Tangled (37 page)

"Come on, Rebecca," Louisa said. "We'll go upstairs and have a cup of tea and I'll have some medicine sent up and some hot bricks to get the bed nice and warm.''

The only way to do it was to stop thinking, that detached part of herself told Rebecca. She allowed Louisa to lead her away, past the silent, motionless figure of David, and out into the hall. David. Stop thinking. Her feet were climbing the stairs. She should go and check on Charles before doing anything else.
Stop thinking.

"There's a nice cozy fire burning in your sitting room," Louisa said.

"Shall we go there and sit down for a while, Rebecca? Tea should arrive almost as soon as we do. You will feel better with some hot tea inside you. One always does."

Rebecca felt the insane urge to laugh. Julian had come back from the dead and was home. Her husband—her love—had come back to her after four years. She had two husbands. She was a bigamist. She had a child of a bigamous marriage. Charles was an illegitimate child.

A bastard. And a cup of tea would make her feel better?

She did not laugh. If she did so, she realized, she
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would lose the last vestiges of her control. If she started laughing, she might never be able to stop.

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"A glass of brandy each would not come amiss," the Earl of Hartington said, crossing the library to a sideboard and setting out three glasses with great deliberation before filling them almost to the brim. "We will sit by the fire, the three of us, and talk this thing out."

He handed a glass to his son and one to his godson as they obeyed his instructions silently, and went back for his own.

Talk this thing out.
There was nothing to be talked out as far as David could see. But perhaps his father could see more clearly than he. His own mind was still numb with shock. He gazed in wonder at the foster brother he had shot more than three years before. Julian looked uncannily the same as he had when David last saw him except that he was not wearing uniform. He looked no older, no thinner, no less good-natured.

Julian was looking steadily back at him. "You really do look as if you have seen a ghost, Dave," he said. "Just the way I must have looked two days ago, I suppose, when Father told me where Becka was. You had better drink up.''

David did so and concentrated for a few moments on the liquor burning its way down his throat and into his stomach. "You were dead," he said. "I turned your body over and felt your neck for a pulse."

"I seemed to hear nothing else for weeks or perhaps months except the opinion that I was dead and there was no point in wasting any more time on me," Julian said. "But I was alive for all that and fortunately there was at least one other person who saw it too. Those Russians never could shoot straight, could they?"

David's glass was empty already. He set it down and started to get to his feet. "I had better go and see how Rebecca is doing," he said before sinking back into his chair. God! His legs felt suddenly as if they were made of jelly.

There was a silence that no one rushed to fill.

"I had a long talk with the vicar yesterday, David," the earl said. "I requested an interview with the bishop.
He has kindly agreed to come here tomorrow. It will be better for him to come here, I suppose. He will probably wish to speak with all three of us. Perhaps with Rebecca too."

David closed his eyes against a wave of dizziness.

"Some of the facts are quite clear, of course," the earl said. His voice was cool and matter-of-fact. Perhaps only David, who resembled his father to a remarkable degree, realized how much emotion it masked. "Rebecca is Julian's wife. A few other matters are more tricky. The vicar was full of sympathy and understanding, but he was unable to give me an answer concerning the exact nature of her—er—marriage to David. The bishop will have to decide if that marriage constitutes bigamy.''

"She married me in good faith," David said, sucking in his breath.

"She believed Julian to be dead. She mourned him for almost two years."

"You don't have to plead your case with me, David," his father said. "The Church will have to make a decision."

David looked at him in an agony. If only he could be a child again, he thought foolishly. If only he could look to his father and know that everything would be made better again. He felt all the overwhelming weight of adulthood and life on his shoulders.

Numbness was beginning to leave him. Rebecca was no longer his wife. She had never been his wife. She would no longer be at Stedwell with him. Their life together was at an end. She would no longer be any part of his life whatsoever. He closed his mind to panic.

"I'm sorry, Dave," Julian said. "I truly am sorry. This is going to be hard on you, isn't it? But it's hard on me too, old chap. It's quite a shock to come home after such an ordeal, you know, to find that everyone thought you dead and that your wife has married your brother. To find that she has had a child by him."

David leapt to his feet, reality hitting him finally like a fist low to his stomach. "Charles," he said.

"It will be for the bishop to decide," the earl said, his voice as calm as before, his eyes troubled. "Tomorrow, David. We must have patience."

David sank back into his chair. His son illegitimate.
A bastard.

Unable to inherit from him as his true heir. His son and Rebecca's.

An innocent, happy little golden-haired child. The light of his life and of hers. The thoughts hammered at him.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have come back," Julian said. "Perhaps I should have stayed in Russia. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, you know.

It was different. But I grew bored and homesick. There is nowhere like England when all is said and done. And I missed Becka."

David stared at him, unseeing and uncomprehending.

"You had to come home, Julian," the earl said quietly. "You are alive and this is where you belong, my boy. And this is where your wife is."

His wife. Julian's wife.

Rebecca!

David saw Julian suddenly. His brother. The man he had killed and suffered torment over for more than three years. Miraculously come to life again and restored to him again. The man he had hugged and shed tears over not so many minutes past before all the implications of Julian's return had begun to strike him.

Julian was alive. And home. He was sitting there, not six feet away, alive and warm and smiling and only a little pale. David forced himself to absorb the truth. He had not after all killed his brother.

Julian was alive.

"Tell me what happened," he said. "Tell me all that has happened to you, Julian. It has been over three years since—since you disappeared."

The account was vague. Julian had been taken into someone's home and nursed back to health. That probably accounted for the fact that he had recovered at all. The Russians were not renowned for the care shown to their prisoners, especially the wounded ones. And women, Julian said with a grin, could get stubborn about refusing to let a fellow die when he wanted to slip away without any fuss.

