Tangled (36 page)

The truth was always best, he had concluded on that occasion. He had been weak to agree to hide the truth from her.

And this time?

There was nothing that remained hidden, he had assured her.

Everything was at last in the open between them. They had touched the depths and were now ready to move onward and upward again.

Once again he had allowed himself to be the scapegoat. She had put what he agreed seemed a perfectly logical interpretation on past events, and he had allowed her to go on believing it. It was he who had had die affair with Cynthia Scherer, she believed, and he had not de-II* ) I
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nied the charge. It was he and George Scherer who had been involved in a death struggle and Julian who had come along to interrupt them. He had allowed her to go on believing that.

He had taken Julian from her. All she had left were memories of what she had thought was the perfect marriage. He had not taken that from her as well. He could
not. It was all she had.

He was not sure that matters would have been better for him anyway even if he had told her the full truth. He really had killed Julian. Perhaps the truth would be worse. The truth was that he had aimed at Julian, not Scherer. Even if the decision had been made in a split second and without any conscious choice, he had quite deliberately aimed at and killed Julian.

Would it help anything to protest his innocence of the lesser charge? To deny the affair with Lady Scherer? The only way he could convincingly do so was to accuse Julian—and so destroy something else in her, the most precious memory she had. He could not do it.

Would
not do it.

Was it weakness? Or strength?

It did not much matter, he supposed.

Incredibly their lives carried on much as usual. They continued with their work, dined and danced with their friends, played with their son. They even loved. He was tempted on that first night to seek out a bed elsewhere, but he knew that if he once did it he would not find the courage to return to her. And they had the rest of a lifetime to live through together. For a while he lay silently beside her, but when he turned to reach for her, she received him with neither the old submissiveness nor the more recent passion. She loved him with tightly closed eyes and a quiet sort of tenderness.

As if she felt and understood his pain.

As if she longed to forgive him.

As if she wanted to be forgiven for not turning him off.

Almost as if she had grown to love him despite everything.

By the end of January he was not at all sure that they could go on as they were, that they could ever put the past finally behind them and move on into the future. He did not know if it was love or despair that was between them, holding them somehow together.

Were they at the beginning of the future? Or at the beginning of the end?

He did not know.

But at the end of January the letter came. The Earl of Hartington was summoning them to Craybourne in an unusually formal manner.

It was a matter of great urgency. They must come immediately—both of them.

Craybourne, 1858

After a short consultation, they decided to take Charles with them.

But of course it was a foregone conclusion that he would go too.

They could not possibly go anywhere for longer than a day without their son. But under protest he traveled in a compartment with his nanny and his mother's maid and his father's valet. David and Rebecca traveled in a compartment alone, worried and speculating on the reason for the abrupt summons.

"It must be that Father is ill," Rebecca concluded for surely the dozenth time since the day before. It was the only reasonable explanation, though why he had written instead of Louisa if he were ill they could not understand. Unless the illness was a lingering one that was going to kill him slowly. They did not mention that possibility though it always hung in the silence between them.

Perhaps it was Louisa who was ill. Perhaps it was Katie. Or perhaps it was not an illness at all. Perhaps . . . But they had exhausted all the possibilities, likely and otherwise, and really there was no way of knowing. They might as well not even try guessing but talk about other matters. They had guessed themselves in circles.

"We will soon find out," David said and put an effective end to the discussion. Soon they would be at Craybourne.

Rebecca thought about their last visit there as the carriage the earl had sent to the station approached the house. It had been only a few weeks ago—at Christmas. Everything had changed since then.

Everything and nothing. She wondered if they would appear different to David's father and to Louisa. She wondered if they
were
different.

Life was much as it always had been between

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them. That brief month of happiness last summer had been exceptional. And yet it had created—or revealed— a bond between them that was proving surprisingly enduring.

For better or for worse they were married and she could not quite persuade herself that she was sorry he had tricked her into marriage, playing on her vulnerability, hiding the truth of what had happened in the Crimea. She should be sorry, she knew. Knowing what she now knew, she should find being married to him quite insupportable.

But she did not. She had discovered a depth of fondness for him that had taken her by surprise during the past weeks.

The house looked normal, she thought, gazing out of David's window as he set his own face close to the glass. Whatever it was, it was nothing that was obvious to the eye. The carriage drew to a halt.

"I'll take Charles up to the nursery and get him settled," she said.

"You can find Father and set your mind at rest, David. Or he will find you. He has probably been watching for the carriage."

But it was the butler who met them in the hall, looking as dignified and as grave as he had ever looked. Perhaps the nurse would take the child upstairs, he suggested. His lordship wished to see Lord and Lady Tavistock in the library without delay.

Rebecca handed an overtired and cross Charles to his nanny and exchanged a glance with David. It was all so very formal. She remembered how the earl had come into the hall to greet David on his return from the Crimea. Even at Christmastime he had been there, with Louisa and Katie.

And now he wanted to see both of them in the library? Not just David? Rebecca found that her heart was beating mmi with uncomfortable rapidity. She saw her own anxiety mirrored on David's face as he set a reassuring hand against the back of her waist and guided her toward the library doors, which the butler was opening.

The earl was standing with his back to the fire, opposite the door.

"Father," Rebecca said, smiling and taking a few steps toward him.

But something stopped her. He really was

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ill, was her first thought. He looked deathly pale and stood unnaturally still. No, it was Louisa, was her second thought. Louisa was dead.

She did not know what caused her head to turn sharply toward the large window to her left. The sudden awareness, perhaps, that there was someone else in the room. Someone standing in front of the window, the light behind him, just as still and silent as her father-in-law.

