The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (58 page)

“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.

O
NE 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.

“T
HIS 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.

S
HE 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 afternoon’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.”

I
T 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.”

He squeezed her hand.

“Perry,” she asked hesitantly, “are you at all disappointed that I did not give you an heir?”

“What?” he said, drawing them to a stop and staring down at her, incredulous. “How could you possibly ask such a thing, Grace? And be without Rose? I would not exchange Rose for a score of sons.”

“If I were fifteen years younger,” she said, “or ten even, I could give you more children, Perry, and it would not matter that the first was a girl. But I am afraid that perhaps I can give you only this one. I was almost two years married before conceiving her.”

“How strange you are sometimes,” he said. “You worry a great deal, don’t you, Grace? About being ten
years older than I. How many times have I told you that it does not matter to me? I would not have you one day younger even if I could. Because I would thereby alter you, and I would not do that for worlds. I love you as you are. Just as you are. And the gift of a daughter that you have given me has filled me so very full of happiness that I am afraid I would have no room in my heart for half a dozen sons. Or even one. I don’t want you to have more children, Grace. I cannot take the risk again of losing you.”