The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (45 page)

G
RACE WENT WALKING
in St. James’s Park after luncheon the next day with Ethel and an exuberant Priscilla. Peregrine had gone to Tattersall’s with the Earl of Amberley to look over some horses that the latter was thinking of buying.

“I cannot tell you what a wonderful time I had at the ball last night, Aunt Grace,” the girl said, and proceeded to do just that.

Grace and Ethel smiled indulgently and seemed quite satisfied to listen to a monologue that needed no participation on their part except an occasional murmur of assent or appreciation. There was something of an awkwardness between them that the girl’s presence helped to mask.

“I danced every set,” Priscilla said, “and with some very handsome and amiable gentlemen. Did you see me dance with Lord Eden, Aunt Grace? He is your neighbor, is he not? He is very handsome and very tall. I think I liked Mr. Johnson best, though. He promised that he would call at Cavendish Square and take me walking in the park one afternoon. And did you know that Miss Darnford whispered to me that Uncle Perry was very charming? She looked quite mortified when I told her that he was married to my aunt.” She laughed gaily.

“I was gratified to find that Priscilla made friends with several young ladies,” Ethel said. “One’s first appearance in society is such an important and anxious occasion.”

“I do admire Lady Madeline Raine,” Priscilla said. “Her manners are so easy, and all the men like her. She
was obliging enough to offer to pick me up later this afternoon when she goes driving with Lord Harris. She says that her brother will come too. Lord Eden, that is, not Lord Amberley. I was not presented to him, though he is very handsome too. And very grand. He is a friend of Uncle Perry’s, is he not?”

They strolled on, admiring the freshness of the leaves on the trees and the grass around them, gazing in admiration at the flowers.

“Lucinda Stebbins is supposed to arrive today or tomorrow,” Priscilla said. “I can scarcely wait. And so many entertainments already engaged for, Aunt Grace. Three balls already in the next month and two soirees, one concert, and one breakfast.” She counted them off on her fingers. “And your dinner party. And the invitations have not finished coming in yet. Papa says that we may expect more now that I have been seen in public and after I am presented next week.”

“I am even hoping that before the Season is out we will procure vouchers for Almack’s,” Ethel said. “Though I have cautioned Priscilla not to set her heart on it. If Martin had the title already, of course, things might be different. Though I am not sorry he does not.”

“And Lord Sandersford is to invite everyone out to his home outside London some time,” Priscilla said. “It is less than a two-hour drive, he says, and the property very lovely. But I do hope he invites some other young people, or it might prove very dull.”

“I did not know he owned property in this part of the country,” Grace said.

“It belonged to his late wife, I believe,” Ethel said hesitantly.

“I have so much to tell Lucinda,” Priscilla said, twirling her parasol and performing a few skipping steps that drew an appreciative smile from a passing gentleman and a frown of disapproval from her mother.

And they would be invited, of course, Grace thought. And should she allow Perry to accept? Or should she beg him to make some excuse? Did she wish to avoid all future risk of private conversation with Gareth? Or did she acknowledge the need to face up to her past and settle once and for all her present and her future?

She did not want any change in her life. She wanted everything to remain as it had been for the more than a year since she married Perry. She had been happy in that year, or at least more contented than she had been at any other time in her life. And she loved her cheerful, smiling, gentle husband, with his private depths of learning and intelligence and insight. It was a cautious love, one that she had not expected to last. It was not the consuming passion that she had known with Gareth. But it had brought her undreamed-of contentment. She did not want it to change.

Yet she had the feeling that she must face up to Gareth, that she must find out what had happened to that passion, which had died such a sudden and bitter death. Was it dead forever? Or would it never die? as Gareth himself said. She did not want to find out. She did not want to love Gareth again. She did not want all the turmoil of that kind of passion, and she did not want any emotion that might destroy her love for Perry. But she had the feeling that she must take the risk.

