Tangled (13 page)

One could not forget by the mere effort of will. It was not going to be easy to forget. Perhaps it was going to be impossible.

She watched David's hand as it clasped hers, a strong, long-fingered, capable hand—Julian's had been smaller, blunter-fingered. She listened to his voice as she watched his hand, not quite hearing what he said, and she heard her own voice repeating what the vicar said to her, not quite aware of what she said. She watched David's other hand place a ring over her finger—the finger where Julian's ring had always been—and slide it on, easing it past her knuckle. It was a little wider than Julian's ring, and very shiny and new.

It was the ring that jolted her out of her stupor. The ring did not belong there. It was not hers. It was a usurper, just as he was. She looked up into his eyes.
Blue, intent on hers. Pained. They were the eyes he had brought home from the Crimean War.

". . . man and wife."

She scarcely heard the vicar's voice, though she felt the sense of his words.

Her husband's eyes.

He bent his head and kissed her lips, his own light and cool. No man except Julian—and probably her father during her childhood—had ever kissed her lips. But David had the right to. He was her husband.

Her husband.

Julian was her husband.

David
was her husband.

She was aware suddenly of sounds—a murmuring among the congregation, someone's muffled sobs, a distant cough. And of smells—roses, David's cologne. And of the reality of the moment.

She tried to smile and was not at all sure that she succeeded. But there was a look in his eyes that made the pain disappear for a moment-relief? Was he relieved that she smiled? Had he not expected her to?

Some time later—she lost all track of time—she was walking back down the aisle of the church on his arm and saw all the faces that he must have been forced to look at before her arrival. Smiling faces.

Happy for her. And for him. For them. She smiled back.

"Rebecca." He covered her hand on his arm with his free hand and drew her to a stop on the church steps. There was a moment—only a moment—before their relatives and friends began to spill out of the church and around them. "You look beautiful."

She was surprised. She had not expected him to say anything so personal. Yet what could be more personal than a wedding? It was more the tone of his voice, its pitch low, the words for her ears only.

A portent of things to come. They would be alone soon and together, the two of them, for the rest of their lives.

He had said the same words, she remembered with a jolt, at her wedding to Julian. He had set his hands on her shoulders, smiled into her eyes, kissed her on the cheek, and spoken them. "You look beautiful, Re-

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becca." And she had laughed back into his eyes and thanked him.

She had felt beautiful.

But this time there was no Julian to turn back to.

She had no chance to return the compliment and tell him how very handsome he looked—she must be the envy of every woman present, she thought. They were surrounded by smiling well-wishers.

"Welcome, daughter," the Earl of Hartington said, squeezing her hand and kissing her cheek before standing back so that his countess might greet her more effusively.

"Lady Tavistock," David's best man said, grinning cheerfully at her, "may I?" And he too took her hand and kissed her on the cheek.

Daughter. Lady Tavistock.

Julian. For the first time she realized that she was no longer Rebecca Cardwell. She was Rebecca Neville, Lady Tavistock. Oh, Julian!

She smiled back at everyone.

******************************************************************

"You are comfortable?" The words
my dear
stuck in his throat. It was how he had planned to address her after they were married. But he could not say the words after all.

"Yes, David." She smiled at him. "Train travel is so much more comfortable than carriage travel, isn't it? And faster. We will be there in two hours? Aren't we fortunate to live in this modern age?"

He settled beside her in their private compartment, their relatives and friends who had come to the station to wave them on their way having long disappeared from view.

"Yes," he said, "and a little unfortunate too, perhaps, to be seeing the end of a more leisurely and far cleaner era.

"And a less comfortable one," she said. "When I look back on the past forty or fifty years, or even on the portion of them that I can remember personally, I marvel that so much change is possible. Will it continue, do you think? Will our present world seem unrecognizably backward even twenty years in the future? Are further changes possible? Some people say we are just at the beginning of a wholly new age."

96 Mary Balogh
It was their wedding day. They were alone together at last after a busy morning at church and at Craybourne. They had not had a moment to themselves—until now. Under different circumstances he would have set his arm about her shoulders, drawn her against him, kissed her with slow thoroughness, and talked love nonsense to her all the way to Stedwell. She was his bride, his wife. No, only his bride.

Tonight she would become his wife.

She sat straight-backed beside him, looking extremely elegant in her dark green traveling suit. Looking breath-takingly beautiful, as she had all day. His breath could still catch in his throat as he remembered his first sight of her at church that morning, regal and lovely—and smiling—on her brother's arm.

She was making conversation with him, careful to choose a topic that could occupy them for a while. Not the weather. Conversation about the weather usually died very quickly.

"I think they are probably right," he said. "Fortunately we will live through those twenty years a day at a time and will have ample chance to adjust ourselves to all the changes as they occur. Unless we stubbornly bury our heads in the sand, that is, and refuse to acknowledge that anything is different."

"Like Mr. Snelling," she said. "Wasn't he foolish, David, when he said at breakfast that he would not come to the station with us because he does not believe in trains? As if they are a figment of the collective imagination. ''

"It is more fun, I suppose," he said, "to be pushing carriage wheels out of muddy ruts."

"Especially when one has servants to do it for one," she said.

They smiled at each other in shared amusement, but the emptiness of the compartment, their aloneness after all the noise and bustle of the morning, set their smiles to fading and the conversation to faltering. She turned her head to look at the scenery rushing past the windows, and he did likewise, so that they were looking in opposite directions.

He wished he had taken her into his arms as soon as the train had drawn away from the platform. He wished

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he had established the fact that they were a bride and groom leaving for their new home and their new life together. He had intended to do that, had planned it. But it was too late now. It would seem foolish and just too damned embarrassing to lunge for her now, out of the blue.

