart on in the last week?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” Grace said. “Martin did not sound too encouraging even about the few things she mentioned this afternoon.”

“And yet he dotes on her,” Peregrine said with a laugh. “And I am sure she understands perfectly well that his bark is many times worse than his bite. It must be very difficult to be strict with a daughter, mustn’t it? I would probably spend a fortune on one merely because I could not face her look of disappointment when I said no.”

In the event, it was Lord Sandersford whom Peregrine
met at White’s, not Lord Amberley. They were both there to read the morning papers, but adjourned to the dining room when they recognized each other.

“I was not even planning to come here this year,” Lord Sandersford said. “But one does feel the pull of town amusements when spring comes, does one not? And female company, of course.”

“Yes, although the social rounds can be trying year after year,” Peregrine said. “Through one’s youth it seems that there is nothing so enjoyable as the Season and that the rest of the year must be spent in dullness waiting for the next spring to arrive. But other interests begin to take priority as the years pass.”

“And is Lady Lampman enjoying being here?” Lord Sandersford asked, looking his companion over with lazy, penetrating eyes. “It is her first time in town, I believe?”

“Yes,” Peregrine said. “She has been suitably impressed with all one is supposed to be impressed with. And she is constantly busy. She is out shopping this morning with her sister-in-law and Priscilla. I think Grace is just as happy, though, at home in the country with her garden.”

“Is she?” The viscount raised his eyebrows. “Then she must have changed. I cannot imagine Grace pottering around in a garden.”

“No?” Peregrine looked at his companion with some interest. “What was she like when you knew her?”

Lord Sandersford’s eyes looked somewhat mocking. “When she was a girl and a young woman?” he said. “Wild, graceful, beautiful. Her hair loose down her back as often as not. Confident, her chin always high, her eyes always flashing. It is hard to imagine, seeing her now, is it not?”

Peregrine considered. “No,” he said. “I can see how
all those qualities would translate into Grace as she is now.”

Lord Sandersford’s eyes rested keenly on the other. “You were a friend of Paul’s?” he asked. “Not often does friendship call upon one to enter a marriage as you did. You are to be commended.”

Peregrine looked startled. “Is that how my marriage appears?” he said. “Because I am so much younger than Grace, perhaps? I am afraid I tend to forget about that. It becomes quite unimportant when one grows familiar with another person, you know. Our marriage seems a very normal one to me, I do assure you. You must not think I did something even remotely heroic. Heavens, no!”

The viscount smiled. “You disappoint me,” he said. “I have thought, you see, that I might look around me for a bride among all the hopeful little girls who are beginning to crowd the fashionable drawing rooms and ballrooms. I would hate to think that after a year or so of marriage I would no longer be aware of her youth and vigor. How very dull a picture you present.”

“Then I must be very poor at conveying meaning through the medium of words,” Peregrine said with a grin. “I wish you luck. And joy, of course.”

Sandersford inclined his head.

“It is,” a tall sandy-haired gentleman with large side whiskers and mustache said, stopping beside their table and bending slightly to look into the viscount’s face. “Heaven bless us! Haven’t clapped eyes on you for five years or more.”

“Six,” Lord Sandersford said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet in order to shake hands with the new arrival. “I sold out six years ago, Maurice. And how have the Guards managed to survive without me?”

“Oh, tolerably well, you know,” the other said with a
bellowing laugh. “And they have had to do without me for the last three as well. Invalided out. My leg, you know. The knee never did heal properly. Should have had it sawn off, I daresay. Keeps giving out on me at the most awkward moments. I was kneeling at the altar for my own wedding—no one you would know, Gareth—and couldn’t get up again.” He guffawed with laughter once more.

“It must have been a priceless moment,” Lord Sandersford said. “Would you care to join us, Maurice?”

He turned to Peregrine and introduced the two men. But his former army friend was in a rush. He excused himself after making plans to meet Sandersford the next day.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lampman,” he said. “And I look forward to hearing what you have been up to for the last six years, Gareth. No good, at a guess. Unless you have reformed. Female hearts and female virtue still strewn around in tatters at your feet, I suppose?” He left them, laughing.

Lord Sandersford resumed his seat. “That is what the Guards can do for you, Lampman,” he said. “Some of us find afterward that we never can talk in anything lower than a quiet bellow. One wonders if he is capable of lowering his voice in his wife’s boudoir, does one not?”

Peregrine excused himself a few minutes later.

T
HE SPACIOUS HOUSES
and mansions of London’s fashionable Mayfair filled up with the coming of April, and soon their wealthy and prominent residents were being offered a dizzying array of entertainments with which to amuse themselves for every moment of their days until
summer should draw them home again or to one of the spas.

Ethel and Martin Howard decided that a ball given by Ethel’s second cousin in honor of his own daughter’s come-out would be a suitable occasion for Priscilla’s first official appearance in society. Grace and Peregrine were invited, but then so was almost everyone who was someone in the social world. It was early in the Season. Many a hostess wished to establish the reputation of having attracted the biggest squeeze to her particular assembly.

Grace was looking forward to the occasion, her first grand ball at the age of thirty-six! She had not planned to dance until Peregrine laughed at her and asked if the rheumatics pained her enough that he should stop taking her walking during the daytime. And she had not planned to dress in just such a way. But Perry had gone with her to the modiste he himself had recommended and firmly forbidden all her early choices of both designs and fabrics for her evening gowns.

Was she afraid that a fashionable gown falling in elegant folds from a high waist might occasionally reveal the outline of her legs? he asked. Shocking! And—with a roguish grin for the dressmaker, who was spreading out a new set of plates for them to consider—was she afraid to reveal a little more of her bosom than a high neckline would allow? And, no, he would absolutely not hear of a turban to hide her lovely hair. Not until she was seventy years old at the very least. And if they were fortunate, perhaps those particular horrors would have gone out of fashion by then. Plumes, yes, if she really wanted, but a turban, no.