It was useless, anyway, to try to cling to things as they were. Things as they had been, rather. Her relationship with Perry was already changing. She had felt it when they were at Pangam Manor. She had felt it since they had been in London. And she had known it the evening before, when they had been almost like strangers, watching each other cautiously, neither of them quite sure what was happening. But something was happening to them. It was not her imagination.

There was the way he had made love to her the night
before. She had loved it at the time. It had suited her mood and her needs exactly. But since waking and finding Perry already gone from her side, she had felt upset to remember the fierceness of his passion. There had seemed to be none of the awareness of her as a person that had always characterized his lovemaking. In retrospect, he had reminded her somewhat of Gareth, though she had never entered into Gareth’s passion quite as she had into Perry’s the night before.

Grace shuddered.

“Lady Leila Walsh said last night that she has heard a rumor that the Prince Regent will be at the Duchess of Newcastle’s ball next week,” Priscilla said. “Do you think it could possibly be true, Mama? Aunt Grace? I should positively die of excitement if it is.”

T
HE NEXT FEW WEEKS WERE SURPRISINGLY TRANQUIL
ones. They were filled with activities, ones that were largely shared by Peregrine and Grace. They had both sensed that the honeymoon period of their marriage was over and that a more difficult period, even possibly a disastrous one, was ahead for them. And both resisted the change and clung desperately to the quiet and affectionate closeness they had shared for more than a year.

They attended the opera together and heard the famous Madame Catalani in
Atalida
. They attended the Hanover Square Rooms one evening and listened to the concert there in company with a large gathering that included four of the royal dukes and Princess Alexandra, mother of the Princess of Wales. They watched a splendid and colorful military review in the park one afternoon and attended St. Paul’s together for the Easter services. They visited an exhibition of paintings at Somerset House and another of paintings of famous cities at the Panorama. They visited the Tower again and spent a full afternoon in the armory there.

They attended some of the quieter evening entertainments as well as the balls and routs that attracted large squeezes. They spent a few evenings at Mrs. Eunice Borden’s salon, meeting and conversing with the writers and
poets and political figures with whom she liked to surround herself. She was a small, rather heavyset, curly-haired widow, somewhat younger than Grace, a particular friend of the Earl of Amberley. Indeed, Grace began to wonder with some curiosity if perhaps she was his mistress. His lordship was always there when they were, and he never left before them, however late they lingered.

Somehow, although they attended several of the more glittering entertainments of the
ton
, they avoided any more uncomfortable evenings like that of the first ball. And yet they both knew that they were living through an interval that could not last. And they both knew that they could not prolong it indefinitely. Although they never spoke to each other of their deepest desires, each wanted to go home, away from London, away from all those forces that seemed to be conspiring against their happiness. And yet each silently consented to stay.

And even in the midst of the tranquillity, there were still signs of strain. They met Lord Sandersford on more than one occasion, though Grace contrived never to be alone with him. At the opera one evening she declined his offer to take her into the corridor for some fresh air between acts, although he had looked to Peregrine for permission and had received a nod in return. And she sat next to Perry for the rest of the performance, their arms not quite touching, conversation between them dead, both of them taut with stress, while Martin and Ethel, Priscilla and Mr. Johnson laughed and exchanged comments on either side of them.

And there was the morning when they called at Cavendish Square to find Priscilla in mingled elation and despair. Four young ladies and three young gentlemen had arranged an expedition to Kew Gardens for the afternoon.

“But Lucinda declares that she will not go as she has no particular beau,” Priscilla said, “though I have assured her that Mr. Johnson will be quite delighted to offer his free arm to her. It really does not signify that the numbers are not quite even.”

“And yet,” her mother said, “you must imagine how you would feel, Priscilla, if it were you without an escort.”

“I would die,” Priscilla assured the room at large.

Peregrine laughed. “If you think that Miss Stebbins would not die an equally horrid death to be escorted by an old married uncle of yours, Priscilla,” he said, “perhaps I could make up the numbers. Would you mind, Grace? We have no other plans for this afternoon, have we?”

