Tangled (44 page)

seemed more like bog than lake. But it still had the wild beauty that Louisa had admired.

It was a difficult thing, Rebecca thought, to adjust one's mind to someone falling off a pedestal. She had always thought Julian near perfect. The sunny-natured, charming boy of her youth had been her idol. He had seemed worthy of her love, and so, like the sensible girl she had been, she had fallen in love with him. Deeply. She had not been able to do anything by half measures as a girl-perhaps she still could not. She had been totally wrapped up in her love for Julian.

Yet all the time he was the one who had committed those occasional cruelties. And he was the one who eventually had committed that dastardly wrong against Flora. Richard was Julian's son. All those times she had wept because it had seemed that she could not present him with a child, he had had a son living in a cottage on the grounds of Craybourne. A son conceived a mere few months before their wedding. Even while that wedding ceremony was being performed, Flora was pregnant.

He had got Flora to lie with him by promising to marry her.

Doubtless by telling her too that he loved her. She did not believe that Flora would have done that with him if she had not been convinced that he returned her love.

Julian was a very flawed mortal, after all. He was no glittering hero.

Rebecca's heart was heavy.

And yet, believing David guilty of all those things, she had nevertheless grown to love him. She had come to love him despite far worse villainies. David had had an affair with a married lady in the Crimea and then had shot Julian who had tried to intervene in the inevitable confrontation with the wronged husband. She had grown to love him despite all that and the fact that she had believed he had actually killed Julian.

Well, then. There was no reason for her love for Julian to die. He had been a mischievous, thoughtless, and sometimes cruel boy. He had ruined and abandoned Flora, something for which he had doubtless suffered in conscience in the years since. Who was she to judge? And Flora probably had not been entirely blameless. It was very unlikely that what had happened to her had been rape.

318 Mary Balogh
There was no reason to come to hate and despise Julian. She had loved him totally. She had loved as a girl loves. And she had married him. She still loved him. There was a deep tenderness in her feelings for him. If she worked very hard, as she must, perhaps her love would deepen and broaden again. Perhaps she would come to love him as a woman loves. As she loved David. No, never that, she realized as soon as the thought came.

David had once assured her that affection was enough, that they could make a workable marriage if they could but feel affection for each other. Well, then, she felt an abundance of affection for Julian.

Even if there was never anything else, there was that. She would make it enough. She would have to make it enough.

"Are you disgusted with me, Becka?" Julian asked after the silence had stretched. "Do you hate me?"

"No, of course not," she said. "Oh, of course not, Julian. We all make mistakes. We all do things for which we are desperately sorry afterward. And sometimes it seems that those things just cannot be put right. But we have to go on. I can't judge you. There is too much of which I could accuse myself.''

"You, Becka?" he said. "You are an angel." He bent his head to kiss her briefly on the lips.

And yet, she thought, she was even then committing one of the greatest sins of all. She loved a man who was not her husband. But she would fight against it. For the rest of her life she would fight. She was going to love Julian again with her whole heart and soon she was going to be a proper wife to him again. She would force herself, letting duty be her armor. She had forced herself for those two years.

Perhaps in some strange way it would be easier knowing what she now knew about him. He was just an ordinary, erring human.

She smiled at him. "You would not be biased by any chance, would you?" she asked.

"Guilty as charged," he said, drawing her around into his arms to that he could kiss her properly. "My sweet angel. My darling."

She wondered as she relaxed into his kiss if he had ever seen his son. Or if he cared. But she would not ask

Tangled319

the questions. Or think about them any longer. There was the whole of spring to be enjoyed. And Julian's love.

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

Both the earl and Louisa were in the hall when David arrived with his son. No one else. He breathed a sigh of relief as Louisa hugged him and kissed his cheek and his father shook his hand, squeezing it tightly and looking him up and down as he did so.

But Charles, in his nanny's arms and tired and cross as he usually was when something happened to destroy the routine of his afternoon nap, would have none of Louisa's kisses and then objected loudly when his nanny would have carried him up to the nursery.

Charles wanted his father and he was going to let everyone within earshot know it.

David took him and nodded to the nurse to let her know that he would bring the child up in a little while. Louisa tried to wheedle a smile from him while David and his father exchanged news.

"Julian told me he was sending for the baby," the earl said. "I approved. She needs him badly, David."

"But Rebecca does not know," Louisa added. "Julian was too afraid that you would not be willing for Charles to come and she would be disappointed.''

"Not be willing for his own mother to see him?" David said.

"Don't pull Papa's hair, sweetheart."

"They are out walking," Louisa said. "I think they were going to the lake."

"Good," David said. "Charles can have his nap before she returns.

He is in a wicked mood. Aren't you, imp? Hair hurts when it is pulled, you know." He wanted to make his escape upstairs. It had been a mistake to come, he realized now that he was here. He really did not want to see her. It could serve no purpose whatsover to see her and would only rub raw again wounds that had scarcely started to heal. "I'll take him up."

But he had hardly turned toward the stairs before the front doors opened behind him. He looked back.

"Hello, Dave," Julian said cheerfully. "You came, then, and brought the child. It was good of you. I had Dave bring your son, darling, as a surprise." He laughed.

Only his heart recognized her. Even with the full skirt

320 Mary Balogh
of her dress and the jacket bodice she looked thin. Her face was thin and colorless. Haggard even. Her eyes had dark smudges beneath. Her hair had lost its shine. She was standing absolutely still, her eyes passing over him and focusing on Charles, who was gripping his neck and looking the other way.

"Oh," she said.

It was only a breath of sound, but Charles turned his head sharply.

And then he reached out his arms toward her, almost causing David to drop him, and set up a pitiful wailing. David hurried toward her.

