Tangled (47 page)

I was just lonely. I was missing you."

"She loved you," she said, "and so did I. You betrayed us both, Julian."

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"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry, Becka."

Adultery. It had always seemed one of the worst possible sins to her. That physical act was such a momentous thing. So very, very intimate. The joining of bodies. That one could betray one's spouse to do it with someone else seemed inconceivable to her. Especially when the other person meant nothing. She could have understood better if he had said that he had loved Cynthia Scherer. But she had meant nothing to him. Flora had meant nothing to him.

"Has there been anyone since?" she asked.

"No, of course not," he said. "I was wounded and in captivity. And now I am back with you. I love you, Becka. You must believe that. I can't tell you how my world would shatter if you did not believe that." There seemed to be genuine panic in his voice.

"And yet," she said, "I have refused to be a proper wife to you, Julian. I could hardly blame you if you turned elsewhere, could I? I am sorry to have put such temptation in your way. Is there someone else now?''

"No," he said. "No, of course there is not, Becka. You are my wife.

I am prepared to wait for you as long as it takes."

"It won't be much longer," she said. "When we leave here next week, Julian, I'll be your wife again. The very first night we are away from Crayboume. I'll be yours whenever you need me. But there must be no one else. I'll not share you. I'll not let you come to me after being with someone else. There have been others apart from Flora and Lady Scherer, haven't there? Tell me the truth. Please?

There is need of truth between us."

"A few," he admitted uneasily. "Not many, Becka, I swear. I don't want there to be any others. I want to be a good husband to you. I love you."

“I know.'' She rested her head on his shoulder for a brief moment.

"I know you do, Julian."

She marveled that almost all her life she had known him and liked and admired and loved him and not seen until now his essential weakness. He was a sunny-natured, charming boy—even now he was more a boy than a man. There was no viciousness in him, but only a lack of control, a lack of responsibility. He was well-

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meaning but self-indulgent. There would be other women. She knew it as surely as she knew that she would never leave him. He loved her. In his own way he really did. More important, he needed her. He needed her strength just as he had needed David's all through his boyhood.

"Will you forgive me, then, Becka?" he asked, his voice miserable.

"I'm pretty far from being the hero you have always thought me, aren't I?"

"I forgive you," she said. "You suffered for that particular sin, Julian. You nearly died. Paris I think will be lovely. Perhaps I will even be utterly frivolous and have the famous Mr. Worth make some dresses for me."

"I will so load you down with finery," he said, turning her against him and kissing her fiercely, "that you will need ten extra trunks by the time we come home, Becka. And I'll make you forget him, I promise. You are going to fall in love with me all over again. Deeply.

Head over ears. Consider yourself warned."

"All right," she said when she could. "We will be a couple of lovestruck children all over again, Julian, and the envy of everyone we meet."

But she could think of only one thing as he kissed her. Sir George Scherer had come to see Julian, not David. It was against Julian his real quarrel was. Perhaps believing Julian dead he had been prepared to vent his bitterness against Julian's widow and against the man who had put Julian beyond his grasp. But now Julian was back and Sir George had a grievance against him that had had several years in which to fester.

Sir George would not leave Julian alone. She did not know if the man and his wife were still at the village inn, or if they had left today.

But they would be back. Sir George Scherer would not be satisfied until he had killed Julian. But perhaps it would take him a long time to come to the point. He would delight in stalking Julian for a while.

They could expect him and his wife to follow them to Paris and wherever in Europe they chose to go.

She wondered if Julian realized that too.

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David had just returned from a ride. He had gone with his father about some estate business, but had not ridden

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back to the house with him, claiming the need for more fresh air.

He was not sure if he was going to resume the journey that had been interrupted the day before. He certainly had no wish to spend time at Craybourne before Julian and Rebecca left there. But there was something that had to be checked out before he left.

He did not even need to stop at the inn to make discreet inquiries.

He passed Sir George and Lady Scherer on the village street. He nodded curtly to them, touched his hat to Lady Scherer, and rode on, despite the fact that Sir George beamed at him and looked as if he was ready for a conversation. They had not left, then, although the morning trains in both directions had already gone.

And David knew that he would not leave either. If he could have taken Rebecca and Charles with him, then perhaps he would have gone. Julian, after all, would have to face the music sooner or later.

Scherer would want some sort of satisfaction, and Julian would doubtless give it to him. Cowardice in such circumstances was not one of Julian's shortcomings.

But Rebecca was now Julian's wife. And Charles had been promised to her for a week or more. Neither one of them could be taken away. And so David would stay with them. Protecting Rebecca was Julian's responsibility, of course. But David would protect her too. She could not stop feeling married to him, she had said the day before. Well, he could not stop feeling married to her either. She was his wife, whether it was true in reality or not. He would not leave her at Craybourne as long as the Scherers were in the vicinity.

He went upstairs as soon as he got back home to change for luncheon. He came out of his dressing room half an hour later to find when he turned toward the stairs that Rebecca was just rounding the top of them. She stopped when she saw him and his hand remained on the handle of the door. If he could, he would have retreated inside again. But it would have looked childish. He prepared some commonplace to say as he took a few steps toward her.

And then she hurried toward him, quickening her pace as she came close. His arms opened almost by reflex and she walked right into them and circled his waist with her

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arms. He hugged her tightly, robbed of breath for a moment by the aching familiarity of her slim, well-corseted figure against him. She smelled of clean soap as she always did.

