Tangled (26 page)

"Any pain now?" he murmured to her after a few minutes.

"No."

He ran a hand up and down her back, circling it slowly so that she relaxed further to its rhythm. She began to realize that David was lying fully clothed in bed with her—he was even wearing his boots, she could feel with one bare foot—holding her close to him, massaging her back through her nightgown. He was doing what she had longed for months for him to do. And it felt even more wonderful than she had imagined.

He had made the pains go away. There had been none since he had come. He had cried with her, she thought in some wonder. Their child was as important to him as it was to her. And surely she meant a little more to him than just a business partner and almost-friend. He might have just sent for the doctor and held her hand—or sent Louisa back to her—until the man came. Instead he had

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climbed into bed with her, boots and all, to hold her because she had asked to be held.

Very soon now, she thought drowsily, she was going to despise herself for showing so little discipline and fortitude. Soon she was going to be embarrassed for having shown him that she needed him—she had even sent Louisa running for him. But not yet. If she felt those things too soon, she would have to push away from him and assure him that she was quite recovered, thank you very much.

She did not want to be quite recovered yet.

Did it matter that she mean more to him than a friend? she wondered through the fog of returning sleep. Did she want to mean more when she knew so many unsavory things about him? And when she loved . . . But she refused—she positively refused to consider such thorny matters at this precise moment.

"Mmm," she said sleepily against his shirt as his hand circled her lower back and comforted the ache there.

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He waited until she was deeply asleep before easing himself slowly and carefully out of bed and leaving the room. As he half expected, his father and Louisa were waiting in the corridor outside. Louisa had been crying. He was suddenly aware that the traces of his own tears were probably still visible and that he must look horribly disheveled.

He did not much care.

"She is sleeping," he said. "I think perhaps it was a false alarm. Or perhaps things are just getting started. I know little about these matters. I never had cause to discuss them—last time."

"The nearest brandy decanter is in the drawing room?" his father asked sternly. "We will take ourselves there without further delay, my boy. If you think you can walk that far."

"I'll send Rebecca's maid to sit with her until she wakes," Louisa said quietly. "We were planning to return home tomorrow, David.

But William agrees with me that we should stay. Perhaps we should spend Christmas here after all, as you suggested."

"I hope," David said, "that there will be something still to celebrate."

"Whether there is or not," she said, taking his arm

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and squeezing it, "I think we are needed here, David. By both of you. And it really does not matter if William and I are here or at home for Christmas. We have each other and that is all that really counts."

David was ashamed suddenly that he had ever suspected his stepmother's motives for marrying his father. Their obvious affection for each other, despite the age difference, showed up the emptiness of his own marriage. He wondered if they had noticed that he and Rebecca were very nearly estranged even if there was no open hostility between them. But how could they have failed to notice? His father's silence on the topic was evidence enough that he knew his fears had been well-founded.

But she had needed him, David thought. For a few minutes, in her panic, she had needed him and sent Louisa running for him. Louisa had come bursting into his study, where he had been discussing some financial matters with Quigley, without even knocking on the door first.

He had not even realized fully how much he needed to be needed until Rebecca had reached for him, her eyes wild with panic, demanding to be held. Her panic had drawn an answering response from him, and for a few minutes he had been lost in pain and tears of his own. "But the wonder of being needed, of having his empty arms filled again, had aroused a pain of a different sort. He could have held her forever. Only the knowledge that his father and Louisa would be waiting anxiously for news had sent him reluctantly from her bed when she was fast asleep.

Even through the thickness of his frock coat and trousers he had felt the slight swelling of her pregnancy. The memory of the feeling brought an ache back to his throat as he took his glass of brandy from his father's hands. His own, he noticed in some surprise, were shaking slightly. Louisa had gone to give instructions to Rebecca's maid.

"Drink it before you disgrace your manhood and faint," the earl said gruffly.

David drank.

"I fainted when word was brought that you had been

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born," his father said. "I was too numb to faint when your mother died with your sister. Be thankful, David, that at least you do not have cause to feel numb. There is still hope. And she will survive at this point even if the child does not.''

David swirled the remaining contents of his glass and downed them in one gulp.

"I am terrified," his father mumbled, taking David quite by surprise.

He watched the earl drink his own brandy and smiled ruefully. "I have been very selfish, haven't I?" he said. "Acting all these weeks as if I am the only anxious expectant father. Forgive me, Papa?"

"She must need you," the earl said, pursing his lips and acting as if he had not for a moment revealed weakness. "If she sent for you like that—Louisa said all she could say, over and over again, was to fetch you—she must need you. It's something, my son. It's something."

"Yes," David said, almost afraid to believe. But his thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, whom he had yelled out for as he had raced up the stairs earlier and whom the earl had sent for.

They sent him away again after giving him a drink and after David had directed him to return in the afternoon.

But in the afternoon, when she finally awoke, Rebecca declared that she was feeling better and that there had been no recurrence of the pains. She gazed at her husband with eyes that he sensed only barely hid anxiety and the need for reassurance. She still looked unnaturally pale.

"Relax and try not to think of it," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed instead of on the chair as he usually did. "Louisa and Papa are going to stay for Christmas. Perhaps you will be able to come downstairs for a few hours on Christmas Day. The month will be over."

It seemed somehow the right thing to do to speak as if there was hope.

"It will be wonderful to be up again," she said. "You would not believe how idle I feel, David. I may have forgotten entirely how to work."

