Tangled (46 page)

And she should not even be reliving that meeting with David.

"You don't like Julian, do you?" she asked Louisa.

"Oh." Louisa looked uncomfortable. "It is not my place either to like or dislike him, Rebecca. I suppose it is just that William and I watched in wonder as your marriage of convenience to David developed into a love match. It did, didn't it?"

"I love Julian," Rebecca said. "I always have."

"Yes, of course," Louisa said. "Forgive me. How dreadful of me to remind you. Do forget I said anything, Rebecca. Put it down to my condition." She laughed in an obvious attempt to cover up her faux pas. "Yes, I am in a
condition.
What is sometimes called an interesting one. Say you're happy for me. Somehow it seems far more of a surprise the second time. Goodness, can I do this again? was my first reaction. I want a son this time. I think it would be enormously clever to have a son. William says it does not matter. But then he already has a son. I don't. Oh, Rebecca, forgive me for saying what I just did."

But Rebecca was laughing too and she turned to hug her former companion. "I am happy for you," she said, "and for Father. It must be a strange and wonderful feeling for him to be having a second family. Perhaps it is possible to have a second family, do you think?

Perhaps Julian and I . . . But it's too soon to think of that. When is it to happen?''

But their conversation was interrupted by the necessity of settling a loud and physical quarrel over a daisy head between the two children.

When they finally returned to the house, it was to be greeted by the news from the butler that there were visitors in the drawing room.

"Oh, dear," Louisa said, looking down at her grass-dotted skirt.

"Do I look as bad as you do, Rebecca? We had better hurry and change and comb our hair. William and Julian will not appreciate having to entertain alone."

They left the children to their nurses' care and hurried to their rooms. Ten minutes later Rebecca came back downstairs and let herself into the drawing room. The

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earl was there and Julian. And David. There were two visitors. Sir George Scherer was getting to his feet, a broad smile on his face, his right hand outstretched. Lady Scherer was sitting silent and white-faced.

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The earl and Louisa made polite, if labored, conversation through tea. They must surely have felt a strangely tense atmosphere, but basic good manners dictated that they treat with courtesy the former comrade David had met at the station and accompanied back to Craybourne. The explanation^ offered with hearty good humor by Sir George Scherer, that he had just discovered the good fortune of his former friend and fellow officer, Captain Cardwell, and had come to pay his respects, seemed a reasonable one. They had, of course, met the Scherers briefly at the station at Stedwell.

It was a three-way conversation. The earl, Louisa, and Sir George talked. Lady Scherer watched her hands in her lap. David and Rebecca exchanged occasional glances. Julian looked uncomfortable.

He got to his feet finally, when it seemed that good manners should have set the Scherers to taking their leave.

"A word with you, Scherer, if you please," he said. "Perhaps you would care to step outside. There are many things to reminisce about and we would not wish to bore the ladies with military talk.''

"My sentiments exactly," Sir George said, getting up and rubbing his hands together as he inclined his head to the ladies and smiled about at them. "You will stay and converse with Lady Hartington and Lady Cardwell, my love?"

Cynthia Scherer looked up briefly at Julian but said nothing.

Louisa smiled and looked determinedly cheerful. It was not going to be easy to converse with a silent guest.

"Well," Julian said when the two men were outside on the terrace.

"I have lived on to be stabbed in the back again, Scherer. Do you have a hidden knife about your person, by any chance? Or a gun? I assume this was not a purely social call."

"I was delighted to hear that you lived," Sir George said.

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"I'm quite sure you were," Julian said. "You must have felt cheated when you thought me dead. You may name the time and the place and weapons, Scherer. But not here if it is all the same to you. I would not bring disgrace or scandal on the man who has been a father to me since childhood."

"A duel," Sir George said. "That is an honorable settlement of differences, Cardwell. But I am not convinced you deserve to be treated with honor."

