Tangled (25 page)

The neighboring ladies all came to call, some of them more than once. They brought her news of her various committees and of the school and church. The schoolchildren were preparing a Christmas play and concert and were disappointed to know that Lady Tavistock would be unable to play the pianoforte for them. Louisa offered to take her place.

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The earl came to tea on several afternoons.

David came twice a day, to Rebecca's surprise and delight. He came after breakfast each morning to stand beside the bed for a few minutes while he inquired after her health. And he came before dinner in the evening and sometimes sat talking for half an hour or longer. He kept her informed of what was going on in the house and on the estate, with the result that she felt less out of touch than she might otherwise have felt.

She was very fortunate, Rebecca concluded. But even so the days were long and the nights endless. There were inevitably long hours when she was alone with herself and her thoughts. And her fears.

Long hours in which to wonder if it was all going to be worth it. She hardly dared hope that it might.

She read a great deal. But even the pleasures of reading could pall when there was little else to do night or day but read. She found herself staring upward for much of the time, her thoughts ranging over topics that her self-discipline normally kept locked away from her conscious mind. She had not even realized that she did such a thing until the thoughts surfaced and she found herself frightened yet unable to suppress them again.

Julian had led the charge down the Kitspur hill, David had said.

He had been a great hero, a mere captain going out ahead of a major and perhaps officers of even higher rank. Julian had held the line at the top of the hill, Sir George Scherer had said, and gone down the hill only later to rescue those who had participated in the charge.

Who was right? David or Sir George? Perhaps what David had meant was that Julian had led the rescue. Perhaps he had deliberately made it sound as if Julian had been more heroic than was in fact the case.

He had wanted to comfort her.

It did not matter anyway. All must have been confusion during the battle. Perhaps both men believed what they had said, and really their stories were not vastly different. Anyway, Julian was just as dead no matter who was right. Except that she would prefer to believe David's story. And so she tended to believe Sir George's. But it did not matter.

But thinking about the discrepancies between the two

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stories set her to thinking about that evening at Sir George Scherer's, an evening she would be just as happy to forget. She was not particularly sure why. She had not liked Sir George himself, but he had been perfectly amiable as had Lady Scherer, and the food had been good.

But there had been that atmosphere. It made Rebecca uneasy even now, weeks later. There had been something, something she had not been able to put her finger on at the time. Something she had not wanted to understand, maybe. But something she could not leave alone now that she had thought of it again.

Lady Scherer did not like her own husband. Rebecca had sensed it though there had been no outer sign. What she realized only now when she looked back on that ghastly evening was that Sir George did not like Lady Scherer either. He had called her "my love" several times, but in reality he hated her. Rebecca frowned and slid a pillow out from beneath her head to try to shake a greater softness back into it. Where had that idea come from? What had made her think that Sir George hated his wife?
Hated?

There was no evidence at all. She was becoming fanciful. What she should do was try writing a story or even a whole book so that her imagination could run riot and produce a fictitious tale that would harm no one. A Gothic romance, maybe.

David and Lady Scherer had felt very uncomfortable in each other's presence. They had scarcely looked at each other or exchanged a word all evening. Rebecca had noticed it at the time and had carefully locked away the memory from her conscious mind. Why would they feel such an awkwardness? They had met before and should have had some common experiences to use as a basis of conversation. Even if they had never met and had had nothing in common, each had had experience in making polite conversation with strangers.

No, there had been an awareness between them. A discomfort caused by the added presence of her husband and—his wife?

Yes, there it was, Rebecca thought at last, grasping the pillow again, yanking it out from beneath her head, and tossing it to the floor.

Now she had done it. She could
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not leave well enough alone. It was none of her business. It had all happened long before she and David married or even thought of doing so. It had happened probably while Julian was still alive.

David and Lady Scherer had been lovers.

She had no evidence whatsoever for the conclusion she had just drawn and despised herself for jumping to it so hastily. But she knew it was true. Because she did not want it to be true, she knew that it was. She had never wanted bad things about David to be true, but they always had been.

He had had an affair with another man's wife.

Rebecca wondered if Julian had known and how he had reacted.

He had always made light of David's iniquities, telling her that David was good at heart and she must not judge him on a few little incidents that were really of no consequence at all. Except that some of them had been of great consequence. Like Flora Ellis's pregnancy.

Had Julian tried to remonstrate with David, tried to get him to give up Lady Scherer?

It did not matter, Rebecca told herself firmly. What David had done before he was her husband was really none of her business.

Besides, she did not know for sure. The evidence on which her conviction was based was fragile at best. Perhaps she was doing him a great injustice. But she knew she was not.

She picked up a book and waited impatiently for Louisa's return from her daily walk.

But the poisonous thoughts would not leave her alone. She woke up in the middle of one night so suddenly that she held her breath and waited in some alarm for the pain and the pushing sensation that she had been expecting and preparing herself for ever since she first suspected that she was with child. But there was no pain.

Sir George Scherer hated David too. That was the thought that had woken her up? It was a stupid thought. It must have woven itself into one of those dreams that have no relation to reality at all. Sir George owed his life to David and made no secret of the fact. He had called on them and invited them to dinner so that he could express his gratitude.

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Rebecca turned over onto her side, running her hand down over the unmistakable swelling of her abdomen and trying to keep her emotions detached from the child that was growing inside her. She closed her eyes and tried to duck down beneath the cover of sleep again.