"David." She looked earnestly up into his face and her eyes brightened with sudden tears. "You are the kindest man who ever existed. I am sure you must be. I am deeply shamed that I ever allowed myself to believe all the evil I heard of you. I chose to believe even though all the evidence of my mind and senses told me otherwise. And I chose to believe my own interpretation of what happened in the Crimea even though it all seemed so alien to your character. I am so sorry. Please, please forgive me."

She knew, then. Julian must have told her. "There is nothing to forgive," he said. "I never denied any of it."

"Because you loved Julian," she said, "and cared for me. You did, didn't you? That was why you did not contradict me when I thought what I did about Lady Scherer and about the shooting. You did not want to spoil my memories of Julian. Because you cared for me."

"I cared," he said quietly, watching one tear spill over and trickle down her cheek. "I care, Rebecca."

She stared mutely up at him. He doubted if she fully realized yet what she had just done. He did realize, but he was finding the temptation to hold her for a few moments longer too strong to resist.

He lowered his head, but when his mouth was a whisper away from hers he caught movement in the corner of his vision. Julian had followed her upstairs.

David straightened, drew her arms away from about his waist, and lifted one of her hands briefly to his lips before turning back to his dressing room. She looked bewildered, and the beginnings of a painful awareness of what she had just done were clouding her face even though she did not yet know that Julian was standing a short distance behind her.

David closed his door from the inside and leaned back against it, his eyes closed. /
care for you. I love you.
He wondered if she understood that that was what his words had meant. What had the expression in her eyes been

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telling him? It had been naked enough. And yet he dared not believe it. And even if he did, what then?

She was Julian's wife.

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Nancy Perkins lived with her mother in a small house at the edge of the village. Her mother earned something of a living by taking in laundry. Nancy helped her. But quite a number of times during the past month she had been absent for hours at a time—usually in the afternoons, two or three times at night.

Julian escorted her back to the usual copse of trees, which was as close as he dared go to the village with her. He bent his head to kiss her, although he had already told her that he would not be seeing her again. But she was crying, and he could not bear to see her cry, especially since he had grown rather fond of her. For almost a month, since he had first tumbled her behind a hedgerow when she was on her way back to the village after delivering some clean laundry, she had been flatteringly adoring.

"Don't cry, my sweet," he said against her lips. "I'll see you again when I return from my travels. I'll bring you some pretty trinkets from Paris."

"I d-don't want trinkets," she said.

He had paid her well after each lay, but he knew that Nancy would not have demanded even a single penny. She was in love with him.

He felt rather wretched.

"You are the loveliest, sweetest girl in the whole world," he said. "If I weren't married, Nance ..." But he felt even more wretched at the lie.

Finally he had to let her go, knowing that he had doomed her to weeks and perhaps months of misery, knowing that she had given the treasure of her virginity to a man who did not really care for her. He hoped he had not left her with child.

He started on the long walk back home. He had not brought a horse today. He felt doubly wretched— partly because he had hurt Nancy and partly because he had lain with her today before breaking the news to her. He had sworn to himself that he would not so much as touch her ever again. He had sworn that he was

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going to remain faithful to Becka for the rest of his life.

He felt unclean. He felt a sympathy for those people who were addicted to such substances as alcohol or opium. One's head and one's heart—the whole of one's being, in fact—could steel one with determination to resist the great temptation and yet when it presented itself there were really no defenses against it at all. He must be addicted to his need for women.

Perhaps it would change once they had left Craybourne, he thought. Becka had promised that she would start sleeping with him again once they were away. She had promised that he might have her as often as he wished. It was a cheering thought. Except that sex had never been good with Becka. Sometimes he felt as if he worshiped her more than he loved her. She embodied for him all that was perfect womanhood, all that he wished he could attain and deserve. He could never deserve Becka. Never. She was as far beyond him as the stars.

He had always been afraid when in bed with her— afraid of shocking her, disgusting her. Becka was a lady. Sex to her must seem the basest of human activities. He had never really enjoyed bedding her even though he had done so with determined regularity during those first years of their marriage. There had seemed something almost obscene about forcing her to do that with him.

Julian hurried along the country lane that would take him to the gate of Craybourne, his head down. And now she had even stopped loving him. She loved Dave. It had always amazed him that she had chosen him rather than Dave, who had all the looks and all the other qualities of character that Julian had craved all his life. But she had chosen to love him, and he had squandered the gift.

She loved Dave now. And Dave, of course, had always loved her.

They had been man and wife for a year and a half. They had had a son together. And Becka, the soul of honor and propriety, had been in Dave's arms this morning when he had arrived at the top of the stairs. They had been about to kiss.

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Yet instead of wanting to kill them both, he had wanted to cry.

There had been a strange lightness to their being together. Their son had been one floor above them, in the nursery. That child who had Becka's hair and Dave's eyes.

He should have stayed in Russia, Julian thought. But he knew he could not have done that. He had been in an alien culture and he and Katya had been growing tired of each other. And he had had a craving for home and for Becka.

"Well, talk of the devil," a pleasant voice said, and Julian's head snapped up.

"Straight from hell, pitchfork in hand," he said. "What are you doing still here, Scherer? I thought you would have gone back to London this morning. Hello, Cynthia."

"Julian." She looked at him briefly, much as Nancy had looked at him a few minutes ago.

"And miss the chance for some country air in the springtime?" Sir George said. "We decided to prolong our stay, didn't we, my love?"

"You decided that we must stay," she said.