Tangled (45 page)

"I would have come," she said.

Now that the flush of playing with the children had left her face, she looked as pale and haggard as she had the day before. Her eyes were large with unhappiness.

"I'll be catching this afternoon's train home," he said. Her eyes flew to his. "No, no, Charles will be staying here for a week or two. You will be able to enjoy his company better with me gone. There are a few matters we should discuss, though." He had become aware of the fact that the two older women had stopped talking, though Katie's jabbering must have made it difficult for them to eavesdrop. "Shall we go somewhere else?"

She hesitated for a moment and then came toward him. He opened the door for her and set a hand at the small of her back, a gesture so habitual that he did not realize he had done it until her back arched away from him and she hurried along the corridor ahead of him and led the way to her sitting room.

He closed the door behind them. "Charles needs both of us," he said. "And we both need him. We are going to have to come to some sort of arrangement, Rebecca, so that he spends part of his time with each of us. It is not a thoroughly satisfying plan for him, but I think it is the best we can manage under the circumstances."

"You are willing to let me have him some of the time?" she asked.

She was looking at his tie again.

"Of course," he said. "You are his mother. You saw yesterday how much he has missed you, and it is painfully obvious how much you have missed him. There is no need to give you both such pain.

Neither of you has done any wrong that deserves punishment, after all."

She closed her eyes briefly. “It will mean so much to me to see him occasionally," she said. "You can't imagine how much it will mean, David."

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"Perhaps I can," he said. "Julian has said that he will not mind. He is being very decent about it. You and he will be going away soon, I believe?"

"He is going to take me traveling," she said. "I can hardly wait to go. He says we will be away for a year or two, but if I can have Charles, I will persuade him to return to England for a week or so every few months. Will that be too often, David?"

"No," he said.

"Thank you." Her eyes lowered still further. He suspected that they were filled with tears. Rebecca did not like to be seen showing emotion. "Thank you, David."

He took a few steps toward her though he knew he should take a brief farewell and leave. "Is he treating you well, Rebecca?" he asked.

"Yes." Her eyes shot to his face and down again. "He is my husband and loves me. And I him."

"Yes." He smiled wryly at the stupid surging of pain. "It is only because of Charles, then, that you have been unable to eat or sleep properly?''

“What makes you think ..."

"I have only to look at you," he said. "It is just because of Charles?"

He watched her draw a deep breath and release it slowly through her mouth. "It's not easy," she said, "to give up a way of life so abruptly. How is everyone—the Applebys, the Sharps, the Mantrells, everyone? Are the children still going to school? Are my ladies still knitting? Are my girls still learning the seamstress's art? Have you built any more cottages? Is Stephanie going back to London for a second Season? Do you still play with Charles? Does he cry for me?''

She drew a deep breath again. "I am not expecting answers. But it is not easy not to know.''

And it was not being replaced by Julian. She looked deeply unhappy.

"I wish," he said, "I had taken longer to kneel beside his body to discover that after all there was a pulse."

"But you did not," she said.

"But I did not."

She spread her hands before her and looked down into

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the palms, then curled her fingers into them, and lowered them to her sides.

"I'll come back for Charles, then, in a week or ten days' time," he said.

"Yes. Thank you, David," she said.

"Good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

But instead of turning to leave the room, as he should have done, he reached out a hand toward her. It stopped halfway. No, that would not do. But he did not immediately lower it to his side. She looked at it for what seemed endless moments and then lifted her own hand until their fingertips touched. She swallowed and closed her eyes.

Could it be? Could it possibly be that he too was part of her misery? But she loved Julian. She always had. She had been quite clear on that point even when she had agreed to marry him. And there was no point in the surging of hope he felt. She was Julian's wife and the soul of honor.

"David," she whispered without opening her eyes, "I have not slept with him."

But the foolish, pointless hope surged higher.

"I can't stop feeling married to you." She was still whispering. "It is a terrible sin as is telling you like this. It is why I want to go away. I love him. I want to be his wife. I want to be a good wife."

But she could not stop feeling married to him.

"You know I did not marry you only because I felt responsible for you or because I needed help with Sted-well, don't you?" he said.

She shook her head from side to side and lowered her hand.

"Don't, David," she said. "Please don't. It is a terrible sin to indulge ourselves like this. I belong to Julian. I love him."

. . .
to indulge ourselves like this. I can't stop feeling married to you. I
have not slept with him.
David let his own arm fall to his side. Yes, it was a foolish and pointless indulgence. And yet he wanted to say the words to her. He wanted to hear her say them.

"And none of this would have happened," she said, "if you had not

. . . That woman . . . And if Julian had

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not tried to prevent a duel. Oh, what is the use?" She spread her hands over her face.

He turned to leave.

"David." Her voice stopped him for a moment. "I know about Flora and Richard. And all those childhood incidents. Julian told me yesterday."

But not about Cynthia Scherer? He turned the doorknob slowly.

"He could not have had deeper love or devotion from a real brother," she said. "I just wish I had known as I was growing up."

Why? Would it have made a difference? Would she have loved him if she had known that he was not capable of all the petty cruelties?

More than she had loved Julian? But Julian had had all that sunny charm.

"I wish I had known," she said softly. "I was a foolish girl. I thought love had to be earned. I grew up close to the church and yet I understood my religion little enough to believe that."

He opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and closed the door quietly behind him.

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The train was late. A brisk March wind whistled along the platform, causing David to hunch his shoulders against it. He could have got back inside his father's carriage, which still waited outside the station. He had told Vinney that he might leave, but the groom, obedient to orders from his master, waited until the train had left.

