Tangled (39 page)

Julian's expression reminded David of the one that had been on his face when he fell on the Kitspur. He looked startled. "Damn it, Dave," he said. "You're in love with her, aren't you?"

"She's my wife," David said coldly. "Correction. She
was
my wife.

She's the mother of my son. You talk about how difficult all this is for you, Julian. Imagine, if you can, what it is like for me, having to stand aside and watch her return to a miserable cur like you."

Julian's face had turned white. "She is my wife, Dave," he said. "I love her. I know I have treated her shabbily, but I mean to reform. I do love her. And she loves me."

"Yes," David said curtly. "You have that advantage over me too, don't you? I'll be returning to Stedwell to-

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morrow. But I meant what I said just now. One infidelity, Julian.

Just one."

"There'll be none," Julian said. "I promise, Dave. It's all different, isn't it? It's all changed. I thought you would be delighted to find that you had not done me any permanent damage after all—I didn't know that you thought you had killed me. I imagined how it would be coming home and seeing you and Father. And I pictured the look on Becka's face when she saw me. But nothing is the way I imagined it."

"Julian," David said, his anger disappearing and leaving him feeling drained and utterly weary. "I am glad that you are alive. So is Father.

And Rebecca."

Julian nodded and ran the fingers of both hands through his hair.

"We are your family," David said. "You belong here. You are the brother I never had. Nothing essential has changed."

Julian nodded again. "You've always loved her, haven't you?" he said. "I feel as if my eyes had suddenly been opened. That was why you were always so mad with me whenever—well, whenever I was weak. It was why you settled things with Flora."

David said nothing.

'I'm sorry, Dave," Julian said. "But I mean to be the world's best husband from this moment on, if that is any consolation."

It should have been. But it was not.

"I had better go and find her," Julian said. "She will be happy to know what the bishop decided. It will be a load off her mind. We have a lot of catching up to do, Becka and I, and a lot of planning.

I'm going to see that she has fun. We are going to travel—all over Europe. Maybe for a year or more. She deserves some fun, don't you think, Dave?"

David did not answer. She would hate it. She would have no settled home, no realm of responsibilities, no sense of purpose or belonging. She would hate frivolity and the sort of transient friends they would make during constant travels. But how could he know for sure? She would be with Julian—with her beloved Julian. Perhaps

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he could be her whole world. Perhaps she would not need those things she needed with him.

"I'll see you later, Dave," Julian said and left the room.

David had always dreaded the waking part of his nightmares more than the sleeping part. Part of him had always known when he was dreaming that he would wake up. The real hell had begun after the dream because then he had known that he was awake and that there was no escaping his thoughts. He tried now to convince himself that he was asleep, that soon he would wake up to cope with a less terrifying reality. But he was wide awake. He knew it. And he was plunged deep into the darkest, most despairing corner of hell.

He wondered if seeing Charles would help him at all. She would be with his father and then with Julian. She would not be in the nursery.

He left the library and climbed the stairs toward the nursery on legs that felt as if they were made of lead.

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

It was cold. Very cold with leaden skies and a brisk, cutting wind.

The rosebushes looked brittle and dead. It was almost impossible to imagine that within a few months they would come back to life again and burst out into exquisite bloom.

She would never see the roses bloom in her own arbor.

It was not her arbor.

It was David's.

She sat inside the rose arbor at Craybourne, huddled inside a cloak that did not protect her from the bite of the wind. Her throat and chest were one harsh ache, but she could not cry. She had been unable to cry all night. And why would she want to cry? Julian was alive and home.

She deliberately felt the joy of the thought. And there
was
joy. Joy like a cup brimming over with sparkling wine. And at the same time a knifing agony. The mingling of two such opposing and extreme emotions was causing the tightness in her chest, the feeling that she must surely be going mad.

She looked up when someone came through the arch and sat quietly beside her. Her father-in-law's hand—no,

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he was no longer that—came to rest on her shoulder and squeezed.

She wanted to tip her head sideways to rest against him, but she did not do so. There was no comfort. Why try to find some when there was none? She continued to sit very upright.

"The bishop has just left, Rebecca," the earl said. “The Church is to pronounce that your marriage to David was a real marriage from the day of your wedding until yesterday. It was a marriage made in good faith. No one concerned in it could have been expected to know that there was an impediment. You have not been guilty of bigamy."

The wind flattened her cloak against her for a few moments, but she did not feel the chill.

"And Charles is a legitimate child," he said. "He is the product of a marriage that was valid at the time of his conception and birth."

Would her arbor ever be as lovely as this one was in summer? she wondered. Would the fact that there had been trees where it had been built have spoiled the soil? It was not her arbor.

It was David's.

The earl's hand squeezed more tightly. "You will find both those facts reassuring," he said.

"Yes."

"Julian is so very happy to be home, Rebecca," he said. "It is a true miracle."

"Yes," she said. "It never seemed real to me. Because I never saw his body and never saw his grave, I could never quite accept that it was true. But all that pain. And emptiness."

"He is home now," he said gently. "Together you will be able to make up for all the lost years."

"Yes," she said.

"He loves you dearly, Rebecca," he said.

"Yes." She drew her cloak more tightly about herself, feeling the chill again. "And I love him, Father. It has always been Julian. For as far back as I can remember. I think of sunshine and laughter whenever I think of Julian. And now he is home. He has come back to me."

"You will be happy," he said, his voice curiously

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heavy, "once you have recovered from the shock, Rebecca."

"I am happy," she said. "I am, Father." But why the leaden weight inside? "But David?" She swallowed. "And Charles?"

