Tangled (5 page)

"I have never said so. Father is kind to me," she said, sitting in an armchair beside the fireplace. "Extremely kind."

"But you feel all the awkwardness of living in a house which you ran for well over a year," the countess said, smiling ruefully, "but where you now feel you have no function. And you feel the awkwardness of the reversal of our roles, though I have never pressed the point, Rebecca, and never would. And I did ask you if you minded. I am not sure I could have brought myself to marry William if you had been dreadfully opposed to the idea."

Rebecca looked down at the hands in her lap. "I was happy for you, Louisa," she said. "And for Father. He had been alone for so many years. He must have been lonely, I think. And I would not have dreamed of trying to prevent what the two of you had mutually agreed upon. It is just that when I married I dreamed of a home and family of my own and now—oh, now there is nothing. But I would rather not talk about it. Self-pitying people are tedious to be with. I am well blessed."

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She did not quite speak the truth about Louisa's marriage to the earl. She had not been happy at the time. She had been deeply shocked when she had realized very gradually what was happening between her companion and the Earl of Hartington. Louisa was a quiet, rather plain woman, six years Rebecca's senior, a gentleman's daughter fallen on hard times. And yet suddenly she had been scheming to become a countess and mistress of Cray bourne—or so it had seemed at first.

And yet she should not have judged as she had done, Rebecca realized now. She should not have assumed that the whole business was sordid, that Louisa was a scheming adventuress. The marriage appeared to be progressing well. There seemed to be real affection between Louisa and the earl. And it was true that Louisa had never tried to be anything but a warm friend to Rebecca.

There had been some awkwardness, of course, at the changing of roles. Rebecca had been mistress of the house until the wedding. Now she was a homeless widow living with relatives—and not even quite that. Though she had never been made to feel an outsider. She had to admit that. It was all in her imagination.

And of course her loneliness had been accentuated by the loss of her companion and of her position in the house all at the same time—and less than a year after her loss of Julian.

"You should put off your mourning soon," the countess said gently. "It has been well over a year, Rebecca. You must start going about again. There are many wonderful gentlemen left in the world, many of them eligible. And you are so lovely. I have always envied your beauty.''

"Perhaps soon," Rebecca said. "For putting off the mourning anyway. I could never marry again."

The countess's smile faded suddenly. "Oh, dear," she said, "I am feeling so nervous, Rebecca. Aren't you?"

Rebecca raised her eyebrows.

"But of course you are not," the countess said, laughing. "Why should you? You have done nothing to incur his wrath. I have. Do you think he will resent me? Do you think he will believe I am trying to supplant him in William's affections? Do you think he will believe I was merely a fortune hunter?"

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"David?" Rebecca said.

"I am his stepmother," the countess said, grimacing. "And only two years older than he. And he will know that I was your employee and that most reprehensible of all creatures, an impoverished gentlewoman. Do you think he will come today, Rebecca? He said in his letter that he would be leaving London within the week."

"Perhaps today," Rebecca said, "or tomorrow. One never quite knows with David." Perhaps he needed a week or so of wild living in London, the war over, his commission sold.

"Thank God he lived through the war," the countess said. "I don't know if William would have been able to take the shock had he been killed."

"Yes," Rebecca said. "Thank God."

But the countess bit her lip in dismay. "Oh, Rebecca," she said, "I am so sorry. How tactless of me." She held a hand over her mouth and was silent for a while. "Will his coming home be welcome to you or not? Will it help to see him and talk to him about your husband?

Or will it hurt to remember that they left for the war together?"

But Rebecca was not given the chance to answer. Both ladies jumped to their feet suddenly and exchanged glances.

"Horses?" the countess said. "Is it Vinney back from the station?

The train must have come in."

They went to stand side by side at the window, watching to see if the carriage would veer off in the direction of the stables as it had done for the previous four afternoons or if it would proceed up to the house. It passed the turning to the stables.

"I must go down to William," the countess said breathlessly when the carriage slowed on the terrace below them and they could see trunks strapped to the back of it. "I would prefer to be with him rather than have to make a grand entrance later. I have never felt so nervous in my life. Come with me, Rebecca?"

"Yes," Rebecca said. She did not want to make a grand entrance either.

They hurried down the stairway to join the Earl of

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Hartington, who was just emerging from the library into the hall.

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Major Lord Tavistock had been wounded again in 1855, a nasty bayonet gash that had opened up his neck and shoulder. It was a wound incurred in saving the life of a young private soldier, whom many men of his rank would have considered expendable. It was the act that had won him the Victoria Cross. He had lost copious amounts of blood, but he had survived. The scar was still livid. Both his leg and his arm ached on occasion and sometimes when he was tired or when he was not paying sufficient attention he limped. But if he compared his condition with that of many other men who came home with him after the peace had been signed, then he had to admit that he had nothing to complain about. At least he still had all four limbs and both eyes.

And of course so many thousands did not come home at all. For a long time he had wanted to be one of them, had even tried to be one of them. But he had survived.

He longed to be back in England. He had decided long before that if he survived the war, he would sell out and spend the rest of his life in the country on his own estate, looking to the well-being of those dependent upon him. It had been an indulgence to join the army and leave his responsibilities to a steward.

He wanted to put it all behind him. He wanted to forget. He wanted to be healed. Not of his wounds—they had healed as much as they ever would, he supposed. Of other wounds that were not physical. His soul needed healing. Perhaps if he could just start a new life and make something worthwhile of it, he would be able to forget.

He would be healed.