He hated David, nevertheless.

He knew.

He had invited them to dinner so that he could taunt both David and his wife.

David had said that it was commonplace for soldiers to save one another's lives during battle. There was nothing extraordinary about the fact that David had shot the Russian soldier who had been about to bayonet Sir George. Sir George had made it seem extraordinary only so that he could bring David and Lady Scherer face-to-face again under uncomfortable circumstances.

It was ridiculous, Rebecca thought impatiently. How foolish she was, making up a story in her head that was pure fiction and yet that maligned real people.

But it was true. She felt that it was true.

It was all in the past anyway. It was none of her business. She must forget it. But she could not get back to sleep for a long time. And then just when drowsiness was finally taking a welcome hold of her mind, her eyes popped open once more.

It had been a bayonet in the first telling. The Russian had been a soldier with a bayonet, Sir George had said— a private soldier. In the second telling the would-be killer had been wielding a sword—an officer. There was quite a difference between the two versions. Even allowing for the confusion of battle, there was quite a difference. Anyway, over time one of the versions would surely have become ritualized in the retelling so that Sir George would not say one thing one day and another the next.

Unless the whole thing had been a recently fabricated story.

Had it been? Had there been no lifesaving incident at all? Or had the whole thing been quite different from the way it had been told?

Just as what had happened to Julian might have been different from what either David or Sir George had said. But there was no connection between the two incidents, of course. Except that they had both

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happened during that brief episode on the Kitspur. David had saved Sir George Scherer's life—or not saved it—and Julian had died as a hero—or not as a hero—all within a few minutes. And David had been a part of both incidents.

Rebecca felt rather sick. There was no connection between the two events. What malevolent night spirit was trying now to suggest that there was? It was horrible. Horrible! She hated the suspicions that were crowding into her mind, without any basis in fact at all. And the terrible unease. She hated the unease.

There probably had been no affair, she thought firmly, and both David and Sir George Scherer had told the truth as best they remembered it from all the confusion. There had been no awkwardness between David and Lady Scherer beyond a certain reserve in both. And Sir George did not hate his wife or David. On the contrary he was grateful to David for saving his life. And he called his wife "my love."

There. That was the truth of the matter. There was no secret, no mystery.

But the mind is not as easily controlled as the will. What had really happened on the Kitspur? she wondered as she sought in vain for a return of sleep and oblivion. Had there been any sort of three-way connection there among David, Julian, and Sir George Scherer?

That last thought was the most fantastic of all and the one least founded on any evidence whatsoever. It was also the most frightening for a reason that Rebecca could in no way fathom.

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He looked closely at her. "You are pale," he said.

"Well," she admitted. "I did not sleep too much, David. I woke in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep again."

"You must sleep this morning, then," he said. "I shall tell Louisa not to come too early.''

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It was in vain to protest that she looked forward to Louisa's morning visits—and she could not say that today of all days she heeded the distraction of Louisa's conversation. When David had that set look on his face, she knew there was no arguing with him.

"Very well," she said at last. "I shall try to sleep, David."

"You are sure you are feeling well?" He was looking down at her broodingly.

She nodded and closed her eyes. "Just a little tired still," she said.

"At your insistence I shall be lazy."

Looking at him, she thought, keeping her eyes closed, it was impossible to believe him capable of any of those old wrongdoings. It was impossible to believe him capable of impregnating Flora—and then callously refusing to marry her. It was impossible to believe him capable of having an affair with another man's wife.

He seemed so very respectable.

But perhaps he was not guilty of that last wrong. She had no evidence except the strong feeling that she must be right.

She fell back to sleep.

And woke to an empty room an indeterminate amount of time later in a sweat and a panic. She lay very still, her eyes closed, until the pain came again and the urge to push—both very faint. Both very possibly a figment of the imagination or part of a leftover nightmare.

She lay still again, afraid to move even to ease stiffened legs. She tried to relax and breathe evenly. She tried to sleep.

The next faint wave of pain was subsiding as Louisa entered the room, bright and cheerful as she usually was, armed with embroidery and knitting and conversation.

"Oh." She dropped her bundles onto the nearest chair and hurried over to the bed. "What is it, Rebecca?"

"Fetch David." Rebecca pressed her palms against the mattress and tried to hold on to sanity. She failed dismally. "Fetch David," she wailed. "Fetch David."

Louisa moved quickly for one who had grown so bulky. She disappeared even as Rebecca drew breath noisily into her lungs and stared wide-eyed into hell.

He came running no more than a minute or two later. "Rebecca?"

he said. "Trouble?"

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She did not notice the paleness of his face or the harshness of his voice as he came up to the side of the bed. She clawed at him, wailing horribly, all control lost. "Hold me."

He knelt on the bed, gathering her close with his arms.

"I don't want to lose the baby," she wailed into his shirtfront. "I don't want to lose it."

"You are having pains?"

"Yes," she said. "I think so. I don't know. David, hold me. Oh, please, hold me." She was too distraught to be embarrassed by her noisy sobs and the flood of tears that followed as she clung to him, trying to climb inside him for safety.

He eased her downward until she was lying down again, her head on his arm, her face and her body along the length of his. He held her close and cried with her. Some detached part of her mind was aware that he cried too.

Somehow he had got beneath the bedclothes with her so that he was able to pull the blankets up warmly about her ears. She was cocooned in warmth and began to feel the hysteria drain away. She relaxed gradually against him.