Julian clucked his tongue with impatience. "I have a strange aversion to being stabbed in the back," he said. "It is not an honorable way to dispatch an enemy, Scherer. I think we are about even on that score, don't you?"

"I wonder," Sir George said, "what you will tell your wife, Cardwell."

"Leave my wife out of this," Julian said curtly.

"I wish you had left my wife out of it," Sir George said. "You are fond of Lady Cardwell, so I have been told. You have allowed her to have her bastard son for a few weeks. Of course, her preoccupation with him gives you more time to spend with your inamorata, I suppose. Nancy Perkins, I believe? You have lowered your sights, though, Cardwell. It used to be ladies, not common laboring wenches."

"You are well informed, I see," Julian said curtly. "And any more slurs on my wife's name and I will be the one issuing a challenge.

What exactly do you want?"

Sir George shrugged. "Oh, this is merely a social call after all," he said. "Cynthia had a hankering to see you again, Cardwell. I understand she fell rather hard for you. One has to pander to one's wife's wishes occasionally, doesn't one?"

"I see," Julian said. "It is to be a cat and mouse game, is it? You always were a worm, Scherer. I am to be left guessing, then, am I?

And watching my back?"

“I should have had an eye over my shoulder in Malta and the Crimea," Sir George said. "Shouldn't I?"

Julian shrugged. "If you have nothing more to say," he said,

"perhaps you should rescue Lady Hartington and my wife from the necessity of entertaining a woman who would clearly rather be any place else on earth."

"In other words, 'Get out'?" Sir George said.

"Exactly," Julian said. "If you wish satisfaction from me, Scherer, you know where to find me."

"Oh, always," Sir George said. "Of that you can rest assured, Cardwell."

Rebecca had not had a restful night. Sir George Scherer was like a constant millstone about all their necks. She had thought that perhaps they had heard the last of him once Julian came home. She had thought that he would be satisfied with the disaster that had overtaken David. Surely he did not need more revenge. Except for the fact that he had nothing to do with bringing this particular one about, of course. Perhaps there was no real personal satisfaction for him in it. Besides, Lady Scherer had said that he was almost deranged.

It was unfair, Rebecca thought, for him to have come to Cray bourne to drag the earl, Louisa, and Julian into his net. Especially Julian. Julian had saved Sir George Scherer's life. Did the man feel no gratitude? But perhaps it was part of his plan to make David utterly miserable.

Rebecca did not approve of dueling, and yet sometimes she wished that Sir George had just challenged David when they were both in the Crimea and been done with it. One of them would probably have been dead, but at least innocent people would not have been involved.

She spent an hour of the following morning in the nursery, bathing and dressing Charles, giving him his breakfast, and playing with him.

Then she sought out Julian. He was still in his dressing room in his shirtsleeves. He dismissed his valet before kissing her.

"Are you putting me to shame?" he asked. "You look as if you have been up for hours."

"I have been with Charles," she said. "Children usually wake early."

"That is why they have nannies," he said.

"I have him for only a week or so," she said. "Though

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David says I must have him regularly. Will you mind, Julian?"

"Why should I mind?" he asked, satisfied with the knot in his four-in-hand and shrugging into his coat. "Have you had breakfast?"

"No," she said.

"Neither have I." He set an arm about her waist and turned her against him to kiss her more thoroughly. “But I could be persuaded to miss it." He grinned. "Or to take nourishment of another kind."

She sagged against him and rested her forehead on his shoulder. It would be so easy to say yes. But it was so impossible to do so. He had almost died trying to stop David from killing the man he had wronged. And yet she could not give herself to Julian because of her love for David. Love could destroy all rationality, she was discovering, and all devotion to duty.

"We need to talk, Julian," she said.

He sighed and then chuckled. "At least you did not say you have a headache," he said. "Let's go and get something to eat.''

Louisa was in the breakfast room. She had been late getting up, she explained apologetically, because Katie had been awake half the night with aching gums and had insisted on her mother's presence.

