Tangled (19 page)

He shouted out his release and relaxed down onto her. And realized as sleep was about to envelop him what he had done. And remembered some of the words he had spoken.
Damn you. Give me
some of what you used to give Julian.

And his father's voice—
now it seems that he is reaching out even
beyond the grave to cloud your happiness.

He lifted himself away from her and off the bed. He stood beside it, his back to it. "I'm sorry, Rebecca," he said. His voice sounded abrupt, stilted. He searched his mind but there were no other words.

And she said nothing, of course. He crossed to his dressing room, let himself in quietly, and closed the door behind him.

He spent most of the rest of the night standing on the triple-arched bridge a short distance from the house, staring downward into black, fast-flowing water.

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It was one of the hardest things Rebecca remembered doing to leave her dressing room to go downstairs to breakfast the next morning. She had lain awake all through the night after he had left, unable to sleep, afraid that he would return. Afraid that he would not. She did

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not feel alert enough now to face what had to be faced. Though she did not know what that was.

She was afraid of him. Terrified. He was no gentleman. He was wild as she had always known he was beneath the quiet, almost austere veneer he presented to the world. He had not changed at all.

No gentleman would have treated his wife as she had been treated during the night. Her face burned with the memories of the passion he had unleashed on her. She had been almost naked. And he had touched her—with his mouth.

She was afraid of him. Perhaps most of all because she had been excited by it. Repelled, horrified, terrified—and excited.
Fight me,
he had ordered her. And she had wanted to fight. She had wanted to strike him for what he was saying to her and to lash out with fists, legs, and body for what he was doing to her. But she had been terrified of where it might all lead. Terrified of the unknown.

Besides, a woman's role was to be a lady at all times. In control at all times. Submissive to her husband at all times. And yet he had commanded her to fight him, to respond to him. He was no gentleman at all, commanding the impossible. She had been right to dislike him all their lives. Control had never been so hard to hold on to as it had been last night. But she had held. She had lain quiet and still beneath his assault. She had been obedient to her upbringing and training and in the process she had been disobedient to her husband.

She did not know how she would face him. And she had been feeling so complacent for two full days, she thought bitterly. She had been so convinced that they had settled quickly into a perfectly amicable business arrangement. No, more than that. She had thought perhaps they were even settling into what might after all be an affectionate relationship. She had been feeling almost happy.

She descended the stairs slowly, but with steps that refused to falter.
Give me some of what you used to give Julian.
She almost lost her footing. What had he meant? Was he demanding her love after all?

He was in the breakfast room, seated at the table. She had hoped that perhaps he had breakfasted early. But this

138Mary Balogh

was as well. He had to be faced some time. She stiffened her spine and schooled her features to show nothing but a calm morning face.

His own face was shuttered and grim.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning." He got to his feet to help her to her place. The perfect gentleman again. The civilized being again.

They conversed steadily and courteously through breakfast, planning out their day's activities. Everything they said was spoken for the benefit of the servant who stood at the sideboard.

“I would take a moment of your time if you can spare it, Rebecca,"

David said at last, when they had both finished eating and risen.

"Of course," she said.

He led her in silence to his office and closed the door behind him before speaking.

"I owe you an apology, Rebecca," he said, raising his eyes to hers and holding them with a steady gaze. "I make it with all sincerity. My behavior was unpardonable."

"I am your wife, David," she said quietly.

But the words did not please him. She watched his jaw harden.

"That fact does not excuse me," he said. "In the future when I have the nightmare, I shall leave the room and so protect you. I warn you that I am best left alone at such times."

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I thought to help."

He held her eyes, his expression unfathomable. "He was an important part of both our lives," he said. "I don't believe we can go through the rest of a lifetime without ever speaking his name, Rebecca. You made me a promise before our marriage that I did not demand though I did last night. I release you from both the promise and the obligation to obey the command. You must speak of Julian whenever you feel the need."

She swallowed.

"I wish I could make it easier for you," he said, turning from her abruptly.

"David," she said, "I want to keep myself busy with

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this new life of mine. There is so much to do. I have no wish to brood."

"Well, then." His voice brisker. He stood with his back to her, his hands braced on the desk. "We had better get on with it. Visits to some laborers' cottages this morning and the hope that what we observed yesterday does not apply to them at least. They do not pay rents after all. How soon can you be ready to leave?"

"Ten minutes?" she said.

He nodded and turned to walk past her to hold the door open for her. His face was an impassive mask, one she was familiar with from the past. Much as she had disapproved of his boyhood pranks, she had always been willing to show him some sympathy after he had emerged from a confrontation with his father, which had inevitably involved a thrashing. He had never allowed her sympathy or anyone else's. He had never allowed anyone in. David had kept David very much to himself. And so over the years she had come to dislike him.

The night before she had seen the wilder, cruder side of David for the first time and had even been a victim of it. Now this morning he was his incommunicative self. And yet there had been more than cruelty the night before—she had glimpsed pain in him. It had been pain that had caused the violence. But he still would not let her in. He would leave their bedchamber in the future when he had the nightmares, he had said. He would keep his pain to himself.

He would keep himself to himself.

She hurried upstairs to change into her riding habit.

