NO ONE CAME OUT INTO THE COBBLED COURTYARD before the main doors of Pangam Manor when their carriage pulled up there, Grace noticed, except for a groom and two footmen. But then it was a cold and blustery February day. Both Martin and Ethel were waiting in the hall, however, both looking remarkably unchanged since she had last seen them.
Martin’s fair hair was perhaps a little thinner on top, his figure a little stouter, his complexion a little more florid. But there was still that air of importance about him, and still the line between his eyes that had always denoted impatience with the slowness and lack of understanding of others and a general dissatisfaction with his life. Ethel was still thin and pale. And still unsmiling.
But they were there, Grace thought, moving forward to hug her sister-in-law and rest her cold cheek against Ethel’s for a moment and turning to place her hands on her brother’s shoulders and stretch up to kiss him on the cheek.
“You are looking well, Grace,” Martin said, resting his hands on her waist for a brief moment in acknowledgment of her embrace.
“You must be very cold,” Ethel said. “I have ordered tea to be brought up to the drawing room. Perhaps you would like some before I have you shown to your rooms.”
Grace turned back to Peregrine, who stood silently behind her. She took his arm and watched her brother and sister-in-law as she presented him to them. Not one flicker on the face of either showed surprise or any other emotion. They were all civil politeness.
“Where is Pa—? Where is Father?” Grace asked.
“He keeps to his rooms a great deal through the winter,” Ethel said, taking Grace’s arm and leading her in the direction of the stairs. “But he will come down for tea when we send to let him know that you have arrived.”
“He is unwell?” Grace asked.
Ethel shrugged. “He has slowed down,” she said. “He is getting older, as we all are.”
There seemed to be no double meaning in the words, Grace decided. And she would not look for snubs where perhaps none was meant. She was no longer Grace Howard, headstrong daughter of the house. She was Grace Lampman, and she recognized the necessity of being civil and expecting civility from those with whom she must associate.
“How are the children?” she asked.
“The children?” Ethel gave her a strange look as she led Grace into the drawing room. “Oswald is away at school. He is almost sixteen. Perhaps you had forgotten that so much time has passed. Priscilla will be down for tea. We will be taking her to town for the Season this spring. She is nearly eighteen, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” Grace said. “It is amazing to think that they are quite grown up already.” Jeremy would have been fourteen.
Miss Priscilla Howard arrived in the drawing room at almost the same moment as the tea tray. She was a younger version of her mother, Grace saw as she rose to her feet. She was slender and fair-haired and wore a frilly pink dress that had obviously been donned for the occasion though the color did not quite suit her. Yet she was pretty enough, with a mass of ringlets bouncing against the sides of her head and the color high in her cheeks, her gray eyes sparkling with mingled shyness and excitement.
“Hello, Aunt Grace,” the girl said, curtsying low. “I remember you. You really look very little different from the way you used to be. Do you wear mourning for Uncle Paul? Grandpapa does too, though Mama and Papa left theirs off at Christmas.”
“You talk too much, child,” her father said. “Make your curtsy to your Uncle Peregrine.”
Priscilla turned her eyes on him and her blush deepened as she curtsied. “Sir,” she said. And her eyes continued to scrutinize him curiously.
Perry’s eyes were laughing at his niece-by-marriage, Grace saw. He bowed elegantly. “I have just overheard your mother say that you are to make your come-out this Season,” he said. “I can warn her now that all the young bucks will be lined up at your door, Priscilla. And we will make that Uncle Perry, if you please.”
Priscilla smiled. “Yes, Uncle Perry,” she said. “Though I think you are too young to be my uncle. Have you been much in London? Mama and Papa have not been there since they were young. I am sure much has changed in all that time.”
Peregrine grinned. “I daresay people went to parties and balls and assemblies and theaters and picnics and whatnot in those long-ago days just as they do now,” he said. “And danced and flirted and otherwise amused themselves. And your mama would have been presented to the same queen as you are like to make your curtsy to. Grace and I will be going to London too, you know.”
“Will you?” she said. “How splendid! Did you hear that, Mama?”
The girl plied Peregrine with eager questions about London for the next few minutes while Martin and Ethel made polite inquiries of Grace about the journey.
But they were interrupted before they could finish their tea by the arrival of Lord Pawley. He left his valet in the doorway and proceeded into the room alone, leaning heavily on a cane. He was still tall and thin, Grace saw as she rose to her feet. Still severe and distinguished-looking. But the gray hair she remembered had turned to pure white, and the lines running from his nose to his chin had deepened. His eyes sought her out and looked into hers with quite as much bright keenness as ever. He was dressed in deep mourning.