"I'll have to crack the whip again then," he said and was pleased to see a half smile on her pale lips. "But not for a while. I'll carry you downstairs for Christmas and back up again."

"It will be wonderful," she said. "Is the downstairs still there? I have been wondering."

He almost reached out to cup one hand about her cheek, but he could not make up his mind to risk wiping the near smile off her face.

"I am going to be sleeping here at night for a while," he said abruptly and watched the smile disappear after all to be replaced by a wary look. "You need someone close by, Rebecca."

Just in case.
The words hung in the silence between them.

But he was not sure his decision was not just an excuse. An excuse to be close. Perhaps to touch. Perhaps to be needed again. He had not realized until that morning just how starved he was.

She did not argue, as he had half expected she would. But then, of course, Rebecca would not argue. She was his wife. It was her duty to receive him into her bed whenever he chose to put himself there. He would read no more into her acquiescence than that.

"Thank you, David," she said.

Rebecca came downstairs for the first time on Christmas Eve, a day earlier than David had promised. The earl, Louisa, and David had dined in her room with her since it was a special occasion, and then had left her to rest. They were planning to go to church later.

Rebecca tried not to feel depressed to be left alone. Indeed, there was everything to put her in just the opposite mood. Tomorrow was Christmas Day and she was to go downstairs for the first time in a month. And that was the most significant and wonderful fact of all. A month had passed, the dreaded fourth month, and she was still pregnant.

If she could just get safely past the fourth month, Sir Rupert Bedwell had said, then she would probably be able to carry her baby to term. And she was about to enter the fifth month. Oh, no, she decided, closing her eyes and spreading both hands lightly over her abdomen, there was no reason at all to feel a little low in spirits merely because she had been left alone during the evening of Christmas Eve. She would not be so foolish.

And then the door opened again and she turned her head to see David come inside. She gazed at him wistfully and wondered if he realized how dependent upon him she had grown in the last month.

His visits were the high point of her day though they rarely talked about any topics other than strictly impersonal ones. Sometimes she wondered if she had invented that memory of him holding her and crying with her, but she knew she had not. It had been one of the very rare chinks in the armor he had always worn so carefully to shield himself from other people's view.

She wondered if he knew how dependent on him at night she had grown. She doubted if she would be able

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to sleep at night if he were not there beside her. It was so very tedious to lie in bed for twenty-four hours each day. He never tried to touch her or kiss her, but there was the warmth of his presence beside her and the knowledge that she was not alone, that he was there if she needed help. Sometimes she awoke during the night to find that they were snuggled up close to each other, though she never knew who had snuggled up to whom. Sometimes she edged away from him self-consciously. At other times she was too warm and comfortable to move but merely closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

"Did you forget something?" she asked.

"The carolers are here," he said. "A great army of them, Rebecca.

They almost fill the hall. And they want you. I did not think it would be quite the thing to bring them up here."

She laughed.

"I think it would be easier to take you down," he said. "Are you feeling up to it?"

"Downstairs?" she said. She felt rather like a child being offered a rare treat. "Now? But look at me."

"You had your hair neatly braided for dinner," he said. "It still looks tidy. I'll fetch your dressing gown and then wrap you up in a big blanket. But only if you want to, Rebecca. I'll tell them you are just not up to it if you don't. If I leave the door open, you will hear them singing. I didn't exaggerate when I said there was an army of them.''

"I want to," she said hastily, sitting up and throwing back the covers. "It's Christmas. I always used to love Christmas more than any other time of year. It seems years since I celebrated it properly. It was in London with Jul-"

"I'll fetch your dressing gown and a blanket," he said, disappearing into her dressing room.

It had been in London with Julian. Noisy celebrations with large numbers of his fellow officers and their wives. She had not really enjoyed it. She would have preferred to be alone with him or with a small group of close friends. But Julian had always loved large gatherings. It had been a few days before her miscarriage. Perhaps it had happened because she had danced and danced over

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Christmas though she had not wanted to. Julian had insisted that she enjoy herself. She was going into the mopes, he had said when she had tried to take life quietly out of fear that she would miscarry as she had done the first time.

"Here," David said and helped her into her dressing gown as she sat on the edge of the bed. "No, don't stand. I'll wrap the blanket around you like this and pick you up like this. Comfortable?"

"I must weigh a ton," she said. "I have done nothing all month but lie here putting on weight."

"A mere feather," he said.

He really had not exaggerated. She could hear the babble of voices as he carried her down the stairs, and it seemed when they reached the doorway into the hall that it was filled to overflowing. She saw Miriam Phelps and some of her knitting and sewing ladies at a glance, though there seemed to be a bewildering crowd of faces. She smiled.

Everyone clapped at the sight of her and then cheered. A few of the men whistled. They were all clearly in a merry festive mood already.

Rebecca felt an unexpected rush of tears to her eyes and had to turn her face into David's shoulder for a few moments. The earl and Louisa, she noticed when she looked up again, were standing beside one of the large fireplaces. A huge log fire was burning in each. An oak settle had been drawn close to the heat.

David seated her on it and sat beside her, his arm still about her shoulders. Everyone lapsed into near silence.

"Carolers?" Rebecca said. "Don't carolers go singing from house to house? Are there any houses left that are not empty?''

There was a general burst of laughter.

It had been someone's idea, it seemed, to go caroling at Stedwell since the house was inhabited for the first time in a long while. And everyone knew that the viscountess was confined to her bed and would not be at church. The idea had caught fire and almost everyone had come—everyone from the laborers' cottages, many from the village.