It was a woman, then, who had nursed him.

After that he had been taken deeper into Russia—he was vague about what part—and kept in gentlemanly captivity. He had not even known until long after the fact that the war was over. It seemed that he had been forgotten about. When he had finally discovered the truth

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and broached the subject of his freedom, he had been told that he was free to go.

"A nice anticlimax after almost three years of captivity," Julian said.

"One expects some sort of dramatic moment, some sort of fanfare, doesn't one? But I merely came home. And here I am."

"I thought all prisoners were released after the peace was signed,"

the earl said.

Julian shrugged. "I was one of the forgotten ones," he said. "I might have been there until I was ninety if I hadn't thought to ask if I could come home. 'Ask and thou shalt receive,' " he chuckled. "Do I have the quotation exact? I never was very good with chapter and verse of the Bible."

"I saw your grave," David said. "I went there and found it. It was a mass grave. I was furious that they had not done better for a captain of the Guards. Officers are not buried in mass graves."

Julian chuckled. "I missed hell from what I can gather," he said.

"You went back to it, Dave, when you could have come home with your wounds? But then I would have expected no different from you.

You were always the hero, always the dutiful officer. You would put duty before personal inclination any day of the year, wouldn't you?

You were awarded a Victoria Cross?"

David nodded.

"And you defeated the bastards," Julian said. "I wish I could have been there for that. I missed almost all the fun, didn't I?"

They lapsed into silence.

"She took it hard," Julian asked at last, "when she thought I was dead?''

"She loved you dearly, Julian," the earl said. "I believe that for a long, long time she wished she could die too."

"Poor Becka," Julian said. "God, but I've missed her."

David stared into the fire.

"Well, I'm home to stay this time," Julian said. "I'm never going to be away from her again. I'm going to make up to her for all the lost years. I love her more than life, you know."

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"Yes," the earl said, "you must cherish her, Julian. She has suffered greatly and this will not be easy for her. Especially if the bishop is a man who clings to the letter of church law more than to the spirit of Christian compassion."

"I'll make it up to her," Julian said. "I swear I will. I know you have looked after her, Dave. I know you have cared for her. But you needn't worry that I will neglect her or leave her again for the rest of her life. I'm going to make her the happiest woman who ever lived."

He got to his feet, the old smiling, happy Julian. "I'm going to go up to see how she is."

It felt rather, David thought, as if someone had plunged a knife into his stomach and was twisting it. He had to stay sitting. He had to let Julian go—up to Rebecca's rooms, into her bedchamber. He had to sit quietly and let it happen.

Julian was her husband.

He sat very still, fighting panic again.

"Let her sleep," the earl said. "But she's your wife, Julian. You must do as you see fit."

"I'll not wake her," Julian promised.

David listened to the library door open and then close again. He set his elbows on his spread knees and rested his fists against his eyes.

"David," his father said after a lengthy silence. All the coolness had gone from his voice. It was raw pain. "My son, what can I say to you?

There is nothing to say.''

"No," David said, the weariness of ages in his voice, "there is nothing to say."

He was hit by the awful truth of the words. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do.

Nothing.

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David was sitting on the edge of the bed when she woke up. She could feel him there. She felt as if she had been sleeping very deeply.

She felt as if she wanted to cling to sleep, almost as if there was something she did not want to wake up to. And then she remembered all in a rush. She opened her eyes.

It was Julian sitting there.

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Julian, smiling and good-looking and familiar and comfortable.

Julian, her dearest love, come back from the dead. It was something she had dreamed of so many times during those first dreadful months—just this dream of waking to find him sitting on the bed.

But she knew this was no dream. There was a heaviness in her as well as a surging of joy.

He set a finger along the top of her nose—a familiar, long-forgotten gesture. "Hello, sleepyhead," he said. "Feeling better?"

"Julian," she whispered to him. "Oh, Julian."

"Tears again?" he said. "Haven't you wept them all dry by now, Becka?"

"Julian," she said. "I thought I would die. I wanted to die. I did not know pain could be so intense."

"I'm home, darling." He set a hand on either side of her pillow and leaned over her, his eyes warm and tender. "I'm not going away again. I've dreamed of this moment for years."

His mouth felt familiar—closed, his lips pouted against hers. It had always felt warm and comfortable and wonderful to kiss with Julian.

Now she set her hands against his shoulders and pushed. Now it felt—wrong? For a flashing moment she wondered what David would say if he knew that there was another man in her bedchamber, sitting on her bed, leaning over her, kissing her.

But David knew.

David was not her husband.

Julian was.

"What is it?" He withdrew his head only so far and gazed down into her face. "Aren't you happy to see me, Becka? Don't you love me any longer?''

She stared in bewilderment into his eyes and saw her beloved Julian. Always her love. All through her girlhood. All through their marriage. During her widowhood. And after her marriage to David.

It had been understood from the start. David had understood it and accepted it. Julian was the love of her life.

He was alive. And here. And bending over her, waiting for her answer.

"I am so happy," she said, lifting her arms and locking them about his neck, "that I can feel only sadness,

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Julian. Only the urge to cry and cry. And I have always loved you.

Always. Even until today, when I still thought you dead. My love.

Oh, my love, I can't find words."

"You don't need to," he whispered. "Becka, my darling." And he kissed her again, more firmly, more warmly. He slid his arms beneath her on the bed and tightened them about her. The weight of the upper part of his body came down on her.

She kissed him back with all the joy of the moment. He had been dead and he was alive. He had been taken from her and he had come back. He had been her love and he was in her arms again.