Tangled

Tangled

Mary Balogh

ONE MAN HAUNTED HER PAST...

Her beautiful eyes flashing with hate, Rebecca faced Lord David Tavistock. He had come back, wounded but still vibrantly, sensually alive, from the Crimean War. Julian Cardwell, her sweet, gentle bridegroom — and David's foster brother — had not. She blamed wild, reckless David for Julian's decision to enter the Queen's Guards, and for the devastating loss of her perfect young husband, whose memory even now broke her heart and filled her dreams.

ONE PROMISED HER A FUTURE...

His blue eyes shadowed by dark secrets, David had come to claim the woman he had always loved. All his life he had protected the charming Julian, hiding the truth from Rebecca about the women Julian dallied with, the child he had fathered, the scandalous way he died. Now David offered Rebecca a life of privilege and wealth—as
his
wife. She wanted a marriage of convenience, but he intended to awake her deepest passions, to make her forget Julian Cardwell...and to find in
his
bed all the ecstasy of a man's true love.

"GO BACK TO BED," HE SAID.

Her eyes were huge with shock.

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. You promised that he would not. It is not to happen again, do you understand me? Julian is dead. Let him go.

She turned away, but he grabbed her wrist and spun her back to face him. 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 been 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. She should have slapped his face—hard. Instead, she was playing the part of a dutiful wife as he suspected she always would. His anger intensified. He hated her at that moment. He stooped down, scooped her up into his arms, strode across to the bed, and tossed her down onto it . . .
.

Topaz, division of Penguin books

copyright 2004

O, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive!

--Sir Walter Scott

England, February, 1854

She was not going to go to the quayside. She had told Julian that already. Plenty of women were going to stay with their men until the bitter end, of course. She watched them now from the window of her hotel room, standing there straight-backed and calm-faced, so that anyone observing her would have thought that she felt no emotion at all, that the scene beyond the window had nothing whatsoever to do with her.

The Guardsmen of the Grenadiers' Third Battalion were marching smartly along the streets of Southampton, making a spectacular show with their swallow-tailed red coatees and tall black bearskin caps. The curious and the patriotic lined the streets, cheering them, calling out encouragement, waving handkerchiefs. And women were there—wives, sweethearts, mistresses—moving along the pavements beside the marching troops, most of them gazing at one particular man with longing, unhappy eyes. Soon they would be saying good-bye to their men.

Perhaps forever.

It was February, 1854. Perhaps many of the men marching so smartly along the street would never see the end of the year.

They were to sail only as far as Malta—as a precautionary measure, the government claimed. It was very unlikely that there would be war. The Tsar of Russia would be foolish not to back down when he was threatened with the might of both England and France. But the Tsar continued to make his presence felt in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. He continued to try to take advantage of the crumbling Turkish Empire.

The British had not been involved in. any major war since the Battle of Waterloo almost forty years before. But British overland trading routes to India and the East were being threatened, and the British were clamoring for a fight. The government, however, claimed that there would be no war. They were sending troops to Malta merely as a precautionary measure.

Rebecca, Lady Cardwell, kept telling herself that as she gazed downward onto the street and waited for Julian to come back to their room to say good-bye. She would not go to the quayside. Perhaps there her control would desert her—in public. It was not to be contemplated. She almost had not even come down from London.

The thought of going as far as Southampton with him but no farther had been excruciating agony. But the thought of not going as far as she could had been worse. She had come.

Those poor women in the streets below, she thought, watching them, many of them with children. Only a few of the wives had been allowed to go with the enlisted men, their names drawn by lottery.

The rest had to stay, most of them to be cared for by the parishes in which they lived. They were to live on charity while their men were preparing to offer their lives in service of their country.

Many officers' wives were going, of course. They did not have to participate in the lottery. Rebecca would have gone, too, but Julian would not allow it. She had miscarried only the month before—for the second time in their two-year marriage—and he was afraid that she had not recovered her health sufficiently to undergo a long voyage and live in an unfamiliar climate.

She had pleaded with him—how was she to live without him? But to no avail. He had deliberately taken her question literally and told her that he had made arrangements for her to return home to Craybourne during his absence. Doubtless he would be back in England almost before they realized he was gone.

But Craybourne was not home. Not really. It was the home of the Earl of Harrington, whom both she and Julian called Father. But in reality he was neither Julian's father nor her father-in-law. He was Julian's godfather, who had taken Julian in as a five-year-old orphan and brought him up with his own son. Rebecca did not really

Tangled 11

want to go to Craybourne, but she had no choice. Julian had said she was to go there—until he returned.

