The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (57 page)

But she did not have to plead. He was quite as eager as she for her not to miss such a rare and glorious event as the marriage of the Earl of Amberley. And he reassured her when she mentioned her size that they were not in London, where perhaps the presence of a very pregnant lady in public might be frowned upon. In the country, people were far more tolerant and willing to accept life for what it was.

“The only thing you must absolutely promise me,” he said with a grin, “is that you will not begin your pains in the middle of the church service or the wedding breakfast. Not only would you divert everyone’s attention
from the bride, but I might give in to the hysterics or a fit of the vapors.”

“I promise,” she said, and spread her hand over her swollen abdomen. “Oh, Perry, this son of yours is going to be a boxer, I swear. I sometimes wish he did not have to practice on me.”

“Your daughter is going to be a dancer, is she?” he said, lifting her hand away and setting his own in its place.

Grace liked the earl’s bride very well and had been pleased to find her a regular visitor during the past couple of months when she was confined more and more to her home. They would be friends, Grace liked to think until she remembered that there must be a fifteen- or sixteen-year gap in their ages. And yet their husbands had been childhood friends and the earl was, in fact, two years older than Perry. It was a little awkward, but it was an awkwardness that she was going to have to accustom herself to. And not before time. She had been married to Perry for two and a half years.

Were all marriages as hard to adjust to as hers was proving to be? she wondered. Even if husband and wife seemed suited in every way, were there still inevitable problems of adapting to each other once the nuptials were over?

She watched the earl and his bride as they stood and kneeled together at the front of the church. They were a beautiful couple and seemed very well-suited in character. Would they live happily ever after from this day on? If rumor was at all true, their association had certainly not had an auspicious beginning. But at this particular moment they were very deeply in love with each other. That seemed very obvious to Grace.

And gracious, she thought later as she watched the earl and his new countess move among their guests after the wedding breakfast, those two had known physical
love already. And she flushed in shock at her own improper intuition and glanced self-consciously at Peregrine, half-expecting that he would have read her thoughts.

“Are you feeling quite the thing, Grace?” he asked, leaning forward and covering her hand briefly with his.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, “I am quite well. Your son must be sleeping. Will they be happy, Perry? I do hope so. I like them both excessively.”

“I could never quite picture Edmund married,” he said. “He is a handsome devil, of course. I used to be envious of his good looks. But he is a very private person too. They seem fond of each other, though, don’t they? I suppose if they want a happy marriage, they will have it. It all depends on how much they want it, doesn’t it?”

They were interrupted at that moment by Lady Madeline and Lord Eden, the latter looking extremely dashing in the green uniform of an officer of a rifle regiment. Madeline was clinging to his arm. A few months before at the age of two-and-twenty, rather late in life, he had finally defied his family’s reluctance and fulfilled a lifetime ambition to buy himself a commission in the army. He was off to Spain the following week to join the British troops there.

“It all depends on how much they want it.” The words echoed in Grace’s mind for the rest of the day and the days to come. Marriage was not quite so simple, though, was it? Both she and Perry doubtless wanted a happy marriage, and had from the start. And they had that now, did they not? But it had not come easily and it had not come merely from the wanting. They had both had to work hard and give a great deal to achieve the measure of harmony and contentment they now knew.

And she could still not say that they were perfectly happy. Happily-ever-after happy. There were always the
niggling doubts. Perhaps such happiness was impossible to achieve in real life. Perhaps because a married couple must always be made up of two distinct people, perfect harmony, perfect togetherness was an impossible illusion, the stuff of dreams and romance. Perhaps she and Perry were as happy as a married pair could ever hope to be.

And perhaps people never reached a pinnacle of happiness, even an imperfect one. Perhaps one could never say that now one was as happy as could be, and that was the way things would always remain. She and Perry would always have to work on their marriage, fight to retain the contentment they had won. That was true of any marriage, she supposed. For theirs perhaps it was more so than usual. The age gap would always create awkwardnesses and doubts and feelings of inadequacy in both of them. But the problems would never be insurmountable unless they chose to make them so.