She could not see his face. But she knew him instantly. There are certain people whom one identifies more through the emotions than the senses. She could not see him clearly and he said nothing. But she knew him. Even if her rational mind had been able to tell her that it was not he, that it could not possibly be, that it was someone else of the same height and build and coloring, her heart would have told her without any hesitation at all that it was indeed he.

She looked at him, strangely calm. But of course time and place and reality have no part in such moments. She had lost touch with all three. She took two steps toward him, stopped, and found herself suddenly released from the spell that had bound her.

"J-U-L-I-A-N!" She flew across the room, wailing his name, and was caught up in a bruising hug and twirled around and around. She continued to wail, her face buried against his shoulder, while he laughed and tried to squeeze all the breath out of her.

Just like
Julian. So very typicalof him.

"Becka," he said against her ear, his voice full of laughter. "Becka my darling."

Her hands were grasping his shoulders. Her whole body was touching his. She could feel his arms tight about her, could hear his voice talking to her and laughing at her. Flesh and blood. Warm.

Alive. He was alive. She drew back her head and looked up at him, her eyes wide with wonder.

"Julian?" Her voice was a whisper. She touched one of his cheeks with trembling fingertips. "Julian?"

"Alive and well," he said, smiling the old charming smile, looking and sounding so shockingly familiar that her eyes widened further,

"and home. And discovering that I was reported dead and buried at Inkerman instead

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of just captured there and carried off into Russia to an endless captivity. I've come home, Becka."

"Captured?" She spoke as in a dream. "You did not die?"

"Very nearly." He chuckled. "I came within a whisker of a whisker, but it seems my time was not up. it took them a year to bring me back to life and then they couldn't bear to part with me for several more years. But here I am at last with only a rather ugly purple hole above my heart to show for it all. I came home two days ago." His smile faded. "To find myself facing one hell of a mess, Becka."

It was only then—how long had it been since she had turned her head toward the window?-—it was only then that reality came rushing back. She was in Julian's arms— Julian's!—in the library at Craybourne. Her father-in-law was in the room too and so was David.
And so was David.
Charles was upstairs in the nursery.

Rebecca gazed at Julian. She could not have turned her head to save her life.
One hell of a mess.
His words rang in her head and echoed in the room.

He kept one arm tightly about her waist and turned her. "Hello, Dave," he said. "I didn't send word ahead. I thought I would just turn up and create a sensation. I didn't expect it to be quite as sensational as this."

Rebecca did not believe she would be able to look at David. But she forced her eyes upward. He looked just exactly as his father had looked when they came into the room. As if he were carved of stone.

Of white marble.

"I'm not a ghost," Julian said. "But under the circumstances I don't suppose I can expect a tumultuous welcome, can I?"

David took a step forward. Julian dropped his arm from Rebecca's waist. And then the two men were in each other's arms, hugging each other tightly and wordlessly. David's eyes were tightly closed.

Rebecca looked across the library to the earl, who still had not moved, though he was watching the three of them. The stony look had gone from his face, to be replaced with a look of suffering so intense that it brought her back finally to full reality. He had had time to digest the fact of Julian's return and all its implications. She

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realized suddenly with a sick turning of the heart just how much there was to be digested, how many implications there were to be faced.

David was crying with noisy sobs. Julian was laughing. Rebecca touched his shoulder from behind, rubbed her palm along it, set her face against it. And felt an arm slide out from beneath her breasts and away—an arm that had been around Julian. Her husband's arm.

David's arm. There was silence in the room again.

"I had no idea I had been reported dead," Julian said. "I thought you would have found me missing, Dave. I thought you would have come looking for me after the battle. But you were badly wounded, Father told me."

"Yes."

"And so everyone thought me dead," Julian said, "and some poor devil who is still thought to be missing is buried back there instead of me. Unless whoever was in charge of the burial detail just could not count. It's a queer feeling to find that you have suddenly been resurrected in people's eyes."

No one answered. Rebecca kept her face where it was. Her eyes were closed. There was a familiar smell about him, something quite unidentifiable, something she had never been aware of before. He was so unmistakably Julian.

"And so you and Becka married," Julian said.

"Yes."

"And have a son."

"Yes."

"It's one hell of a mess, isn't it?" Julian said. He chuckled, though the sound lacked his usual humor. "Whose wife is she, I wonder."

They all knew the answer to that one. Rebecca could hear someone crying and realized, startled, that it was her. She could not seem to stop.

"No, don't, David," she heard the earl say sharply and it was Julian who turned to take her into his arms and cradle her head against his shoulder.

"Becka," he crooned against her ear. "We'll sort it all out. I'm home, darling. I'm holding you in my arms again. Where you belong.

They have been so empty

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without you. So very empty. You are glad to see me, aren't you?

Tell me you're glad. Tell me you love me."

An ache of the old tenderness washed over her and she cried harder against his shoulder. Her usual control had utterly deserted her.

"She is in shock," she could hear the earl's voice saying- "Take her upstairs, love, and get her something to calm her down and put her to sleep for a while. No, David, stay where you are. Louisa will know best what to do.”

She had not heard Louisa come into the room. The earl must have sent for her.

"Let her go, Julian," the cool voice of the earl continued. "Louisa will be the best medicine for her at the moment. We three have some talking to do."

Julian was releasing his tight hold on her. She was still crying helplessly and observing her loss of control as if from a distance, as if she were two distinct persons, one observing, the other gone all to pieces.