Rebecca and Julian went outside to stroll after breakfast. He linked her arm through his and clasped her hand.

"You were wondering when we are going to be on our way?" he asked. "Next week, I think, Becka. We'll make Paris our first stop, shall we? It is the place to be these days. The Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie have a glittering court, and all is gaiety and busy activity. We can stay there for as long as we want and then move on somewhere else. Where do you most want to go?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. As long as I am with you I'll be happy."

"Will you, Beck?" He looked down into her face, his own serious.

"Julian," she said, "that man invited himself to Sted-well a few times before you returned. Sir George Scherer,

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I mean. David and I met him in London. He called at Hartington House to thank David for saving his life."

"Ah," he said quietly. "Then you know the whole story, do you, Becka? I was hoping to keep it from you."

"Yes, I know what happened," she said. "It was a foolishly brave thing you did, Julian."

He looked at her.

"The only thing I don't know," she said, "and I suppose it makes a world of difference—it has worried me. What I don't know, Julian, is whether Sir George had a gun too or not. Was it a type of duel they were engaged in, or was David going to shoot him down in cold blood? That possibility has haunted me."

Julian did not answer for a while. "What is the story you have been told, Becka?" he asked.

"Oh, I know all the sordid truth," she said. "I know David was having an affair with Lady Scherer. And I know that Sir George found out. I know that they had a confrontation in the middle of the Battle of Inkerman and that you stopped David from shooting Sir George by taking the bullet yourself. But did Sir George have a gun too? Tell me the truth, Julian. I need to know."

"Dave told you all this?" he asked.

"I pieced it all together," she said. "He did not deny it. And Lady Scherer told me that she loved him. That makes it hard to bear too. I don't think he loved her. He was just using her and forcing her into committing adultery. But I must not judge. I really must not."

"She said she loved Dave?" Julian asked. "Those were her exact words, Becka?"

"Yes," she said. "I did not imagine them. She told me that she had loved my husband. I wonder if she still does, poor lady. She is dreadfully withdrawn and unhappy. Was she always so, Julian? Did you know her in the Crimea? But I am straying from the point, perhaps because I am afraid of the answer. Did he have a gun?"

"No," he said. He passed a hand over his face.

"No." Her voice was bleak. "Ah, this is what I feared. I have tried to believe that he could not have been capable of such villainy. I am well out of that marriage, aren't I?"

And yet she wanted to howl with grief.

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"I always used to let him do it," Julian said. "I always used to convince myself that I had more to lose than he did. And he never seemed to mind. He had broad shoulders. He has less to lose this time too."

She was not really listening. She was grappling with one more count against David.

"You love him, don't you?" Julian said.

"Who? David?" she said. "No, of course not. I love you. It's just that—"

"It's just that you love him," he said. "He did it one more time for me, Becka. For your sake, I suppose. So that you would be able to keep your belief in me intact. So that you would be able to remember me as a hero."

She did not have to ask him what he meant. The truth came rushing at her with such force that it seemed impossible to believe that she had not seen it before. Especially after she had discovered the truth about Flora and about all those childhood escapades.

And of course it was just the sort of thing David would have done, even though she had been married to him at the time and they had both thought Julian dead. He had risked the future of their marriage so that she could cling to a youthful attachment that she had convinced herself was the love of her life.

Lady Scherer had loved her husband. Yes. Oh, yes.

David had shot Julian because—because Julian was about to kill Sir George?

Julian had been the one having an affair with Lady Scherer. They had both been committing adultery. While she had been at Craybourne, miserable with missing him, living with daily and nightly anxiety for his safety, loving him, he had been having an affair with Lady Scherer. Flora just before their marriage, Lady Scherer two years after. How many more had there been?

"I'm sorry, Becka," he said. "It would have been better if you had never known. But I couldn't let you go on thinking that David was the villain of that piece. Not when he is your child's father. Not when you love him. I'm sorry. She didn't mean anything to me, you know.