When she was eighty and he seventy, the age difference would be almost unnoticeable, she thought with a smile of amusement.

“Not allowed, Grace,” Peregrine said, taking her by the elbow. “I absolutely forbid you to enjoy a joke that I cannot share. Out with it.”

“I was thinking that when I am eighty and you seventy, no one will notice the age difference,” she said.

He grinned before looking at her a little more seriously. “Do you think they notice now?” he asked. “Do I look so much younger than you, Grace? I do not see it when I look in the mirror and when I look at you. And I doubt that our friends do. We are just Perry and Grace to them. I don’t plan to still be crawling about among flower beds when I am seventy, by the way. Your eighty-year-old knees will have to take you alone then, I’m afraid. I will not be able to keep up with you.”

She laughed.

“I think we might just be able to get close to Edmund and his bride now,” he said.

The new Countess of Amberley held out both hands to Grace as they approached, and smiled warmly. “I am so honored that you came, Grace,” she said. “Are you very uncomfortable? You should not be standing so much, should you?”

Grace took her hands. “You look very beautiful, Alexandra,” she said. “And of course I cried at the church, just like every other lady present. Except you, that is. And I am quite well, thank you.”

The countess looked up, bright-eyed, at her new husband, who was talking with Peregrine. “Perry has promised Edmund that he will send word as soon as your time comes,” she said, “so that Edmund may go and pace the floor with him. I will not come. I don’t believe that you will feel like making social conversation at that time.” She laughed and squeezed Grace’s hands. “But I will come and visit afterward as soon as I may and duly admire your child. You must be very excited. And frightened?”

Grace smiled. “Yes, both,” she said. “I am glad the weather has been kind to you today. And I am glad that you decided after all that the wedding would be here. The Misses Stanhope were ready to hold a wake, I believe, if you had removed to London or Yorkshire.”

“Papa favored St. George’s in London,” Lady Amberley said. “And I am not at all in the habit of defying Papa. But Edmund and I decided this together. This is where we belong, where we love to be even though I came here for the first time only a few months ago. It made sense that we also marry here. Oh, and today I am so glad. I have all my friends around me and I have never had friends before. You must know what I mean, Grace. Do you know?”

“Yes,” Grace said. “This is a special part of the world.
We are fortunate, you and I, that our husbands live here.”

“Our husbands,” the girl said with a breathless laugh. “How strange that sounds, and how very lovely.” She looked wonderingly at the earl again, and he smiled and moved to her side.

“Lady Lampman,” he said, “I must tell you how grateful I am that you have come to our wedding. It would not be quite right to be without my oldest friend on such a day, and one who got me into so many scrapes as a boy, I might add. Yet I am sure he would not have come and left you at home alone. If you will pardon me for noticing your, ah, condition, I must say that I think it heroic of you to have traveled all these miles.”

“You don’t know Grace,” Peregrine said with a grin. “I have had to have new locks put on all the garden sheds so that she does not sally forth into the garden at the dead of night to create new flower beds. And I have to tie her arm to my side when we are out walking so that she does not break into a gallop. You are looking at a man who is almost worn out from the exertions of chasing after a, ah, pregnant wife, Edmund.”

“Perry,” Grace said, and all four of them laughed.

“We are pleased to have you here anyway, Lady Lampman,” the earl said, extending a hand to her, “aren’t we, Alex? And if you wish to take Perry to sit down before he collapses, ma’am, please feel free to do so.”

Peregrine took Grace’s arm and smiled down at her as bride and groom turned away to greet another group of well-wishers. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed with color, sure signs of fatigue. “I am going to order the carriage to be brought around,” he said. “And you may not argue with me, Grace. You are tired and I am in the mood to play tyrant. Besides, that daughter of mine is going to wake soon and want her dancing lesson again. Or has she started already?”

