Tangled (21 page)

He lifted a hand and cupped one of her cheeks with it. He ran a thumb lightly across her cheek. "You are a good wife, Rebecca," he said. "Far better than I deserve." He laughed softly without feeling any amusement. "It is just that I am a poor husband. I have had less practice than you and I am not sure that even when I have had more I will be better at it.''

She leaned her cheek into his hand.

"We have a great deal of work ahead of us," he said. "Both of us.

Far more than we expected and far more important than we expected since it involves people rather than things. Let's throw ourselves into it body and soul, shall we, and put off more personal matters until a later date?"

She was silent for a while. "If you wish," she said.

"I do wish," he said. "See about having that room made up. For me. You will continue to occupy the master bedchamber, where you belong."

"If you wish," she said again.

He lowered his hand and crossed the room to the door. "May I escort you to your room?" he asked.

She nodded and came toward him.

“Rebecca,'' he said, pausing with his hand on the knob

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of the door, "it is not because you have done anything to displease me. I don't want you thinking that."

Her nod was almost imperceptible.

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She began to find it hard to sleep at night. Sometimes she lay awake simply staring up into the darkness. Sometimes she stood at the window where he had stood that night, until the chill of the room drove her back under the covers. Sometimes she wandered through to her own bedchamber in the darkness, wondering if she would find it easier to sleep there if there were only a bed to sleep on. It was not David's room after all.

She should have been happy. She was after all having the best of both worlds. She had all the advantages of marriage without the single unpleasantness. If David meant what he had said in the drawing room, they were to sleep separately for some long indefinite period. Perhaps forever. It should seem like a dream marriage.

Yet she was not happy. They worked well together in the daytime and even seemed to share something resembling a friendship. They spent a good deal of time in each other's company and never found conversation difficult. But there was nothing to give a personal dimension to their marriage. They were more like business partners than a married couple. It should not have mattered, but it did.

It would not have mattered with Julian, she thought. If Julian for some reason had decided to stop coming to her bed, she would not have fretted. There had been so much closeness during their days, so much love, so much sense of being married. What had happened nightly in her bed had not been necessary to her happiness. Indeed she would have welcomed its absence.

But it did matter, curiously, with David. It was all that bound them together as man and wife. There was no love and no real closeness. She sensed and had occasionally glimpsed the turmoil and the pain that seethed beneath the rather grim surface of David's being, but he would not allow her to come close. The only closeness there had been was the physical union that had happened between them during the first three nights of their marriage.

She had not enjoyed it. But in some strange way, she realized now that it was no longer happening, she had welcomed it for the bonding it had begun between them. A bonding was needed. Friendship—if there was friendship between them—was not enough. She was not sure it even existed, anyway. Sometimes she thought he hated her.

She could certainly provoke him to anger without even doing anything.

She needed it, she realized in some surprise. She needed the reassurance that his lovemaking would bring. The assurance that she was needed, that he did not regret marrying her.

And she did not find it unpleasant. She could not explain to herself why she did not when she did not love him as she had loved Julian and when he took so much longer doing it than Julian ever had. It was not that she enjoyed it at all, but—oh, she found that she missed it after that night when he had left her bed never to return.

Her cheeks burned when the truth finally formulated itself in her conscious mind. She wanted her husband's body. In hers.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on falling asleep—in the large, very empty bed that was David's.

Stedwell and London, Autumn, 1856

Life became busy—blessedly so. There were tenants to be visited again and decisions to be made about what repairs were in urgent need of doing and what could wait until at least next spring. There were extensive repairs to be done on the laborers' cottages and the decision to rebuild three of them completely. They would all have to be rebuilt over time—perhaps he would need to make a five-year plan, David thought.

There were rents to lower and wages to raise and adjustments to be made for his projected income during the coming year. Quigley could at least be trusted to deal with those inanimate matters. There were a few growing children to worry about. They were at the age of being able and ready to work but were being forced to go elsewhere to seek employment. David could not take on an endless number of workers for whom there would not be enough to do.

A partial solution came when he looked regretfully at his overgrown gardens one day and realized that if the regular gardeners had extra help with the day-to-day business, like cutting the grass, then they could perhaps deal with some of the more pressing problems. Three sturdy lads were hired from the laborers' cottages, and the regular gardeners began the task of cutting back branches from the trees to the west of the house.

Rebecca did her part. She rehired the former cook, as she had promised, and a young girl to help her and to learn the skills of cooking for a large household. She increased the staff further by hiring three more young girls. The house would look less shabby, she decided, if it were cleaned far more thoroughly than it had been for many years. The three girls were promised that if they

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worked hard, they would be recommended for jobs elsewhere in domestic service if and when they were no longer needed at Stedwell.

Four of the tenants hired older boys to help with the harvest, able to afford such a luxury with the lowering of their rents. Their own young children were sent to school. Rebecca had found the schoolhouse very dilapidated and the schoolmaster quite demoralized.

She had ordered new supplies and had promised to spend two afternoons a week at the school, helping with reading classes and with music and needlework.

She was paying regular calls on the sick and the elderly and frequently taking baskets of food to the laborers' cottages. A few of the women began to knit with the wool she provided. She too spent many of her evenings at home knitting. She even tried the experiment of getting the knitters together in the schoolroom on the occasional evening, herself included, so that they could enjoy one another's company as they worked. The women all seemed to enjoy the novelty of being able to go out, as their husbands did more often. Once they relaxed more in her presence, Rebecca found that she learned a great deal about their lives and dreams and worries.

