Tangled (6 page)

He stood staring at her, wanting to take her into his arms and hug her as he had hugged her at Southampton the very last time he saw her, wondering if she needed to be hugged at that moment.

By her husband's murderer.

His father's hand clasped his shoulder. "Let's all go up for tea," he said. "We can talk there."

David released Rebecca's hands and offered his arm. She took it and they walked up the stairs ahead of his father and his father's wife, all of them strangely silent.

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They had talked and talked through tea, the three of them, and again over dinner. There seemed no end to the questions his father and Louisa had to ask David, and he showed no reluctance about answering them. All of Louisa's nervousness seemed to have evaporated. She looked entirely happy by the time they all adjourned to the drawing room and the earl asked her, as he often did, to play the pianoforte and sing. Louisa had a sweet voice.

She was playing and singing now, the earl behind her, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, David standing at her other side.

Rebecca sat in the window seat, where she usually sat in the evenings, though both the earl and Louisa frequently urged her to join them at the pianoforte or beside the fire if it was a chilly evening.

He had changed. He had aged. He was thinner—at least his face was. His figure still looked powerful beneath the dark evening suit he wore. He looked more like his father than ever, tall and dark and severe. Except that there was a new softness about the earl's eyes, put there no doubt by his contentment with his new marriage and perhaps by the safe return of his son from war. Whereas David's blue eyes were hard and bleak all at the same time.

They were eyes that had looked on suffering and horror

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and death and could not forget. Or so it seemed to Rebecca.

But he had lived through it. Julian had not. There was little physical evidence of David's ordeal except for the shockingly livid scar on his neck, which showed above the collar of his shirt and which he had told the earl extended all the way down his neck and along his shoulder. Courtesy of the Russian tsar, he had said lightly.

Rebecca had shuddered deeply. Julian had received his death courtesy of the Russian tsar.

She found herself resenting David more than she wanted to and feeling guilty at her reaction. He was safe and loved and being made much of by his father and by Louisa. It was all over for him. It was his past. He had the rest of a lifetime to look forward to.

Julian was in a grave in the Crimea.

It was unfair. And her bitterness was unfair, she knew. Such were the realities of war. She was not by any means the only widow the war had created. At least she had not had children to be orphaned, though she might have had two if circumstances had been different.

So many poor widows of the war had children.

"Rebecca?" She had been so deep in thought that she had not noticed him crossing the drawing room toward her. He was standing in front of her now, dark and elegant, looking down at her from those hard, opaque blue eyes. "You no longer sing?"

She used to sing, during her childhood and during her girlhood, both at home and at Craybourne during the frequent visits she had made there with her parents—the earl and her father had been close friends. She used to love to sing at Craybourne as she grew older because the two boys had liked to watch her and listen to her. David used to turn the pages of her music until Julian had ousted him.

Then David would sit at a distance watching her while Julian sat beside her smiling his appreciation and flirting with her to the extent her very proper upbringing would allow.

"Your father wants to listen to Louisa," she said. "He is fond of her, David."

"Yes," he said. "I have seen that. Will you join us at the pianoforte?"

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She shook her head quickly. The conversation at tea and at the dinner table had encompassed every topic concerning the past two years, it seemed, with one glaring omission.

"Were you there?" she whispered. "Did you see it happen?''

Although there was a lengthy silence, she could see by his eyes that he understood what she was asking.

"Yes." His voice was no more than a whisper too.

"They said he was a hero," she said, leaning forward and looking earnestly at him. "That was all. They seemed to know no more. I suppose all men who die in battle are called heroes, aren't they? At least to their surviving loved ones. Thousands of heroes for each battle."

She watched him swallow.

"Tell me what happened," she said. "Tell me how he died."

He shook his head. "Perhaps it is better not spoken of, Rebecca,"

he said.

"Why?" She gripped the edge of the window seat on either side of her until her knuckles turned white. "Because he did not die a hero's death? Because it was too horrible to describe? Because I will be upset? He was my husband, David. He was my'love. You know that more than anyone. I must know. Please, I must know. I think perhaps it is because I do not know that I cannot let him go. I cannot believe that he is dead, that I will never see him again. I still cannot believe it after almost two years."

His hands were clasped behind him. His eyes bored into hers.

"There were not many of us," he said, "but we had repulsed an attack by a large column of Russians. We had driven them down a steep slope and were pursuing them, putting them to rout. Julian led the charge in his usual madcap, utterly courageous way. He was shot through the heart."

Yes, that would be Julian. If she just had him in front of her now, she would shake the life out of him. A bullet. Through the heart. He would not have felt a thing. He would not have known.

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Julian!

"Are you all right?" David's voice was soft.

"You could not have stopped him?" she asked. "You could not have shielded him?'' She knew that her questions were foolish, childish.

She resented the fact that he had let Julian go on ahead. He had been Julian's superior officer. He should have been leading the charge. He should have stopped that particular bullet.

"We were all charging, Rebecca," he said. "I was wounded myself during the retreat that followed. Those were the wounds that landed me in the hospital at Scutari."

She spread her hands palms-up in her lap and looked down at them intently. "So you were not there when they buried him," she said. "You did not see how he looked. Whether his face was at peace or showed suffering."

"It was at peace," he said. "I turned him over before going back up the hill. I had to make sure that he was dead."

She closed her eyes.

"He was my brother," he said softly.

She was sorry for her unreasonable resentment. Yes, wild as David had been, he had always been fond of Julian, she believed. And Julian had loved him and emulated him and always craved his approval.

Julian had joined the Guards because David was one of them. For the first time she realized that David must have been distraught at Julian's death. And he had witnessed it.