“Well, Grace,” he said, stopping a short distance from her, “you have come home.”
“Yes, Father,” she said. “How are you?”
“Well,” he said. “I am glad to see that you appreciated your brother enough still to wear mourning for him.”
“I loved Paul, Father,” she said.
He nodded. “I suppose I did not,” he said. “Present me to your husband.”
Her father looked long and hard at Peregrine, Grace saw in some discomfort after she had made the introductions. She found she was holding her breath.
“I am grateful to you, sir, for taking care of my daughter at a difficult time for her,” the baron said eventually before seating himself and turning to take a cup of tea from his daughter-in-law.
Peregrine was smiling, apparently quite unperturbed by the long and steady scrutiny he had just been subjected to. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “But Grace and I did not wed merely because she was in need, you know. And may I express my belated sympathies on the passing of your son? Paul was a particular friend of mine. I wear mourning for him still on my own account as well as out of respect for my wife.”
The baron nodded curtly and the conversation became general.
It had been very stiff and very difficult, Grace thought half an hour later as she and Peregrine followed Ethel upstairs to the bedrooms. And much, much easier than she had anticipated. If she looked back on the bitterness of her departure ten years before, it was amazing enough that they had all been able to behave civilly over tea in the drawing room.
Ethel showed Peregrine to his room, in which his valet was already unpacking his things and laying out his shaving gear, before taking Grace across the hallway to her old room.
“Do you want this room?” Ethel asked hesitantly. “I did not know. But it is still thought of and spoken of as yours.” She flushed.
“Yes,” Grace said, wandering across it and looking about her. “And it is just the same. The Chinese wallpaper, the green curtains and bed hangings. Why did I expect everything and everyone to be so different?”
“You look no older, Grace,” her sister-in-law said. “Indeed, you look a great deal better than you did when …”
Grace had crossed to the window to see that, yes, she could still see along the elm grove to the summerhouse, where she had sat so often as a girl with a book or talking with Gareth. She turned to look back at Ethel. “Yes,” she said. “I am feeling a great deal better.”
“I am glad you have come,” Ethel said. “Papa needs you, I believe. But he would never have asked for you, of course.”
Grace turned completely from the window. “How did he take the news of Paul’s death?” she asked.
Ethel’s lips tightened. “He showed Martin your letter, ordered mourning for himself and the servants, straightened his shoulders, which were becoming stooped, and said no more about the matter,” she said. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “He took it hard. I think I am glad, both for his sake and Paul’s.”
Perry was standing in the doorway, she saw suddenly, his face smiling, his very presence lightening the atmosphere.
“This is where you are,” he said. “What a lovely room. And don’t tell me.” He held up a hand. “This was your room when you lived here, was it not, Grace? And you planned it and chose the wallpaper and the colors of the paint and the bed hangings and the carpet. I could walk into this room anywhere in the kingdom and say without any hesitation at all that it is the handiwork of Grace Lampman.” He grinned and turned to Ethel. “Now, tell me that I am wrong and make me feel very foolish.”
Ethel was smiling, Grace was surprised to see. “No,” she said. “You are quite right.”
Peregrine laughed and strolled right into the room. “An indoor garden,” he said. “That is a thumb of the nose to English weather. I was going to suggest that you move your things to my room, Grace, but now I think I must beg to be allowed to bring mine here.” He turned to Ethel, still smiling. “Grace and I share a room always. You will not mind?”
“DID SHE MIND?” he asked Grace a few minutes later when they had been left alone. “She certainly turned pink and left in some haste. But I would feel foolish to be observed creeping across here to you each night, Grace, as if I were up to no good. Better for everyone to know that we sleep together.”
“Yes,” she said, strangely pleased.
“You do not mind, Grace?” he asked. “Perhaps you would prefer to have your room to yourself again? Perhaps you need some time alone? I am remarkably selfish, am I not, thinking only of my own comfort.”
“No,” she said sharply. “I would prefer to have you here, Perry.”
He came closer to her and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “This is all very hard for you, dear. Do you think I do not know that? But you have done the right thing to come. Your family wants you back again. Perhaps you are too involved in your own emotions to see that clearly. I can see more objectively. And it is so, Grace. You are loved here. And I can see just as clearly that you want them too. You have never stopped loving them. It will be hard for you, the next week or so, but it is right to force yourself to live through it. It is what you need to do.”
