Tangled (17 page)

Perhaps by the time everything had been set to rights they would have settled to a comfortable amity. She would hope that his wildness was all behind him. After all, he was almost twenty-nine years old. It was almost five years since he had disgraced Flora. Since then he had fought in the Crimean War as one of Her Majesty's officers and had distinguished himself to the extent that he had been awarded a Victoria Cross. He had been severely wounded on two separate occasions. She hoped that he was now changed. She hoped it fervently. She had always hated it when some new perfidy of David's had come to light. If there had ever been an air of mischief about him, maybe it would have been different. But he had always seemed so quiet and respectable.

Anyway, for the time being she was feeling almost happy. Certainly happier than she had felt for long ages— since before the day she had discovered that Julian's regiment was bound for Malta without her, she supposed. And even before that there had been the agony of her second miscarriage. She had something to do now and she owed deference to no one except David. She was mistress of Stedwell.

There was something marvelously exhilarating in the thought.

Something certainly did need to be done about the trees west of the house. At the very least, branches needed to be cut away. They were both agreed on that.

"Perhaps some of the trees should be taken out altogether to make room for my rose arbor,'' she suggested.

"Rose arbor?" He looked down at her. "Yes, it will suit you, Rebecca. Plan for it, then."

They spent an hour taking the air, enjoying the wide views from the house in most directions, admiring the three-arched stone bridge that they had ridden over and not noticed the day before, discussing what might be done to make the gardens more picturesque.

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"Rebecca," he said at last, "you are not daunted at the prospect of so much to do?''

"No," she said. "It will give my life purpose to be so busy, David.

You realized that when you were persuading me to marry you. You were quite right."

"You are not sorry, then?" he asked, "But it is a little soon to ask such a question, I suppose. And perhaps it would never serve any useful purpose to ask it."

"I am not sorry." She looked at him, curious again to know exactly why he had married her when it seemed that he had so much less to gain than she. "I made a commitment yesterday, David. To you, not just to restoring this house. I took you as my husband and vowed to make you a good wife. Such vows are always challenging, I think.

They were ..." She stopped in some dismay. She had vowed never to talk of Julian. "Well, they are challenging. Committing yourself to someone else's happiness is not easy. But I have made that commitment."

He stared at her broodingly and she wondered if she had made a mistake. She wondered if he wanted or expected such a commitment.

Perhaps all he wanted was a companion and helper—and someone to satisfy his needs in bed. She flushed at memories of the night before.

It had been so very different from what she had expected and from what she had once been accustomed to.

He stared off over her shoulder suddenly. "We are about to have visitors," he said. "I suppose it was to be expected. We have neighbors to grow familiar with, Rebecca."

A carriage was making its way up the driveway.

"Yes," she said. It was a pleasing thought. To be mistress of her own home. To be the leading lady of the neighborhood, socially speaking. To be about to make new acquaintances, perhaps new friends. "And other responsibilities to be taken on. I wonder what they will involve altogether?"

“We had better stroll back so that we are on the terrace by the time that carriage arrives there," he said.

"David," she said impulsively, "it feels good to be mistress of my own home. Thank you."

"I hoped it would," he said quietly. "And it feels good to have a mistress for it, Rebecca, not to be here alone. It would be lonely."

As he had said, they both had something to gain from the marriage. It was not going to be bad after all. Provided she could keep on tucking her memories firmly into the past, she could expect a measure of contentment at least from the future. Perhaps in time it would even be possible to give David the affection he had asked for.

She would try, she resolved. She would try very hard.

Three sets of visitors arrived before the afternoon was out. At one time they were all in the drawing room together and everyone was very merry. Including Rebecca. Her neighbors had come calling with the obvious intention of doing more than just making her acquaintance and David's.

"Stedwell has been unoccupied altogether too long," Mrs. Appleby said over tea. "Of course, my lord, we understand that for many years you were a mere boy living with your father, the Earl of Hartington, and that more latterly you have been serving Her Majesty and our country in the Crimea. We were all proud to bursting when we heard of how you distinguished yourself there. Weren't we, Gregory? But it is truly wonderful to have you home at last and with your lovely new bride. Isn't it, Mrs. Mantrell?"

The lady referred to, middle-aged like Mrs. Appleby, and as thin as the other was plump, agreed. "Our only hope is that you are here to stay now, my lord," she said. "It seems such a waste to have a large estate like Stedwell uninhabited. There is no leadership, if you will forgive my saying so, though we all do our part to do the best we can."

"Our intention is to make this our home, ma'am," David assured her. "I have been dreaming for several years of settling here and my wife has been looking forward to having a home of her own."

The ladies were satisfied and were quite content to let the gentlemen begin their own conversation about hunting and shooting and crops and stocks and shares—all those dull topics that would make a lady yawn merely to think of. Mrs. Mantrell wanted to assure herself that the

126 Mary Balogh
new Lady Tavistock was going to take up her position as lady of the manor and leading lady of the neighborhood.

"Even though you are a new bride and have other duties too," she added, smiling and nodding in a manner that set Rebecca to blushing.

There were various committees with which she was expected to involve herself, Rebecca discovered, among them the church flower committee, the ladies' missionary aid committee, and the school committee.

"Not that the school committee's task is a very onerous one these days," Mrs. Appleby remarked, "there being very few pupils attending school any longer. But then I always have said that teaching the poor to read and write is a waste of time when they will spend their lives in the fields."

And Rebecca would be expected to sponsor the spring flower and baking show, the summer fair, and the children's Christmas party.