Perhaps.

He had to go to Craybourne first. He knew that. He must see his father. But he dreaded going there and spent four days longer in London than he needed to conduct the little business he had there.

Craybourne would be different. His father had a new wife. He could not imagine his father with a woman. His own mother had died in childbed when he was only two years old.

His father's wife was only thirty years old—and she

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was the woman Julian had employed to be Rebecca's companion.

David could not remember what she looked like though he must have met her once or twice. He dreaded meeting her now. He feared that she must be frivolous and mercenary. He feared that his father would be unhappy, would be realizing now after almost a year that he had made a mistake.

Or perhaps he feared for himself. Perhaps he feared no longer belonging. No longer having his father to himself—as if he were still a small boy and needed that security.

Or perhaps what he feared most, what delayed his homecoming for four days, was something else altogether. Rebecca was still living at Craybourne, as she had since Julian had sent her there when he sailed for Malta. She had nowhere else to go, of course, but even if she had, his father would have persuaded her to stay. He had always treated Julian like a son. He would think of her as a daughter-in-law.

In the course of almost two years David had somehow managed to persuade himself that he had had no choice in what had happened during those dreadful seconds on the Kitspur during the Battle of Inkerman. The choice had been between Julian's life and Scherer's, and he could not in all conscience have watched a murder being committed in cold blood. He had, after all, been an officer in Her Majesty's service, dealing with two fellow officers. It had been immaterial that one of them was Julian. If it had been anyone but Julian he would have done the same thing without a qualm of conscience. He had assuaged his guilt with the obvious truth of that thought, even if he had not banished it. The thought had enabled him to go on living—somehow.

But he would rather do anything else in life than go to Craybourne and have to face Julian's wife. His widow. Rebecca.

The drive from the station seemed shorter than he remembered, perhaps because he did not want to reach the house. Despite the four days and the steeling of his mind, he was not ready. Before he could quite gather himself together after the train ride from London, they were through the gates and among the trees. And before he

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had adjusted his mind to that fact, they had rounded the bend in the driveway and left the trees behind and there at the top of half a mile of rambling lawns, was the house itself. Home.

David shifted uneasily in his seat.

A few minutes later he climbed the horseshoe steps to the main doors, which were being thrown back even as he set his foot on the bottom step, and wondered if his father would be there in the hall to greet him or if he would have to steel himself for an entrance into the drawing room. But all nervousness and all thought fled as he stepped into the doorway and his father came hurrying toward him. The next moment they were locked in a close, bruising embrace.

"My son," he heard the earl say. His father had never been a demonstrative man, though David had never doubted his love. But he clung now wordlessly, without shame. "My son," he said again.

"Papa." They released their hold on each other finally and David looked at his father, an older replica of himself, their eyes on a level.

The handsome, rather narrow, rather severe face had acquired dignity with age. The dark hair was silvered at the temples, perhaps a little more than it had been two and a half years before. "It's good to be home." The words seemed inadequate to the emotion of the moment.

A woman had moved up behind his father's shoulder. David dared not look. He could feel his heart beating in his chest and could hear it hammering against his ears. His father turned and set an arm about her waist.

"This is my son, my dear," he said. "David, this is Louisa, my wife.

I believe you have met before."

She was small and inclined to plumpness, though she was by no means fat, fashionably dressed in a blue, tight-bodiced dress, its wide skirt made fuller by three deep flounces. She had light brown hair and gray eyes. Her face was amiable and rather plain. David could not remember her. But she was a surprise. It was difficult to see her as his father's wife, as his companion, his lover, despite the fact that his arm was still about her waist.

"David?" Her voice sounded anxious and he realized that she must be as nervous about meeting him as he was

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about meeting her. He realized too that she must have greeted him by his title at former meetings. But she was his stepmother now.

He inclined his head to her. "Ma'am?" he said. "It is a pleasure to meet you—again."

She smiled suddenly and he could see that she was not entirely without beauty. "You are so like William," she said and flushed. "So like your father. I had forgotten your looks, though we did meet on one occasion, I believe. Was your journey tedious? Trains are so noisy and dirty, I find, though wondrously fast. You must be ready for tea."

He felt himself relaxing. Until something—a small flutter of movement perhaps—drew his eyes in the direction of the stairs and the shadows to one side of them. She was almost invisible. She was wearing black—Oh God, she was still wearing black. His stomach turned over. He had forgotten that she was taller than average. And he had forgotten the way she had of holding herself so regally erect.

He had not forgotten her hair. Even in the darkness of the shadows he could see that its pure gold had lost none of its luster. It was parted at the center and looped down smoothly over her ears. Her face looked as if it had been sculpted of alabaster. Had she always been so delicately pale?

"Rebecca?" he said. Somehow it seemed as if there were no one else present except the two of them. He took a few steps toward her.

"David." Her lips formed his name though he felt the sound more than heard it.

And he knew with a painful rush that he had been fooling himself for well over a year, that nothing was over, that nothing could be forgotten, that there could be no healing—ever. For he was the one who had clothed her in black and put that alabaster look on her face.

He was the reason she was standing there forever alone and in shadow instead of in the light and the sunshine with Julian.

He had killed her husband. He had shot Julian through the heart.

"Rebecca," he said, reaching out his hands to her

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without knowing that he did so, "I am so sorry." She would never know how sorry.

She set her hands in his, two slender blocks of ice, and he squeezed them tightly until he could feel the hardness of her wedding ring.

"I'm glad you are safe," she said. "I'm glad you came home, David."