She stood where she was, but her eyes were huge and bright with tears by the time David got close, and her arms reached out. He held out their son and her arms closed about him and Charles's about her neck even as her eyes closed and her mouth opened in a silent cry of agony.

David stood back as his son wailed and clung to the mother he had not seen in over a month and as she held him in an ecstasy of pain.

And then she turned sharply and hurried across the hall to her left.

"Open the door," the earl said to a servant who was standing there.

She disappeared into a salon and the servant closed the door behind her.

"I told you she needed him, Dave," Julian said from behind him.

"You can see that for yourself, can't you? Women are like that with their children, aren't they? It comes from carrying them around inside for nine months, I suppose. She'll be better after a day or two with him."

He should turn around and greet Julian. Say something pleasant to him. After all, Julian was guilty only of having survived a bullet that should have killed him. It was unreasonable and unfair to resent him, to hate him.

"When was the last time she had a decent meal or a decent night's sleep?" he asked. His voice sounded cold, accusing. "Can't you look after her better than this, Julian?"

"She has been missing the child," Julian said. "I have been doing my best, Dave. I sent for him."

David turned and held out his hand. "I'm sorry," he said. "Yes, you did, Julian. Thank you. Charles has been

Tangled321

needing her too. This is proving to be a difficult homecoming for you, isn't it?"

Julian clasped his hand and said something whose sense David did not even grasp. All he could think of was that the hand now shaking his touched Rebecca at night. Touched his wife. Hatred constricted his breathing.

And yet she looked haggard enough to be almost unrecognizable.

Haggard only because she missed Charles? That sadness should have been countered with ecstasy over the return of her love. Why was it not?

What was wrong?

"I had better go up and tell the nurse that Rebecca has Charles and will bring him up later," he said, turning abruptly and striding toward the stairs.

"Come to the drawing room for tea as soon as you have done that,"

Louisa said behind him.

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

He was soft and warm and smelled of powder and soap. He was surely bigger and heavier, though perhaps that was just her imagination. He could not have grown a great deal in a month. He had a death grip on her neck and showed no signs of stopping crying.

She did not believe she had ever felt happier in her life. There was misery too, she knew, just beyond the bounds of the happiness, but she would not let it in. Life had so few moments of happiness.

Experience was teaching her that each one was to be grasped and accepted with gratitude. She held on tightly to her moment of happiness.

"Sh, sweetheart," she crooned to her son. "Mama has you safe. No one is going to take you away. Just you and Mama, sweetheart. Sh."

She rocked him, talked softly to him, rubbed her cheek over his soft hair, and listened as the wailing gave place to drowsy sobs with silences between. He settled his cheek more comfortably on her shoulder. Soon the extended silence and the greater warmth of his body told her that he slept. She continued to rock him.

There was a forgotten shawl of Louisa's tossed over the back of a chair. Rebecca picked it up, lowered herself slowly onto a comfortable chair and sat back, her child
cradled against her. She covered him with the shawl and gave herself up to the sheer joy of holding her sleeping child. She had always set him down soon after he had fallen asleep. There was some theory that it would spoil a child to be held too much. But she did not care a fig for theories at this moment. She would sit here for as long as he cared to sleep. She would hold on to her little piece of happiness for as long as she could.

His mouth must have fallen open. She could hear him breathing deeply and evenly.

Louisa tiptoed in about half an hour later and set down a cup of tea and a piece of cake at Rebecca's elbow. She smiled though she said nothing, and she leaned forward impulsively to kiss Rebecca on the forehead.

Rebecca leaned her head back when she was alone again and closed her eyes. He had lost weight. His face looked thin and harsh, his eyes bleak. He looked much as he had looked when he came home from the Crimea. He was suffering. Perhaps it had been only a marriage of affection, but it had been important to him. He was suffering.

She had not even realized that she had looked at him that closely until she saw him now behind her eyelids, holding Charles, coming toward her, putting their child into her arms.

He was suffering.

Poor David. Ah, poor David. Perhaps he had been the cause of it all—her own misery, Julian's, his own—but he was suffering dearly for his sins. Too dearly.

He would not stay, David decided overnight. He would come back for Charles after a week or possibly two. His father had told him that he had been encouraging Julian to take Rebecca away as soon as possible. Surely they would be leaving within a week or two. She must have Charles until then, hard as it would be to be without him himself.

She had spent all the rest of the day with their son. She had sat in the salon with him while he slept, keeping him in her arms, according to Louisa, and had then taken him to the nursery, where she had played with him, fed him, and eventually rocked him to sleep for the night. David had not gone there himself.

He went there in the morning. Early enough to see Charles before she came, he hoped. But there she was in the middle of the nursery floor, lying flat on her back with Katie sitting on her stomach and Charles crawling about her head and throwing himself across her face.

She was looking unusually disheveled. She was laughing.

David stood in the doorway, watching, during the minute or two before his son noticed him and came crawling toward him. She lifted Katie to her feet and got to her own, brushing at the full skirt of her dress and trying to check her hair at the same time. Her face had considerably more color than it had had the day before. She did not look at him.

David picked up his son, who played briefly with his watch chain, patted his cheeks and pulled his hair, and then wriggled to get down.

He went crawling off after Katie to visit their two nannies, who were gossiping in a corner.

"He seems well," Rebecca said, fixing her eyes some-324Mary Balogh

where on a level with David's tie. "I was worried when I knew he had had the measles."

"He had them quite badly," he said.

"You should have let me know, David," she said. "I should have known."

"I instructed Nurse to wait," he said. "I did not want you to have the frustration of being here knowing that he was there and ill."