"My mother used to talk about the Stedwell summer picnics," Lady Sharp said, introducing the topic with such a determined tone to her voice that Rebecca realized that doing so had been the main purpose of her visit. "Involving all the leading families, Lady Tavistock. There used to be sports and food in the outdoors during the day and a dinner and ball during the evening."

“It would be truly wonderful if you and his lordship were to revive the custom," Mrs. Appleby said. "I can remember my father talking about the cricket. It was the grandest event of the year, according to him. I was a mere child when the last one was held."

"It sounds like a wonderful tradition to be renewed," Rebecca said, smiling. "Next summer we must begin it again. Are there usually many parties and balls here?"

It seemed that her neighbors all did their part to keep the social life of the countryside active. There were dinners and musical evenings and dances as well as afternoon calls.

"But no real balls, Lady Tavistock," Miss Stephanie Sharp said wistfully, speaking for the first time. "No one hereabouts has a real ballroom, but only drawing rooms. And there is never an orchestra, but only pianoforte music."

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"Sir Gordon and I will be taking Stephanie to London next spring to be presented, Lady Tavistock," Lady Sharp said. "She will be almost twenty, which is a little old, I am sure you are thinking. But she is our only daughter, you see, and we have been reluctant to have her taken off our hands."

The girl was rather lovely, Rebecca thought, smiling at her. She was small and slim, with dark ringlets arranged in fashionable clusters at the sides of her head and a healthy, rosy complexion. She had been staring, rapt, at David through much of the visit. It struck Rebecca suddenly that if he had come to Stedwell a single man, Stephanie Sharp would have been an eligible match for him. There might have been all the excitement of a courtship in the neighborhood and a connection that would have bound David more closely to Stedwell.

But now was not the time to remind herself that the time might come when David would regret his dispassionate, loveless marriage with her. She glanced at him as he talked with the men, and saw him as he must appear to Stephanie—young, wealthy, elegant, and handsome to a fault.

And he was hers. She almost lost the thread of the conversation for a moment as she remembered just how he had become hers the night before.

"The Stedwell ballroom is large," she said, "though it has an air of neglect about it as most of the house does, I am afraid. We will have to restore it to splendor by next summer and have a magnificent ball there—with a full orchestra. But by that time, Stephanie, after a Season in London, it will appear very commonplace to you."

Mrs. Appleby clasped her hands to her bosom. "How wonderful all this is, Lady Tavistock," she said. "So wonderful to see Stedwell about to be restored to its original glory and to have the viscount and his lady in residence. But we have stayed long enough." She got firmly to her feet. "The men will talk until dinnertime and not even think of breaching etiquette. Come along, Gregory, do. We have been here far longer than half an hour."

Everyone left together with a great deal of bustle and cheerful farewells and assurances by Rebecca that they would return the calls within the next few days.

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She smiled at David when they stood alone together on the steps at last, the three vehicles all on their way down the driveway. "Were you just conversing politely with the gentlemen?" she asked. "Or were you being organized as I was, David? I gather that I am already on about six different committees and that 1 am to be a leading light at annual fetes and flower shows and children's parties. Oh, and there is to be cricket and croquet and a picnic tea out here one day next summer and a grand dinner and ball in the evening of the same day. An ancient tradition, I gather. It is all planned."

"Rebecca," he said, "you are the Viscountess Tavistock, you know, and must not let yourself be manipulated."

"I know," she said. "But oh, yes, I will, David. This is wonderful. I feel already that I belong. I am quite sure that idleness and boredom will be the least of my worries for the next ten years or so. In fact, I may even have to give up sleeping at night.''

She spoke lightly from a welling of excitement the visits had brought her. She had done the right thing, she thought. She had put the past two years behind her and wrapped up the memories of the love and happiness that had preceded them to keep in a secret part of her memory where they could no longer cause her raw pain. She had replaced it all with a life that was going to bring her practical satisfaction. It was the sort of life she had been brought up to live.

The sort of life she had always wanted to live—with Julian. But no—no, she would not spoil what had been a surprisingly happy day with that thought.

"Give up sleeping?" David said, turning to lead her back inside the house. "I think not, Rebecca."

She felt herself flushing scarlet. And even that, she thought, did not seem so dreadful.

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Rebecca's lists were almost complete. She had not yet shown them to David, but doing so was merely formality. He had promised her a free hand in the changes to house and gardens. She was longing to see a start being made, to see that she somehow made a difference in someone's life.

But the following morning she decided to accompany

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her husband on his ride to visit some of his tenants. She was, after all, responsible for their well being and was eager to meet them all and discover their needs.

"Though I suppose your tenants are quite independent, aren't they?" she said. "It is your laborers who will probably be more in need of my help. There may be some elderly people who will appreciate visits or some sick people who will need medicines."

"This is going to take several days," he told her. "Apart from the accounts Quigley has been sending me and the books I examined yesterday, I know nothing of my estate, Rebecca. The human element is totally absent from my knowledge."

"But all is prosperous?" she said. "Your people must be happy, David. Do we dare canter over these fields? We are moving at a very sedate pace."

They gave themselves up to the enjoyment of fresh air and sunshine as they took their horses at a faster pace toward the cottage of one of the tenants.

Mr. and Mrs. Gundy did not seem particularly happy to see them, though they were perfectly polite. Mr. Gundy stayed outside the house with David while his wife invited Rebecca inside and offered her tea.

"This is a pretty house," Rebecca said, smiling at two young children, who were standing in a doorway, staring at her.

"Yes, my lady," Mrs. Gundy said. "Except when it rains and the roof leaks."

"Oh, dear," Rebecca said. "That must be uncomfortable. Has Mr.

Gundy been too busy to repair it?"

Mrs. Gundy busied herself with preparing tea and did not answer.