He wished his father's voice would not keep echoing in his mind.

You will not be happy with Rebecca.
He would be. She was his bride.

He would have her with him for the rest of their lives. He would have the chance to take care of her for the rest of his days. It was all he had ever wanted. He would not ask for her love. He would be happy just having her for his wife.

You need more than she can give.
He did not. All he needed was what she had already given—her hand in marriage. Rebecca was the soul of honor, as his father had admitted. She would do her best to be a good wife to him and to give everything but what was not hers to give—her love. He did not need her love. Only a little affection. He would earn her affection. It was all he needed.

But he wished he could forget that confrontation with his father.

He had always valued his father's advice and opinions. He had always respected his wisdom.

"Don't expect anything wonderful," he said now, turning his head to look at Rebecca. "Stedwell is going to look very shabby after Craybourne. Perhaps I should have taken you somewhere else for a week or two."
For a honeymoon,
he had been going to say before changing his mind.

"I would be disappointed if I found something wonderful," she said. "I am counting on finding it very shabby indeed, David. I want the challenge of making a lovely and comfortable home for you. It is why I married you, remember?"

To make him a lovely and comfortable home? Or to find a challenge in life? Her meaning was not clear. But he knew the answer.

It was both. It was for the latter reason that she had finally accepted his offer. But she would work for the former. Being Rebecca, she would devote most of her energies to being his wife.

And all the time she would love Julian. She would

98Mary Balogh

never talk of him, never think of him after their marriage, she had promised him. And he did not doubt that she would keep her promise or at least try. But beyond thought, in that part of a person's being that was uncontrolled by the will, she would love Julian. Never him. Always Julian.

He saw Julian suddenly, turning toward him, surprise in his eyes, before pitching forward across George Scherer—the face and the expression and the action that most often occupied his nightmares, and sometimes even imposed themselves on his waking consciousness. And he felt deep resentment. Julian had deserved to die—he had been about to kill an unarmed man. A man he had been cuckolding for several months. David had done what any other officer who had arrived on that spot at that moment would have done. He had shot Julian. He resented the fact that he must endure the nightmares and carry around the load of guilt for the rest of his life.

This was his wedding day—to Julian's widow.

Damnation!

Rebecca was watching him. "I am sorry," she said. "Were those words hurtful? I did not mean them to be. I want to be a good wife to you, David. I must learn how to please you. You must show me how."

The words from another woman might have been provocative.

From Rebecca they were not. They were meant quite literally, he knew. They did not refer specifically to their sexual relationship, though they would apply to that too.

"You please me by being," he said, taking her hand in his and squeezing it. He could feel his ring on her finger. His, not Julian's.

He kept her hand in his although they resumed their separate study of the scenery beyond the windows.

She was his, he thought, knowing that he could keep her hand in his for the rest of the journey if he wished. No longer would his touches have to be brief and infrequent. Tonight he would have her in his bed. He would hold her and make love to her. Sleep with her.

Sleep with Julian's wife.

He felt sick to his stomach.He tried not to see the surprised eyes.

He tried not to feel the pistol in the hand that now held hers.

He tried to tell himself—as he had done thousands of times for almost two years—that he had nothing to feel guilty about.

Stedwell, August, 1856

David had expected a carriage to be waiting at the station since he had informed his housekeeper of the exact day and time of his arrival.

And sure enough it was there, a shabby, ponderous old coach drawn by four horses that looked as if they might feel more at home drawing a farmer's cart or even a plough. The coachman looked as if he might be a gardener playing an unfamiliar role.

What David had not expected was the small crowd waiting on the station platform and the large white bows tied to its pillars. The Reverend Colin Hatch, the village rector, stepped forward to make himself known, though his clerical garb would have done that anyway, cleared his throat importantly, and in the clear ringing tones that were peculiar to the Anglican clergy read a formal speech of welcome to the viscount and viscountess and of congratulation on their marriage. He understood that they had entered the bonds of holy matrimony that very morning? The words were phrased as a question and accompanied by a bow.

There was a smattering of self-conscious applause from the rector's wife, the innkeeper and his wife, the doctor and his wife, the schoolmaster, the trademen and their wives gathered there, and a few people whose clothing and bearing suggested that they were important enough socially to have secured a place with the welcoming committee.

David smiled. Good Lord, he had not expected this. If he had, he would have rehearsed a suitably gracious reply. As it was, he had to rely on smiles and simple thanks and handshakes all around. Rebecca, he noticed, rose to the occasion without fuss or confusion, moving easily amongst the small crowd, talking and smiling as

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she went. But he would have expected no less of her. If a suitable viscountess and hostess was all he wanted of marriage, then he could have done no better than marry her.

Outside the station more people were gathered, people whose position in life had not merited them a place on the platform. They too applauded. Two children waved white handkerchiefs. Someone whistled and there was some laughter. David raised a hand in acknowledgment of the welcome and smiled again before handing his bride into the carriage. He noticed that she did the same.

He looked at her in some amusement when the door closed behind them and the carriage lurched into motion. "That was unexpected,"

he said.

"But pleasant," she said.

"Those people should all be familiar to me," he said. "Stedwell has been mine since birth, and I am almost twenty-nine years old, Rebecca. They should have met me with hisses and boos. I deserve no better. I feel guilty for having neglected my responsibilities here."

"The people will grow familiar," she said. "And there is never any real point in feeling guilt for what is past, David, unless there is something one can do about it and is not doing it. You are doing something—you are here."