And he laughed at her again when she tried to pick out sober colors for her gowns. “Has all the black you have been wearing made you color-blind, Grace?” he asked. “Choose a different color from that gray. I insist.
You cannot really want that, can you? What would you really like to wear if you did not have to consider at all what you think you ought to wear?”

She looked around at all the bolts of cloth spread around them. “That red,” she said daringly and half-jokingly, expecting another storm of protest.

“Then we are finally agreed,” Peregrine said. “The red it will be for your first ball gown, Grace. And for the design, this, I think. Do you like it?”

She looked at the plate to which he pointed. “Oh, Perry,” she said, “it is gorgeous. But I do not know if I dare.”

“This one,” he said, looking up to the dressmaker, his eyes twinkling. “And now for all the others. And you have my strict orders, madam wife, to think and see as a woman for the next hour or so, not as the sober dowager you are pretending to be.”

So, almost two weeks later, she was wearing the red gown and staring at her image in the pier glass in her dressing room, wondering if she had stepped back in time. She had not expected to see herself so ever again, looking vivid and alive and, yes, feminine. Surely when Perry saw her, he would be startled at just how much bosom was showing and at just how much the fine silk did reveal of the outline of her body and legs. Only the heavy flounces at the hem kept it from clinging, she was sure.

And Effie had done wonders with her hair and the silver and red plumes that nodded above it. There was color in her cheeks, though none of it was artificial, and there was a brightness in her eyes that was unfamiliar to her gaze. She felt almost like Grace Howard again, the young Grace, the Grace before Jeremy.

She turned as the door opened behind her and Peregrine stepped into the room. She was suddenly self-conscious,
convinced that she was making a foolish spectacle of herself, masquerading as a girl.

He closed the door behind his back and stood against it. And his eyes traveled down her body from the plumes to the toes of her silver dancing slippers and back up to her face again. “I am going to have to keep you at home, you know, Grace,” he said. “This ball is supposed to be in honor of some poor young girl, and yet, if I take you there, no one will have eyes for anyone else but you.”

“Perry,” she said, pleased. “What a silly joke. But do I look all right? The color is not too vivid?”

“Blinding,” he said.

“Is the bodice not cut too low?”

“Decidedly,” he said. “I am not at all sure that it will please me to have other men see what a magnificent bosom you have, Grace. In fact, I am sorry now that I did not encourage the gray silk and the high neckline and the turban. I might have hidden you in a dark corner, then, and not have had above three-quarters of the men present realize that you were heavily disguised.”

“How silly you are tonight,” she said. “Oh, and Perkins has perfected another waterfall with your neckcloth, Perry. You do look splendid.”

“Well,” he said, “I cannot be quite outclassed by my wife, now, can I?”

Grace felt more lighthearted than she had felt in a long while as they drove the distance to Fitzroy Square, where the ball was to take place, and joined a line of carriages waiting to deposit their passengers before the double doors of the house. She was looking and feeling her best, she was on her way to the first grand ball she had ever attended, her niece was about to make her first appearance in society, and she had Perry at her side. She was going to enjoy herself and forget anything that might cloud her joy.

She was going to forget that Gareth was in town and had called on them two days before and stayed for almost a whole hour, making himself charming to Perry, looking at her frequently with those eyes that established ownership and that she knew from long experience meant mischief.

And she was going to forget that Perry was already going away from her. Oh, he still spent most of each day in her company and all of every evening and night. And she was not so unrealistic as to expect him to be with her for every moment. She had expected him to want to spend some time at his clubs and with former acquaintances.

She had no complaint whatsoever against him. But he was going away from her for all that. He had been unnaturally quiet for the last week, unnaturally serious. Not unkind, not in a bad mood, not silent, not even humorless. It was hard to explain in words. Perhaps she would not have even known that he was going from her if she had not lived long enough with him to know him very well indeed. But she did know him well, and so she did know that she was losing him.

It was inevitable, of course. It must have started at the opera, when that very lovely Lady Leila Walsh had reminded him that there were young people whose company and activities were waiting to be enjoyed. Yet he was married to a lady quite indisputably beyond the age of thirty. And it would have continued when Priscilla left them and took the sparkle and frenzied restlessness of her youth with her. And all their walks and rides together, all his outings alone, would have brought to his notice the young and the beautiful and the exuberant who seemed to have a monopoly on the springtime and the Season.

And Perry, because he was good and kind and honorable, was still spending most of his time with her and
still treating her with deference, still entertaining her and buying her gifts by day and loving her by night. Perhaps he did not even know himself yet that their marriage was dying. Or perhaps he did know and was fighting the inevitable. Poor Perry!

But she did know and accepted the reality, though with a dull and hopeless pain inside. She had always known it would come to this and had protected herself from unbearable agony by refusing to allow herself to come fully alive under Perry’s affection. But it had not happened yet. It was happening, but it was not finished. There was some time left yet. There was this evening and this ball. And she had Perry beside her, in the sort of teasing mood that she had not seen in the past week. She was going to enjoy herself.

L
ADY
M
ADELINE
R
AINE
had just rapped Peregrine on the knuckles with her fan and told him not to be impertinent. Her green eyes were dancing with merriment.

“If you are suggesting by talking so pointedly about this being my fourth Season that I have been unable to find a husband in all that time,” she said, “then I shall direct Dominic to call you out. He is considerably taller than you, sir. The very idea! Have you considered that perhaps I have not wanted to find a husband?”