She clasped his wrist and turned her head to kiss it briefly. “Yes,” she said. “I am only sorry that you have to be involved in the discomfort, Perry.”
He smiled at her. “I think you may need an arm or a shoulder to lean on from time to time,” he said, “though of course you could do it alone if I were not with you. But since I am here, it will be my arm and my shoulder, Grace. And I must confess to some curiosity to know the people and places that figured so largely in your life before I even knew you. I must go back to my dressing room to shave. Perkins had gone for the water before I came across here, and there is nothing more terrifying to behold than the wrath of Perkins when he has just been forced to watch my shaving water grow cold.” He bent and kissed her cheek.
GRACE WAS SURPRISED and somewhat gratified to find in the following days that Ethel was making an effort to be friendly. They spent some time together, sitting over their embroidery, wandering through the orangery, examining the shooting plants in the garden, which would be transformed into daffodils and tulips within a very few weeks.
“I am glad you have come, Grace,” Ethel said on more than one occasion. “The cloud of your leaving has hung over Papa and Martin for a long time. They never mentioned either you or Paul in all those years, of course, but I know them both well enough to understand that that meant only that they were hurting deeply.”
Grace looked at her sister-in-law curiously. She had never liked Ethel, had never tried to like her, perhaps. She had not wanted another young woman in the house when Martin had first brought his bride home. And she had been jealous when the births of her niece and nephew had diverted some of her father’s attention from herself. Then, of course, for the last five years she had been at home, pregnant during the first, with Jeremy for the remaining four, Ethel had been the favored lady of the house.
And Ethel had gloated. She had made the most of her triumph, both for herself and for her very legitimate children. Grace had hated her, if the truth were known. But Ethel was a person like any other, she saw now. And she was clearly a person who knew and understood her husband and her father-in-law. And cared. And now she was holding out an olive branch to the sister-in-law who had treated her badly for several years and to whom she had finally returned the compliment.
“I did not even write about Paul’s death until six weeks after it happened,” Grace said. “I did not know if they would wish to know.”
“You are as stubborn and as blind as they are, Grace,” Ethel said. “You are all so similar, you know, the three of you. Only Paul was different.”
Grace looked up again in surprise.
“Martin cried,” Ethel said. “I was frightened, as you may well imagine. I had never expected to see him cry. And he talked on and on about how he had always ridiculed and mistreated Paul as a boy. And about how he had let him go and had never even tried to communicate with him after.”
Grace pointed to a bunch of primroses, almost hidden in the grass. “Was it Martin’s idea to invite me for Christmas?” she asked.
“It was mine,” Ethel admitted. “But I know it was what Martin wanted, Grace, and Papa too, though they would never have said so in a thousand years. I know both of them rather well after almost twenty years of marriage.”
With her brother Grace did not talk a great deal. They never had had a close relationship. Martin was five years her senior. He had always been a rather slow, plodding boy, who worked with dogged perseverance to be worthy of being his father’s oldest child. And he had watched his younger sister, willful, heedless, frequently disobedient, engrossing all their father’s love, though she made no effort whatsoever to ingratiate herself with him.
They had despised each other, even hated each other through most of their life. Or had they? Had they not always watched each other for the smallest sign that the other would be willing to be loved? Grace wondered now. It was strange to be back, to be involved again in the emotions she had thought long dead, and yet to be able to see her family more objectively than she had ever done, and her own part in it.
“I have seen the new enclosures and the land that was drained five or six years ago,” she said to her brother one day after driving out with Ethel and Peregrine. “And Ethel says that the estate is prospering more than ever, Martin. You have worked hard.”
He looked at her sharply as if to detect some sarcasm. “Yes, I have,” he said. “Papa has lost interest in the land these last few years, you know. And there was no one but me to see to things.”
“You have done well,” she said, and reached out to touch his hand lightly with her fingertips. She and Martin had never touched each other often.
He withdrew his hand uneasily but looked at her. “The news of your marriage took us by surprise,” he said. “Are you happy, Grace?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”
“He is younger than you,” he said rather jerkily.
“Yes,” she said. “Ten years younger.”
“Ten?” He looked away from her in some embarrassment. “Well, as long as you are happy.”
“Yes,” she said.
Lord Pawley did not come out of his rooms very often. But Grace made a point of visiting him there twice each day, alone in the mornings, with Peregrine later in the day.
“You have come home, then,” he said to her almost every morning.
“Yes, Father,” she said. “I have come home. For a visit.”