"I am glad you were there," she said, looking up at him again. "I hope he knew you were there. He would have known, wouldn't he?

You were in the same regiment. Yes, he would have known."

He frowned and said nothing.

"Thank you for telling me," she said. "Thank you, David."

It was foolish for the pain to be so raw again after so long. It was self-indulgent, perhaps, to let pain go on and on. To grieve interminably. Perhaps Louisa was right. Perhaps it was time to put off her mourning.

But the pain was raw and new again.

She got to her feet and drew away from his outstretched hand.

"Please excuse me," she said, hurrying past him. And then she noticed the earl and Louisa, standing beside the pianoforte, looking at her.

"Rebecca," the countess said, "let me . . ."

But she smiled at them and hurried on by. "Please excuse me," she said.

Perhaps these tears were necessary, she thought, blinded by them as she hurried up the stairs and into her room. Perhaps these were not a foolish indulgence. Perhaps these were the healing tears at last.

At last it was real. David had seen him die. David had touched his body and turned him over and confirmed that he was dead. He really was buried in the Crimea. He really was.

Julian was dead. He was never coming back to her.

He was dead.

"I should have refused to answer," David said. "I should not have stirred it all up for her again."

"She was fond of the boy," the earl said. "And he left at a bad time, when her health was delicate. She has never recovered from his death."

"I should not have told her anything," David said.

Louisa came across the room toward him and set a hand on his arm. "I know her well," she said. "We have always been close. I believe it was because she did not know, David, that she has found it so impossible to accept. Upset as she is tonight, I believe it will help her to know the full story.''

"Foolish boy," the earl said. "He led the charge, David? He took unnecessary risks? How typical of Julian."

"It was that sort of battle," David said. "It was not one that could be fought by the book. It was one that was won by individual effort and foolhardiness. We were so damnably outnumbered—pardon me, ma'am."

"Louisa," the countess said, smiling. "It is an embarrassment to be your stepmother and only two years older than you."

"Louisa." He nodded. "This must have been a tedious evening for you with nothing but talk of war and armies. And now this upset. My apologies."

"It was inevitable," she said. "You have been gone for well over two years, David, and there have been only a few letters. Your father has been frantic about you."

"Frantic, my dear?" the earl said.

"Yes." She turned to look at him. "You have scarcely mentioned him, William, or your anxieties about him. But do you believe I have not known that you have

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Mary Balogh

thought of little else since I first came here? Do you think I do not know you?''

The earl raised his eyebrows and looked at David. David could not recall seeing his father grin before. He had rarely even seen him smile.

"And now I am going to leave the two of you together," the countess said, "so that you may talk freely to each other without fear of either boring or horrifying me. I shall look in on Rebecca on my way up. Good night, David. Good night, William." She raised her face to her husband, and he kissed her briefly on the lips.

It looked strange to David, seeing his father kissing a woman.

They talked until the early hours of the morning—about the war, about Julian, about the earl's decision the previous year to marry again, about David's decision to sell out of the army, about his plans to move to Stedwell, the estate he had never yet either lived on or managed for himself. He was going to give the housekeeper and steward there one month's warning before going there.

It was a satisfactory homecoming, he thought as he finally said good night to his father and closed the door of his room behind him.

It was wonderful to be with his father again, and he had felt a cautious and unexpected approval of his father's wife. It looked as if it might be a happy marriage. A.nd he had a good future to look forward to, an interesting one. A challenge.

He wondered suddenly as he unbuttoned his shirt if Rebecca was sleeping, if she was still crying. He wondered if she had any suspicion at all that he had lied to her. He wondered if his father had any suspicion. He wondered, his hands stilling on the buttons, how each of them would react if they knew the truth. If they knew that the bullet that had stopped Julian's heart had come from his own pistol.

He felt a familiar coldness and dizziness buzzing in his head. They must never know, and that was all about it. Apart from himself, there was only one man who knew the truth and George Scherer, wherever he was, was unlikely to tell it. And so David felt again, but more intensely than he had yet felt it, all the heavy burden of his secret. A secret that he could share with no one.

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I killed my brother,
he had told Miss Nightingale. That was the closest he had come to telling the truth. But he had been unable to say any more though he had sensed that she would have listened. But as she herself had said, she had skill only in healing the body. She could have given no absolution to his soul.

No one could give that. Not even God. God might have the power to forgive sin, but He could not erase guilt. And this particular sin had been committed not against God, but against Rebecca.

He had not expected to find her still in mourning.

He had not expected that.

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Flora Ellis lived with her son in a small cottage on the Cray bourne estate, half a mile from the village. She was accepted there now, time being a healer of most ills, though she felt no wish to move back there. It suited her to live a little apart but also to be close to other people. She did not mind going into the village now that there was no chance of meeting her father there. Her father had been vicar at the church there at the time of her disgrace. He had recently been moved to another parish at his own request. He had not spoken to his daughter since the day she had announced her pregnancy.

She had steadfastly refused to disclose the name of the father, though it was generally believed that he was David Neville, Viscount Tavistock. His father, the Earl of Hartington, had after all given Flora the cottage of a deceased former housekeeper to live in, and had apparently supported her since her own father had disowned her, and her son too since his birth almost four years before.

Flora even had a few friends, among them Rebecca Cardwell.

Rebecca called on her frequently at the cottage, though Flora never called at the house. They often went walking together, Richard with them. Rebecca enjoyed the friendship of someone who was quiet and kept to herself. And she enjoyed watching Richard grow even though there was some pain in knowing that she might have been watching her own children grow if only she had been able to bear them. She tried not to brood on the matter. Although she had always been quiet, she was not naturally of a gloomy turn of mind.