Grace encouraged the outing. It was just like Perry to step in with such cheerful kindness to save a poor girl from embarrassment. She did not even mind when he arrived home late in the afternoon and came directly to her sitting room to throw himself rather inelegantly into a comfortable chair so that he might tell her all about the expedition. It seemed that he had undoubtedly made a mortal enemy of Mr. Francis Hartwell, who had been forced to escort Miss Stebbins during the whole afternoon because Lady Leila Walsh had laid claim to Peregrine’s arm. He was laughing by the time he finished.

“Do you think I might get called out onto a frosty heath at dawn, Grace?” he asked. “It sounds a deuced uncomfortable prospect to me.”

“I don’t think there are any frosty heaths left at this time of year, Perry,” she answered, “even at dawn. I would say you are safe.”

“Thank heaven for a wife’s common sense,” he said, laughing again. “Ah, you have finished embroidering that sprig of flowers, Grace, and I looked forward to
watching you do it. What a shame. Kew had nothing to compare with it in beauty, you know.”

“Silly,” she said, holding the cloth up nevertheless so that he might see better the work she had done during the afternoon.

And there was that uneasiness in her again. It was not jealousy. She was not jealous of the young and vital Lady Leila, not suspicious of her husband, not accusing in any way. Only left with a feeling that there was perhaps more rightness in Perry’s being with her and with those other young people than there was in his being with his own wife. And did he realize it too? Or would he come to do so soon?

Their own dinner and evening party were set for a day one week ahead of Lord Sandersford’s two-day house party in the country. They had invited him—how could they not without admitting to each other an awareness of a potentially explosive situation they had never referred to? And they had invited all their acquaintances from both their homes as well as Peregrine’s mother and aunt and cousin, who had arrived from Scotland a couple of days before, and a few other young people to make the gathering merrier.

Grace had been apprehensive about meeting her mother-in-law, but when they called upon her in Charles Street the day before their party, they received a gracious welcome. Peregrine’s mother offered a cheek for his kiss and then hugged him. She stretched out both hands to Grace, looked her up and down, declared that she was in good looks, and then hugged her too. Perry winked at her over his mother’s head.

Mrs. Campbell, too, Peregrine’s aunt, greeted her with affectionate courtesy and proceeded to tell her that of course she had still not forgiven young Perry for imitating her late husband’s Scottish accent so mercilessly during their last visit into England that a footman had burst
into laughter and slopped a soup tureen over the tablecloth and almost got himself dismissed.

“I protest, Aunt,” Peregrine said, laughing. “I could not have been above fourteen at the time. Ah cuid nae be sae ill-mannered noo, ye ken.” He dodged her flying hand and caught her around the waist in order to plant a smacking kiss on her cheek.

“Grace, my dear,” Mrs. Campbell said, “how do you endure it? You must be a saint, for sure.”

They all laughed, and Grace felt accepted as one of the family.

And throughout the five-course dinner at which she presided the next evening, she continued to hug to herself that warm feeling of belonging. She looked down the length of the table to where Peregrine sat, entertaining his mother on his right and Ethel on his left, and felt again how wonderful it was to be a married lady with a definite place in society. And she marveled anew at how she could have lived for so many years at the rectory in a type of suspended animation. Then she caught the rather mocking eye of Gareth, seated halfway down the table.

And she knew she would not be able to avoid him for the whole evening. A chill of something like fear set her to refusing her favorite dessert and stumbling in her conversation with Mr. Stebbins beside her.

They had thought that perhaps the younger people would wish to dance. But no one suggested it. They seemed content for a while to entertain themselves at one end of the long drawing room by playing the pianoforte and singing. And then they formed two teams for charades and played with a great deal of shrieking and laughter. Some of the older people wandered over to watch while others stayed closer to the fire and talked.

Peregrine had been drawn into the game in order to make up even numbers and was having so much success that he was being loudly accused of cheating by the opposing team. Grace sat behind the teapot, talking to Lady Amberley and her mother-in-law until both ladies smiled at an unusually merry burst of laughter from the opposite end of the room and strolled across to see what was happening. Grace was not at all surprised when Lord Sandersford took their place almost immediately.