Tangled (18 page)

"Do the children go to school?" Rebecca asked.

"No, my lady," Mrs. Gundy said. "They are needed here to help with the farm."

"At their age?" Rebecca said. "Are they not a little young?''

"We need the help, my lady," Mrs. Gundy said, rather tight-lipped.

"It can come only from our own family."

Her questions were resented, Rebecca realized. Obviously Mrs.

Gundy was a proud woman who did not like having the lady of the manor prying into her business. It

Mary Balogh

was quite understandable. And Rebecca had really not come to interfere. For the rest of the visit she talked on safe topics, concentrating on establishing some sort of easy amity with her husband's tenant.

She was not sorry when the visit ended.

"That was not too successful, I'm afraid," she said after David had helped her into the saddle and they had ridden away from the cottage. "The roof leaks and the children cannot go to school because their labor is needed on the farm. And Mrs. Gundy hates the fact that her husband smokes a pipe in the house. I do believe she also resented the fact that I came calling."

David was looking severe and uncommunicative.

"Was Mr. Gundy more amiable?" she asked.

"His rent is too high," he said shortly. "It has been raised sharply year by year despite the near-impossibility of his paying it. One more raise and he will be forced to leave."

"To go where?" Rebecca asked. "He has a wife and two young children."

"And the traditional help from the manor with things like repair of the barn and of the house roof has been withheld," David said. "It seems that I cannot afford the expense."

"But I thought you were prospering," Rebecca said.

"So did I." He looked grim. "I hope Gundy's is an exceptional case.

It will be easy to rectify if it is."

"You have promised him help and a reduction in rent?" Rebecca asked.

"I have promised nothing," he said. "I have some investigating to do first."

It was not after all a good morning. The first visit was a mere harbinger of the four that followed it. It seemed that everyone's rent was exorbitantly high. Every penny earned that was not going to pay the rent was being spent on mere survival. There was no money to spare for essential repairs and improvements. And there was no help from Stedwell. Only constant demands for more money. Very few of the children were attending school. They wanted their children to attend, one vocal wife explained to Rebecca. They had ambitions for them. But what could they do? Their help was needed at home.

Tangled 131

"It's amazing, David," Rebecca said when they were finally riding home, rather tired and dispirited, "that they were as civil to us as they were. They must hate us with a passion."

"They do not do so," he said, "only because they believe we are suffering along with them. They have seen the condition of the house and grounds at Stedwell. And they know that I was in the army, fighting in the Crimea. A viscount does not do such a thing unless he is in great financial straits—or so the theory goes."

"And yet—" Rebecca said.

"And yet," he said vehemently. "There are a few things I need to have explained, Rebecca. I think perhaps you had better not accompany me on tomorrow's visits. Or on any visits for a while."

"Why not?" she asked.

“I have the feeling that none of them will be any more pleasant than today's," he said. "You might as well stay at home."

"David," she said quietly, "we are in this together. I did not marry you for a pleasant life of ease, remember? You promised me challenge.

You promised that I would help you. Don't try now to make an ornament of me."

He gazed steadily at her for a few moments. "Perhaps there is an explanation," he said. "Perhaps we just visited all the wrong people this morning."

They rode the rest of the way home without further conversation.

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

David came awake with a surging of terror and relief. He was suffocating, his body wet with perspiration. He flung back the bedclothes before remembering that he was not alone as he usually was when the nightmare came. He turned his head to look at Rebecca. She was sleeping quietly on the other side of the bed, turned slightly away from him.

God! He sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed his hands over his face. His heart was still pounding like a hammer in his chest.

Always the same nightmare. It had come to him first at Scutari and had followed him back to the Crimea and home to England. It was not fading with time, as he had

132 Mary Balogh
told himself at the first that it would, but was getting more frequent and more vivid. Sometimes it came to him more than once in a night. Sometimes he fought exhaustion to stay awake merely to avoid it.

He got to his feet and crossed the room to stand at the window, looking out into darkness. The terrifying thing about dreams, he had discovered, was that they could distort time horribly. In the dream it always took him what seemed like ten minutes to pull his pistol free of its holster and fire it, though he knew that in reality it had taken only a split second. In the dream there was time for all sorts of strange things to happen within that split second.

In the dream he always knew what he was about to do. He always knew the alternatives and the consequences. He had time to debate with himself whether he would fire merely to get Julian to drop his sword or whether he would shoot to kill. He had had enough of Julian, of always covering for him, excusing him, expecting him to grow up and become a responsible adult. Nothing would ever change.

It was time he got rid of Julian from his life. It was time he killed him. If he killed him, perhaps he would have a chance with Rebecca.

There would never again be any need to blacken his own name in order to protect Julian. His willingness to lie and take punishment in order to protect Julian had always been his greatest weakness. No more weakness. He was going to be strong.

And so he always shot to kill. Quite deliberately. Quite cold bloodedly. He always hated Julian in the dream. He felt no love for him at all. Only the overwhelming desire to kill him.

God! David closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass of the window. He was sweating again. His waking self could never shake off the dream. What if the dream was the reality? What if the dream had merely uncovered what his conscious mind denied? What if his killing of Julian had had nothing really to do with George Scherer? What if he had killed Julian because he hated him and wanted him dead? Because he wanted Rebecca?

And now he had Rebecca. She lay asleep in the bed behind him.

He had made love to her only a couple of

Tangled133

hours ago. She was his wife. But why had he married her? Only because -of the responsibility he felt toward the widow of the man he had killed? Or because he had cold bloodedly planned to have her for himself?