“Did he suffer?” he asked abruptly on one occasion. “Was it instant?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was instant, the doctor said.” She hesitated. “His neck was broken when the bull tossed him. He is remembered as a great hero in Abbotsford, you know. He saved the life of the son of one of the Earl of Amberley’s laborers.”
Her father grunted. “Young fool,” he said after an interval.
“He would like that description,” Grace said gently. “Paul liked to be a fool. A fool for Christ, as his namesake said in the Bible.”
Her father grunted again and said nothing more.
“You have changed,” he said on another occasion.
“Have I, Father?” she asked. “I am ten years older.”
He looked at her broodingly. “You have learned what I should have taught you when you were growing up, I daresay,” he surprised her by saying. “I spoiled you. Gave you no training at all. It was all my fault. Everything that happened.”
“No,” she said. “That is not true. No one is ever entirely to blame for what happens to another. I was an adult. I had a mind and intelligence of my own. I made my own choices, my own mistakes. I blame no one else. And I do not even like the words mistakes and blame. Because they imply that Jeremy was all wrong. And he was not wrong. He was my son. Despite his death, I would not have my life any different from the way it has been. Perhaps that is something I have learned in ten years. Everything that happens in life happens for a purpose. I would not be the person I am if there had not been Jeremy. And I would not wish to be different even if I could be.”
Her father continued to watch her broodingly, though he clearly had nothing more to say. She left him after a few minutes, hesitating a moment before deciding not to stoop down to kiss his head. She had not touched him since her return home.
HER NIECE WAS inclined to be friendly with the aunt she remembered as something of a favorite, probably, Grace thought, because she had spent more time with the children than any of the other adults during the four years of Jeremy’s life. And Priscilla was clearly charmed by Peregrine’s good looks and by his easy humor and teasing. She introduced her two special friends to him, and the three girls, giggling, dragged him off walking with them on more than one occasion, pretending to quarrel over how they were to divide his two arms among the three of them.
Grace found that she spent very little time alone with her husband during the daytime. She was happy to see him occupied and in his usual good humor—she had been very afraid that he would be oppressed by the atmosphere of her home and by the old, still-unresolved quarrels. And she was glad that her time was taken up so agreeably with her relatives, even if they had still not conversed on any matters that really concerned their relationships and even though there was much awkwardness still among them.
But it was strange not to have Perry’s continual companionship, strange not to be alone with him for large segments of the day. She found herself, as she viewed Ethel’s garden with her, looking back with a great deal of nostalgia on the previous spring when she and Perry had worked side by side in their own garden, often for long hours. And she often thought with some longing of their quiet afternoons and evenings, sometimes both of them reading, sometimes just Perry doing so while she sewed.
But there were still the nights, she consoled herself. There was something especially comforting about having Perry sharing the room that had been hers until she was six-and-twenty years old. She had always loved to leave the curtains back at night so that she might see the garden on her walls picked out by the moonlight. She liked to see it still, her head against his arm, just the two of them silent together.
She often lay awake long after he slept—and had done so even when they were at home—but she never minded, never fretted over what might have been called insomnia. She very consciously enjoyed every moment of their closeness. It could not last forever. There would come the time when he would tire of her, when he would want the greater freedom of a separate room. Kind as he was, the time would come, and she would let him slip away from her gradually so that he would not dream that she knew, that she was reluctant to accept the new arrangement.
Until that time came, she was happy to lie awake and enjoy the nights. And happier still when he woke, as he sometimes did, to turn to her with a sleepy smile and a gradually rekindled desire for her. He often apologized for troubling her when he took her for the second time in a night, and she would smile secretly to herself as she held him in her arms again.
AT THE END of the first week at Pangam Manor, there was only one thing Grace had not done that she fully intended to do. But the opportunity came finally when Martin had borne Perry off one afternoon to see something on the estate, Priscilla in tow, and Ethel had begged to be excused from any outdoor exertion as she had a headache. Grace assured her that she would leave her alone so that she would not feel obliged to make conversation. And she took herself off to the east end of the lake, where the private family burial ground was situated.
No one had objected to her having Jeremy buried there. No one had offered an opinion on the matter either way. But she had not wanted to have him put in the churchyard. The graves there were so close together, the tombs so elaborate. It was a place of death, heavy and black death. Jeremy was dead, of course. She had realized that. She had never, from the moment when Priscilla had come shrieking back from the lake with the news that Jeremy was drowned, been able to doubt the fact. But she had not wanted him in a place of death. She had wanted him in a place where he could become part of nature, part of the wild beauty of the universe.