"David is returning to Stedwell tomorrow," he said. "It will be best if he leaves you alone with Julian. There will be too much awkwardness if he stays longer." He paused and patted her shoulder.

"He will take Charles with him."

All the joy of Julian's return was gone again suddenly.
He will take
Charles with him.
Charles! Her baby. Her sunshine.

Charles was David's son. He had been born of a marriage that no longer existed. His mother now belonged in another marriage.

Charles was David's. He was going home with David tomorrow.

Home!

Home was Julian. Home was wherever Julian was.

"Yes, that will be best," she said.

The earl got to his feet and reached out a hand to her. "Come inside, Rebecca," he said. "You will catch a chill out here."

"I want to sit here for a while," she said.

"It's winter," he said, "and a raw day. It is not the time to be sitting around outside."

"But summer will come," she said. "The roses will bloom again.

Won't they?"

He leaned down, took her hands firmly in his, and drew her to her feet. "When they do," he said, "you may sit out here all day if you wish, Rebecca. Now you are coming indoors."

But they met Julian coming out as they neared the doors and the earl relinquished her arm.

"She is thoroughly chilled, Julian," he said. "I would advise you to take her indoors."

"Your nose is like a beacon," Julian said, drawing her arm through his and following the earl to the doors. "We'll go up to your sitting room, shall we, Becka? And talk? Did Father tell you what the bishop said?"

He was a familiar height. Walking with him, it seemed

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impossible to believe that so many years had passed. That she had thought him dead. Part of her must have always known that he was alive, she thought. She smiled at him.

"Yes," she said. "It was good news. I'm glad it is all settled. Shall I have tea sent up, Julian? It will be good to talk, won't it? Just you and me? I was still drugged when you came to talk with me yesterday.

And still in deep shock. You cannot imagine what it felt like to walk into the library and see you there. I am not sure I quite believe it yet."

"Oh, you can believe it, Beck." He released her arm as they climbed the stairs to set his own about her waist. It was something he had often done. It had used to embarrass her. She had used to scold him about it. What if his father saw? Or the servants? Hang the servants, he had used to say, grinning and shocking her, and perhaps Father could remember what it was like to have a young and lovely wife. It had seemed so very improper to her. And rather wonderful. "I am real flesh and blood." He set his mouth close to her ear. "And I'll prove it as soon as we have the door of your room closed behind us."

He wasted no time. He held to her wrist as he closed the door of her sitting room with a booted foot and leaned back against it. He drew her against him, set his arms about her, and kissed her.

She had always loved such closeness. If there had been only this, she used to think, and not all the embarrassing discomfort and unpleasantness of what he did to her in her bed, she would have considered the physical side of marriage true bliss.

She surrendered to the kiss, leaning into him, setting her arms about his neck, kissing him back, focusing all her thoughts, all her energies, all her being on Julian. Her husband. Her love.

"Steady, love, steady," he said, looking down at her with the lazy grin that stirred her with the ache of sudden memories. "If you are that eager, I had better get a mattress at your back.''

"No," she said quickly. "No, let's just talk, Julian. Let's talk and talk and talk. I want to know all about the missing years." She took his hand—so familiar, broader

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and shorter-fingered than David's—and led him to sit beside her on a love seat.

"Where do you want me to begin?" He smiled into her eyes and lifted his free hand to caress her cheek lightly.

"At the beginning," she said, gazing eagerly into his much-loved face. "At the very start, Julian. Tell me everything. Every last little detail."

He laughed softly and lowered his head to kiss her once more before starting to talk. She listened avidly. She listened as if she were a girl again and back with her governess and knew that she had to write an examination on what was told her.

She pushed everything else ruthlessly from her mind—

everything—and concentrated her full attention on him.

It was going to be wonderful, she told herself as he talked, her thoughts straying despite herself. He was back with her again.

Everything was going to be wonderful. She had forgotten how soft and wavy his hair always looked, inviting fingers to feather through it.

She had forgotten how large and expressive and smiling his gray eyes were. She had forgotten—oh, so much. But he was back home, back with her. She had a lifetime in which to relearn everything there was to know about him.

She wondered if Charles was having his afternoon nap. She had not seen him today. He would be wondering where she was.

She smiled and focused her attention on what Julian was saying.

She wondered what David was doing.

She leaned forward and kissed Julian's cheek, causing him to chuckle again and declare that he could not keep the thread of his story with her sitting so close to him and issuing such invitations.

She surrendered determinedly to his kiss again.

He was Julian and she loved him with her whole heart.

Rebecca had gone to the nursery during the evening, having dined alone in her sitting room. She had stood tentatively at the door looking in at her son, almost as if she expected him to look different, almost as if she expected him to reject her. But he had seen her almost immediately and had come crawling toward her, dragging along with him a toy of Katie's.

She had swept him up into her arms to find him red-cheeked and bright-eyed. He had not had his afternoon nap, his nanny had told her. He had refused to go to sleep. And so she had undressed him and changed his nappy and rocked him to sleep in her arms, though it had not been necessary for a couple of months, ever since he had been weaned. She had kissed the chubby hand he lifted to her face and watched his eyelids flutter until they finally closed and stayed closed.

And then she had set him down in his cot, her heart aching with love and grief.

That had been the evening before. Now today when she went to him late in the morning to say goodbye—though she could not use that word in her mind-all was different. He had slept through the night and on into the morning later than usual. He was full of energy and mischief and crawled determinedly after the toddling Katie, willing to fight her for every toy. Beyond a broad smile for Rebecca when she appeared in the nursery and helpless chuckling when she picked him up to twirl him about, he had no time for a mere mother.