Rebecca set her forehead against the glass of the window. Until he returned. What if the Tsar continued to be stubborn? What if the British and the French held firm? What if there was war after all?

What if—? But she straightened up again and turned with a falsely calm and cheerful smile as the door opened abruptly behind her.

"Look whom I've brought home with me, Becka," Captain Sir Julian Cardwell said, his voice cheerful, his good-looking face animated, his eyes sparkling with the excitement of the occasion. "He was skulking along the street and unwilling to come up with me. I had to convince him that you would be mortally offended if he did not take his leave of you before going off to war.''

Major Lord Tavistock closed the door behind them. David. The Earl of Hartington's son. Looking apologetic and, as always, ten times more handsome than any other man she knew, including Julian. He was taller than Julian, with a greater breadth of shoulder and chest, with narrower waist and hips, and longer legs. He was darker than Julian, with those blue eyes making Julian's gray ones look quite ordinary. But then he had neither Julian's sunny good nature nor his charm. Nor her love.

She disliked David. She had no wish to have him there in her hotel room. He was an intruder. She had only a short time left with Julian—perhaps only an hour or less. She was greedy for every minute of that time alone with him. But it was not David's fault he was there, she had to admit. Julian had brought him, insensitive perhaps to her need to have him alone for the final hour. Or perhaps he found their parting as difficult to contemplate as she and was trying somehow to take some of the emotion from it.

"David," she said.

"You'll wish me to the devil, Rebecca," he said, coming toward her, his right hand outstretched. "I'll say good-bye, then, and leave you alone with Julian."

Good-bye. Perhaps she would never see him again. Perhaps there would be war after all. Perhaps he would be killed. She disliked him, but Julian had always thought of him as a brother. And she had once played with him

12 Mary Balogh
and looked up to him as something of a hero—a long time ago.

She had even sighed over his growing good looks for a while as a girl until her moral upbringing and her own firmly held principles had made her realize that he was not at all the sort of young man who was worthy of her devotion. More recent events had confirmed hep in that opinion. But she did not want him dead.

She must feel some trace of fondness for him after all, beneath the dislike and the disapproval.

"David," she said, looking earnestly up into his eyes, "look after yourself. Keep yourself safe." Her hands were clasped before her. She would not take his outstretched one. But suddenly—she did not know how it had come about—she was in his arms, her own tight about his neck, his about her waist—hugging him as if she would never let him go. Her eyes were tightly closed. "Keep yourself safe."

"And you, Rebecca," he said. His arms tightened as if to squeeze all the breath out of her. "I'll take care of Julian for you."

And then he was striding back across the room and opening the door. He spoke without looking back. "I'll see you downstairs, Julian.

Five minutes. No longer."

She had never done anything so unseemly in her life, Rebecca thought, running her hands over the full, flounced skirt of her green dress. And then his final words echoed in her mind.
Five minutes. No
longer.

She clasped her hands again and forced a smile to her lips. She would not disgrace herself. "Julian," she said, looking into his face, memorizing it just as if she expected to forget it the moment he sailed away, "take care of yourself. Don't forget to write." As if she were his mother. As if he were going away to school. He was going to war.

Perhaps there really would be war. Perhaps ... In spite of herself she felt her smile wobbling and her hands clenching each other painfully.

“Becka,'' he said softly, opening his arms to her. His normally sunny, charming smile had deserted him, "Becka."

She hurried into his arms and set her forehead against his shoulder, against the hard shield of his scarlet coatee. She set her arms about his waist and was aware that she

Tangled13

could not feel him, but only the uniform he wore. It was as if he had already been taken from her.

He laughed and rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. "I knew you would be like this," he said. "Like a marble statue. I wish I had insisted on sending you home from London so that we would not have had to go through this."

"It would have been the same there," she said. "There would have been the moment of parting. It was unavoidable. Oh, Julian." She fought tears.

"Becka," he said, holding her close, "it is just to Malta. Just an expensive and pointless exercise. We will be home by summer, mark my words. The government does not want war.''

Three minutes must have passed already. Two left. She breathed in slowly and lifted her head.

"Becka," he said, framing her face with his hands, gazing into her hazel eyes. "Becka, my darling."

"Julian." There were world and universes of things to be said, yet all she could do was whisper his name.

"I have to be going," he said, smiling. "Smile for me."

She tried, felt the impossibility, and shook her head quickly.

"Well, then," he said, lowering his head until his lips touched hers,

"kiss me, Becka."

She kissed him with desperate tenderness. It might be for the last time. The very last time. She tried to will time to a standstill.

"My darling." He had drawn his face back a few inches. "I shall miss you every hour of every day until I am home with you again.