There were no elaborate tombs in the family burial plot. Only neat headstones announcing essential information for the eyes of the living. And neatly mown grass and a neat wooden fence to keep out grazing animals.
The grass was short on Jeremy’s grave, as on the others, Grace saw at a glance, kneeling down on it and touching the marble headstone with its legend: “Jeremy Howard. Beloved son of Grace Howard. 1796–1800. R.I.P.”
Jeremy. She took her hand away from the cold stone and closed her eyes. Jeremy. A thin, wiry little boy. His father’s dark curls and dark eyes. Bright, eager eyes. Her own rather long, thin face. Small white baby teeth. A dimpled chin, another legacy from his father. A surprisingly low-pitched chuckle that could quickly give place to a shrieking laugh after a little tickling. Warm, soft clinging arms. A wet baby kiss. Wet, muddy hair and a dead face. She closed her eyes more tightly and clung to the grass on either side of her.
She was lying facedown on the grass when Peregrine found her half an hour later. He had guessed where she had gone when he had returned to the house with Martin to find Ethel sitting alone in a darkened parlor. He had been expecting it since their arrival. He asked directions to the graveyard of Martin, and declined his company, with thanks.
He stood at the fence watching her for a few minutes before climbing over it, ignoring the gate, and approaching her. She was not crying. He did not think she was sleeping, though she had not moved since she had first come into his sight.
She seemed to sense his presence. She turned her head, though she did not look up.
“Do you want to be alone, Grace?” he asked. “Would you prefer that I went away?”
There was no response.
“I shall wait for you over by the trees, out of sight, shall I?” he asked, stooping down and laying a light hand on her head. She was not wearing a hat.
She shook her head. “Don’t go.” Her voice was muffled by her arms, on which her face rested.
He sat on the ground cross-legged beside her, his hand still on her head, and waited for her. She moved eventually and sat beside him. She did not look up.
“I don’t know who it was who dragged me away from here after the funeral,” she said. “I cannot remember if it was Martin or Paul. It was not my father, because he did not come. But someone took me away, very much against my will. And I did not come again. Not until now. It was terrible to leave him all alone here. He was only four years old.”
He took her hand and held it in a firm clasp.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I loved him, Perry,” she said. “For four years he was my life. No, for five. I loved him every moment I carried him.”
“I know,” he said. “You must not feel guilty, dear.”
“Do I?” she said. “Do I feel guilty? For letting someone else care for him when I should have been with him? But he was an independent little lad. He wanted to be with his older cousins. A mere mother was a nuisance when they were there to be played with.”
“For having him,” he said. “You feel guilty for having him, Grace. Don’t. It is never wrong to give life, dear. And love.”
“Isn’t it?” she said. “That is a dangerous moral statement, Perry. It is not wrong to bear a bastard?”
“Don’t use that word,” he said. “Don’t punish yourself with it. Children die every day, Grace. It is no judgment of God on the parents when they do. Your son was one of the fortunates of this world. He was dearly loved from the moment of his conception to the moment of his death. Not all children are so loved, not even those born in wedlock. Forgive yourself, dear. If you committed a sin, you have also atoned for it a thousandfold. And you have suffered for it. Let him rest in peace now. And let yourself live in peace.”
Grace sat for many minutes with her eyes closed, her head resting on her husband’s shoulder. She was letting Jeremy go again and wishing and wishing one thing. She was wishing that Perry had been his father.
Perry, who had been twelve years old when Jeremy was born! She sat up and smiled wearily at him.
“I am ready to go now,” she said. “Thank you for coming, Perry. It must have been a dreary afternoon for you. And thank you for your words. I am not sure I can quite accept them. It is far easier to forgive others than oneself, you know. But thank you. Paul would have disagreed with you. Paul forgave me and never mentioned my sin to me after we left here. But his very silence told me that he thought it a very great sin, nevertheless.”
“Yes.” He smiled as he got to his feet and pulled her to hers. “Paul and I disagreed most noisily on the nature of sin. You were oppressed by his forgiveness, weren’t you? You were so very quiet and withdrawn during those years, Grace. You need not fear my forgiveness. You gave love—to a man and to a child. I can only honor you for doing so, dear, and feel sad for the pain that those loves still cause you.”
What had she ever done to deserve Perry? Grace wondered as he drew her arm through his and began to walk back with her to her father’s house. But she could not forgive herself for all that. She never would, despite what she had said to her father. Jeremy would not have drowned if she had not lain with Gareth.