He shivered in the coolness of the night air. Another thought always haunted him during this waking part of the nightmare, though it had no part in the dream. What if Julian's actions had been in self-defense? What if George Scherer had been trying to kill him and Julian had had no choice but to defend his own life? What if it had been a kill-or-be-killed situation? And yet Scherer had had right on his side—he was a wronged husband. Would that have given him the right to kill Julian, though? And in the midst of a battle in which they were both supposed to be killing the enemy and defending their countrymen?

The questions were academic if David's initial reaction to the scene before his eyes had been the correct one. But what if it was not? Even then, could he have stood by and watched Julian run a fallen man through with his sword?

The dream, terrifying as it was in itself, always gave place to a waking nightmare that was many times worse.

"David?" A light hand touched his arm.

He whirled around to find Rebecca standing beside him, looking at him in some concern. God, she was the last person he wanted to see at the moment—his wife, in her nightclothes and with her hair loose down her back, in their bedchamber. All the intimacy of a domestic scene. Julian's wife.

"Go back to bed," he said harshly. "You should be sleeping."

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Is something wrong?''

"Nothing is wrong." He glared at her. "Get back to bed."

Her hand fell away from his arm. "You were breathing heavily," she said. "I thought you were in pain."

"A little insomnia," he said. "I suffer from it occasionally. It is nothing you need concern yourself with, Rebecca."

"Stay out of my life,"
she said so softly that for a moment he was not sure what she had said. "This is the

134Mary Balogh

way you have always looked and sounded when something was wrong and one might have offered you some sympathy, David.
Stay
out of my life.
I had forgotten that it was that as much as anything that used to make me dislike you."

He sucked in air slowly. "Go back to bed," he said, his tone more controlled. "I appreciate your concern, but I would not keep you awake too, Rebecca. It would be unfair."

"Was it a bad dream?" she asked.

His fragile control snapped again. "Yes, goddammit, it was a bad dream," he said. "It is no great matter. It was a bad dream, that's all.

Do you want to tuck me back into bed and smooth a hand over my brow and assure me that there are no ghosts in the cupboards after all?''

He watched her jaw harden in the dim light from the window, though she did not turn away. "I used to have them too," she said, "I used to wake up crying and sometimes screaming. Is it the war, David? Is it war memories that trouble you?''

"Yes," he said curtly. "There was so much death and horror and so much suffering, Rebecca. Is it any wonder that a man's dreams become haunted?"

"No," she said.

He turned back toward the window. He wished to God that she would go away. It was impossible to explain that it was not so much the dream as the wakefulness following the dream that was most to be dreaded. He did not want her of all people to step into that wakefulness.

"Do you dream of
him?”
she asked abruptly.

"Yes."

"Is it guilt you feel, David?" Her voice was no more than a whisper.

"God!" He closed his eyes very tightly and clamped his teeth together. He felt bathed in sweat again. He willed her to give up and move away from behind him.

"Do you keep imagining that you might have saved him?" she asked. "That if you had held him back or gone forward instead of him you might have saved him? But he might still have been stopped by another bullet. I don't know what battle is like, David, but I do know that thousands of men died just on that one day. Besides, you

Tangled135

could not watch out for just Julian. You were responsible for the lives of all your men. Don't blame yourself."

He rounded on her again suddenly. "You are right, Rebecca," he said through his teeth. "You know nothing of what battle is like.

Don't mouth platitudes at me. And I thought it was agreed that he not be mentioned between us. I thought you promised that he would not. It is not to happen again, do you understand me? Julian is dead.

Let him go."

Her eyes were huge with shock.

"Go back to bed," he said.

She turned away, but he grabbed for her wrist and spun her back around to face him. What had he done? But words of apology could not force themselves through the turmoil of his mind. He hauled her against him and lowered his mouth to hers.

It was not a tender kiss. Ghosts were clawing at him and he fought to banish them, to impose the reality of the present on the dreams and horrors of the past. She was his wife. They had married less than three days before. This was their honeymoon.

She was clinging to him when he lifted his head again, her body arched in to his, held there by all the strength of his arms. But she made no protest. She should have slapped his face—hard. Instead she was playing the part of dutiful wife, as he suspected she always would.

His anger intensified. He hated her in that moment. He stooped down, scooped her up into his arms, strode across to the bed, and tossed her down onto it.

He leaned over her, hauling her nightgown with one pull of both hands up beneath her arms. He lifted himself over her, pushing her legs wide with his knees and kneeling between them. He held her nightgown up to her chin with both hands while he lowered his head to one of her breasts and took it into his mouth, sucking inward, laving the stiffening nipple with his tongue.

He heard her sharp intake of breath and felt its ragged expulsion.

And he felt her fighting for control as he moved his mouth to her other breast, and winning. Her body began to relax beneath him. She was becoming as always the submissive wife. She would allow him his will, no matter what indignity he had planned for her.

136Mary Balogh

"Damn you," he hissed at her, lifting his head and glaring down into wide eyes. "Fight me. Respond to me.

She shook her head slowly. He could feel her bewilderment and it infuriated him. She lay spread-eagled on the bed, her hands palm down against the mattress.

"You wanted to comfort me," he said with quiet fury against her mouth. "You wanted to banish my nightmares. Then banish them.

Banish the memories. Give me some of what you used to give Julian."

She whimpered as he pushed his tongue into her mouth. He withdrew it. He slid his hands beneath her, cupping her buttocks, holding her steady as he lowered his weight onto her and thrust into her. He worked fast and deep, his head buried against her hair, his eyes tightly closed.
Banish the memories. Banish the memories, Rebecca.

My love. Put your arms around me. Hold me.
His teeth were clamped together. The words were not spoken aloud.