It felt strange to be alone, to be without Charles. It was going to feel even stranger at home without him. The house, which had seemed large and silent and shabby during the last month without Rebecca, was going to seem like a tomb without Charles either.

David began to understand something of the emptiness that Rebecca must have felt when Charles was taken from her. Except that she had thought she would not see him again.

The train was coming at last, a good twenty minutes late. Its departure must have been delayed in London. He could see the steam billowing up into the sky and hear the rhythmic chugging of the steam engine. He watched the engine pass him and the carriages slow beside him.
He dug his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders again. It would be good to get in out of the wind. It was spoiling an otherwise lovely spring day.

He waited while five passengers got out onto the platform. He nodded to the first one, the village smith, and exchanged pleasantries with him. And then he found himself being hailed and had a strange feeling of deja vu.

"Ah, Major," Sir George Scherer said, his voice hearty, his right hand extended, "well met. Returning to Stedwell, are you? You are leaving your son with Lady Cardwell for a while? Very generous of you, sir. Very generous, indeed. Don't you agree, Cynthia?"

Lady Scherer, as always, was just behind her husband, like a silent shadow. She neither replied nor looked at David.

"What are you doing here, Scherer?" he asked, not even trying to remain polite. It was perfectly obvious why Scherer was there—as well informed as he always seemed to be. David wondered which servants at Stedwell and Craybourne were getting rich with bribes from him.

"We heard, purely by chance, didn't we, my love, that Captain Cardwell survived the Crimean War after all," Sir George said. "We were never more glad of anything in our lives. Especially Cynthia.

She was once fond of him, you know. Nothing would do but we had to come to pay our respects."

"You would do better to write if you feel you must," David said.

"Why not join me on the train and visit Lady Scherer's relatives in Gloucester?''

Sir George laughed. "Captain Sir Julian Cardwell and I have some unfinished business," he said.

Yes. David had wondered how long it would be before the man discovered that Julian was still alive. Something would have to be settled there, he supposed, since the wronged husband had had no satisfaction in the Crimea. And Scherer was obviously not the man to let the past die. But Rebecca was at Craybourne. And so was Charles.

And Scherer had already demonstrated that his almost insane hatred extended beyond Julian himself to

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anyone who was connected with him—even to the man who had apparently killed him.

David nodded to the guard of the train, who was looking at him with some impatience, and waved him on.

"There is a carriage outside the station," he said. "I'll convey you and your wife to the inn, Scherer, so that you may take a room for the night. I'll wait for you there and take you on to Craybourne.

Perhaps Julian will consent to speak with you."

"How extraordinarily kind of you," Sir George said, his words half drowned in the loud hiss of steam that preceded the train's departure from the station. "Is he not kindness itself, Cynthia, my love? The village inn, you say? The Earl of Hartington is not as generous a host as you, Major?" He chuckled.

David turned to lead the way out of the station. He should have let Julian kill the man, he thought. But he had given in to that eternal urge to interfere in Julian's affairs. He had seen what had looked to be the imminence of cold-blooded murder and he had interfered on behalf of the man who would have stabbed Julian in the back just moments before he came on the scene. And the man who had tormented his wife for years for her transgression and had stalked Julian's wife and the foster brother who had robbed him of the pleasure of killing Julian for himself.

David wished the mist had been thicker or that he had come through it just one second later than he had.

One second. Less.

He turned to hand Lady Scherer into the carriage, but she ignored his hand and took her husband's instead.

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Rebecca and Louisa took their children for a walk in the afternoon, though the coldness of the wind threatened to spoil the outing somewhat. Julian had decided not to come. She was to run along and enjoy herself with the child, he had said.

Charles was almost always just “the child'' to Julian. But she would always be grateful to him for sending to Stedwell for him. It must be difficult for him to accept the fact that she had a child by David and that she was finding it an agony to live without that child. He seemed

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not at all annoyed to know that Charles would be staying with her for a week or two.

"I am happy for you, darling," he had said, drawing her into his arms and kissing her when they were alone together for a few minutes after luncheon. "You look brighter already. You must enjoy the week.

Spend as much time with the child as you want. I'll understand."

She had hugged him tightly and asked him to come out walking with them later. She had been consumed with guilt at the memory of those minutes she had spent alone with David and of what she had said to him. She felt almost as if she had been unfaithful to Julian.

And in a sense she had. When she had touched David's fingertips, she had felt as deep a stabbing in her womb as if he had put himself inside her. And she had wallowed in the feeling, hugging it to herself, keeping the contact with him even after she had realized its erotic nature.

She had hugged Julian and kissed him and resolved silently that she would never allow herself to err again.

"You run along," he had said, "and have fun with the child and have a good gossip with Louisa. I'll go out for a ride."

It was bitingly cold—so unlike the day before when she had walked beside the lake with Julian—but bracing. And it felt good to draw fresh air into her lungs. And even better to watch Charles crawling across the grass after Katie, heedless of either wind or cold or grass stains.

"One thing I will always bless Julian for," Louisa said, "is sending for Charles. I hate to imagine how I would feel if Katie were taken away from me."

Rebecca smiled. She thought of David on the train, on his way back to the empty house at Stedwell. For the rest of Charles's childhood and boyhood one or other of them was going to feel empty and deprived. She thought of his saying that he had not married her for any of the reasons he bad given her when he had proposed marriage to her. She wished for a moment that she had allowed him to complete the thought. The words he had been about to say would have warmed her for a lifetime. And chilled her for as long.

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