It was all far worse than he had ever dreamed, David found over the next few days as he gradually visited every laborer in his employ and every tenant who rented from him. Indeed he had not expected to find anything bad at all. The reports he had received over the years had indicated growing prosperity on his estate. The only negative fact he had known about it was that the house was falling into neglect—but that was only because he had never seen the need to keep it up.

What he was now finding was an estate that had grown rich on the exploitation of its workers and renters. The laborers' cottages were hardly fit for habitation. His men and their families were thin and listless from malnutrition—it seemed that he could spare them no land about their cottages on which to grow their own food and their wages would buy them only the bare necessities. There was much sickness, especially among the children and the elderly.

He had wondered at the shortage of older children and young people until someone explained to him that they usually left home as soon as they were able to search for work in the industrial towns.

Most of them were successful, but they lived as desperately there as their parents did at home. There was rarely any money to spare to send back.

Some of his workers seemed resigned to their lot. They were, after all, very little different from most other agricultural workers they knew about. Times were bad for those who lived off the land. That was all there was to be said about it. Some were bitter. Their parents and their grandparents and generations before that had lived comfortably on the land. Were they now, and their chil-

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dren, to be forced into the towns, where they had no desire to be?

None seemed mutinous. Their master, after all, was suffering through hard times too. There was no money anywhere.

Only David seemed to feel any deep emotion. He was furiously angry. He did not confront his steward until his visits had been completed, but he did so eventually, hoping that he could hold on to his temper sufficiently that he would not punch the man in addition to dismissing him.

And yet he did neither when it came to the point. Quigley had after all been an excellent steward. His job over the years had been to see to it that his absent master's estate prospered and earned him wealth. In that he had been eminently successful. The fact that he had shown no compassion for the human agents of that success was really irrelevant to the situation. It was not his job to show compassion.

That was his master's job.

But his master had been away, living his own life, accepting the reports from Stedwell at face value, quite careless of the fact that several hundred people were directly or indirectly dependent upon him for their very survival. He had been too busy since reaching adulthood carving out a career for himself in the Guards. A career he had undertaken so that he could get away from the woman he loved but could never have.

He could have begun a career as owner of Stedwell and done better. Julian would not have followed him to Stedwell except as an occasional visitor. David would have had no occasion to kill Julian at Stedwell. He could be living there now, perhaps alone, perhaps with a different wife, but certainly with a clear conscience.

Now he was weighed down by conscience. Guilt attacked him from all quarters.

"Thank you, Quigley," he said when the interview was over, staring through the window of his office, "that will be all for now. I intend to remain at Stedwell now that I have finally come here and will be taking over the actual running of the estate. But I will need your knowl-

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edge and expertise and your skill at bookkeeping. Perhaps you will find your job less onerous from now on."

"It has always been a pleasure to serve you, my lord," the steward said with all sincerity.

David continued to stare out the window after the man had left.

He had Rebecca's lists in a pile on his desk. He had been through them with her a couple of days ago. She had estimated the costs of some items; he had done the same for others. Some things neither of them had any idea about but had costed at what seemed slightly above a reasonable estimate. The house and grounds would be magnificent when all was done. As he had expected, she had an unerring eye for what was needed.

It had been the prospect of transforming his house into a home fit for a viscount and viscountess which had finally swayed her to accepting his marriage offer. He knew that. She would not have married him if she had not had the prospect of something useful with which to fill her days. He had promised her a free hand. The presentation of those lists for his approval had been a mere formality, but of course one that Rebecca would always observe. To her he would always be master for the simple reason that she had married him.

His jaw tensed as he clamped his teeth together. He walked purposefully to the bellpull beside the fireplace and told the servant who answered his summons to ask her ladyship to join him in the study if it was convenient to her.

She came within five minutes.

"Rebecca," he said, "sit down. We need to talk." He indicated a comfortable armchair before the desk, waiting for her to be seated before he sat down himself behind the desk. "About these lists."

"David," she said, "these people need food and medicine. I am sending someone to town tomorrow with a list of the medicines I will need. The food can be taken from the gardens here or bought at the village and some of it can even be cooked here. I shall deliver it myself."

"Of course," he said. "That is all part of your domain, Rebecca.

You do not need my permission if that is what you are asking for.''

“I do want your permission to dismiss the chef,'' she

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said. "With a good reference and perhaps a month's salary. He will have no trouble at all finding another position in London. He does not fit in here, David. He is contemptuous of the rest of the staff and has inspired their dislike. And though his dishes are magnificent, they would not be suitable for food baskets. He is making a great fuss over my requests for plain food."

"You must dismiss him, then," he said. "The servants are your responsibility, Rebecca."

"Thank you," she said. "The woman who used to cook here is living in the village with her sister. She has no other employment.

The servants all agree that she was a good cook, but Mrs. Matthews thought that her dishes would not please our aristocratic palates.

People are foolish. I wish to rehire her. The job should be offered locally anyway. These people need jobs."

"I will expect you to handle the matter," he said. "And no, I will not mind plain dishes, Rebecca, provided they are well prepared. I spent years with the army, remember. About these lists."

"I am going to start knitting socks for the children," she said. "Did you notice how many of them were barefoot, David, with autumn just around the corner? Perhaps some of the women can knit. If I provide the wool for them, perhaps they can get busy on scarves and gloves—and shawls for the elderly. I am going to see what can be done, anyway.''