Other evenings were taken up with visiting or being visited. They were fortunate enough to have friendly neighbors. Soon they were dining out, playing cards, dancing, singing—Rebecca sang, proving to her husband that she had not lost the voice that had delighted him as a boy. He went fishing or shooting some afternoons with one or two of his neighbors. Rebecca often went walking or driving with some of hers. Stephanie Sharp, in particular, seemed fond of her and liked to admire her fashionable clothes and to copy her regal bearing.

Rebecca and David were busy almost constantly, sometimes together, more often separate, but always in harmony with each other. They had become almost friends after two months of marriage, except that friends spoke to each other from the heart. They spoke to each other only about day-to-day concerns.

He wondered about her sometimes. Rebecca carried her discipline and her dignity about with her like a shield. Always calm and dignified, always the lady, always busy

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and concerned about others—it was impossible to know if she was happy or unhappy or something in between the two extremes. He wondered if she hated him or was indifferent to him or even perhaps was growing to like him. He wondered how deeply she still grieved for Julian.

Sometimes he thought himself a fool for putting an end to the physical side of his marriage and making her into no more than a business partner. But whenever he considered going back to her at nights, he would remember her carefully controlled revulsion and his inability to be content with only what she had to give. Dutiful submission was not enough, he had discovered during those brief nights. If he could not have her love, or at least her affection, then it was better to deny himself his rights altogether.

Besides, there were the dreams. He could not risk any repetition of the strange surges of anger that he had turned against her on two occasions. She had done nothing to deserve his anger. Nothing at all.

He could not ask for a more dutiful wife.

Except that that was not what he wanted.

"I need to speak with you, David," she said one afternoon when they had come back inside the house after waving the rector and his wife on their way from a visit.

He tried to anticipate what it was that was troubling her. Was she going to ask again if she had displeased him? And if she did so, would it be because she wanted him? Or because she felt that duty compelled her to offer herself?

It was not about business. He sensed that immediately. Her back seemed even straighter than usual, if that were possible. Her face looked rather as if it had been carved of marble. He was reminded forcefully and unwillingly of the way she had looked in the shadow of the stairs at Craybourne on his return from war.

She stood still just inside the doors of the library while he closed them carefully. She clasped her hands at waist level.

"What is it?" he asked. He crossed the room to set his back to the fireplace. He was accustomed to talking business with her. He braced himself to treat this—

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whatever it was—as one more business dealing. After all they had nothing of a marriage. Only a work relationship.

"I am expecting a child," she said quietly.

He heard each separate word but could not for a few moments connect them into a meaningful whole.

"I wanted to be sure before telling you," she said. "I am sure now.

Perhaps I will be able to present you with an heir, David."

"A child." The words scarcely made it past his lips. He remembered telling his father that perhaps he could give her a child. But he had been with her so few times. He had not really thought of it since his marriage.

"And perhaps not." Her face was paler. "If you are pleased about it, don't hope too much, David. I miscarried in the fourth month both times before. I think perhaps it is impossible for me to have children."

He saw her suddenly with eyes that had been deliberately clouded over for almost two months but had been cleared by the few words she had spoken. He saw Rebecca, his love, his wife. Rebecca, womanly and ladylike and elegant in her high-necked, long-sleeved, full-skirted dress. He remembered the feel of her, warm and soft, and the smell of her. He remembered each separate occasion—there had been six in all—when he had planted his seed in her. Including the last.

"Rebecca." He realized that he was whispering and cleared his throat. "Are you all right? Are you well?"

"I am always well," she said. "I do not have to suffer nausea as many other women do. I am fortunate in that. I tire easily, but that is natural."

"You have seen the doctor?" he asked.

"Yes."

He stared wordlessly at her. His seed had taken root in her womb.

His child was growing in her—now. His eyes strayed down her body.

There was going to be a child that was of both him and her. A new person. Theirs. A child of their marriage. After all it was a real marriage. It had been consummated and it was to be fruitful.

He was going to see his baby at her breast. Perhaps.

"Are you pleased, David?" she asked.

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His eyes snapped back to hers. "Pleased?" he said. "Yes."

"Just be prepared," she said. "I may not be able to do this for you. I don't want you to be too disappointed if I miscarry.''

/
may not be able to do this for you.
For a moment he felt a flash of the old anger. She did not want to do it for herself? For them? But it was not a time for irritation. Now that the first shock was passing, he was beginning to feel terror.

"Would you be disappointed?" he asked.

Every part of her remained the same except her eyes. But in her eyes, before she directed them downward toward the carpet, he saw sudden pain that seemed almost to be despair.

"Yes." The one terse word. But she continued after a short pause.

"I want a child more than anything else in the world."

A child. Not his or theirs. Just a child.

"I try not to want it too much," she said. "It is a sin to want something too much. I think I must have committed that sin the first two times. I don't expect too much this time. But I felt obliged to tell you, partly because you have a right to know, and partly because you will need to know what is happening when ..."

"I want you to have expert advice and care," he said harshly. "What did the doctor say?"

"He agreed that there is danger of the same thing happening again," she said, "since it followed the same pattern both times—everything fine until the fourth month and then ... He advised me to pray. I did not need that advice. I have been praying both morning and night— and every hour of the day, since I began to suspect. But I try not to want it too much."

"I am going to take you to London," he said. "I am going to take you to the best physician. We will leave the day after tomorrow.