“I think he is stirring,” she said. “And I am in the mood to play obedient wife, Perry. I am tired, I must confess. But do you mind leaving early? I am afraid I am spoiling your enjoyment.”

“I am expecting a child too within the next two weeks, you know,” he said. “Has no one told you? I feel excitement too, and emotional turmoil, and anxiety, and fatigue. And, no, you need not look at me with suspicion. I am not teasing you. I have never been more serious.”

I
T WAS AWKWARD TO HOLD
G
RACE IN THE CARRIAGE
on the way home, Peregrine found. He could not just cuddle her against him as he could remember doing during the same journey late on Christmas Day. But by sitting sideways himself, he did manage to cradle her head on his shoulder and take some of her weight against himself. She was very tired. She held both hands over the bulk of her pregnancy. Perhaps he should not have allowed her to attend the wedding, after all.

“I am glad we came, Perry,” she said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Was it not all very splendid?”

“Very,” he said. “Are you comfortable, Grace?”

“Mmm,” she said. “I think they are going to be happy.”

“Do you?” he said, and wriggled her head into the warm hollow between his neck and his shoulder. He held her while she relaxed more against him and while her breathing became deeper and more even.

He was thinking of his own wedding, in the same church more than two years before. He had been a married man for more than two years! It seemed impossible. And yet that wedding and the weeks that had preceded it could be something from another lifetime altogether. As he held his sleeping, very pregnant wife against him, it was hard to believe that she was the same woman as the quiet, dignified sister of his friend the rector, whom
he had married to save from the humiliation of having to seek employment.

He had cared for her then. He had thought he cared. And he had thought it such a simple thing, to marry her and to comfort her for the rest of his life. Even after she had told him her history, he had thought that it would be easy. And yet marriage had proved the most difficult undertaking of his life. It was impossible, he believed now, to be married and not become totally involved in the relationship. At least, it was impossible for him.

Grace was now more dear to him than anything or anyone else in his whole life. She was a person now, a complex, dearly beloved person, not just the figure of respect and, yes, pity that she had been at the start. But even love brought its own complications, its own doubts and fears and dissatisfactions.

Somehow, through two and a half difficult years, they had reached a plateau of harmony and contentment. Even love, perhaps. Certainly love on his part. But he could not be certain that this state of affairs would remain for the rest of their lives. Or even that he wished it to do so. Marriage was a living, dynamic relationship that must keep growing if it was to survive. They would have to want to be happy if they were to be so. That was what he had said to Grace earlier about Edmund and his bride. But the same applied to himself and Grace and to any married couple.

They must want to be happy. He did. He wanted it badly enough to be prepared to work at his marriage for the rest of his days. Did Grace? He could only have faith that she did. There were no certainties when one was married. Because, however close one became to another person, one never became that person. That person was always a different being. It was a risky and a troublesome business, marriage.

Would he do anything as rash as marrying Grace if he
had it all to do again, knowing what he now knew? Would he choose to live if he could go back beyond his mother’s womb and have the choice? Foolish question! Life was worth living despite all its problems and dark times. And his marriage was more precious to him than anything else in his life had been, despite the uncertainties and the heartache. And the continued uncertainty and his constant terror for Grace’s life and that of their child.

The carriage jolted to a stop before their front door.

“Oh,” Grace said before he could kiss her awake, “I have been sleeping. And, Perry, I have been leaning on you and you have nothing against your back. You must be in agony.”

“Worn to the bone. A mere shadow of my former self,” he said cheerfully, “as I was telling Edmund a little while ago. I will be very glad when this daughter of yours finally puts in an appearance, Grace. Perhaps I will be able to drag myself around again afterward.”

“Silly,” she said. “Your son will take his own sweet time in arriving, I am sure. Why should he hurry when he has a father who will hold him and his mother so comfortably?”

“Do you want me to throw you both from the carriage?” he asked.