Tangled, p.1
Tangled, page 1
Dear Reader,
Over the past several years Class Ebook Editions have been gradually re-publishing my out-of-print novels and novellas in order to make the whole body of my work available again to readers, especially those of you who have only recently discovered me. Now, in 2022, there are very few books still awaiting their turn. Soon you will be able to find English language editions of every story I have written, more than one hundred of them.
Most of my books, as you are probably aware, are Regency era love stories. They are set in Britain during the first quarter of the 19th century. To me it is the most romantic of historical eras. I feel as at home in that world as I do in my own. I hope to continue writing Regency romances as long as I live. However, there were times earlier in my career when I thought I might try something different, just to discover how I could rise to the challenge of bringing alive a different historical era.
The Georgian period, a few decades earlier than the Regency, was fun. It seemed to me there was something more flamboyant, more earthy about both men and women. I particularly loved describing the men, with their broad-skirted coats, high-heeled shoes, fans, and even make-up—and the dress swords they carried at their sides and knew how to use with deadly intent!
The farthest I have ever strayed historically from the Regency era was the 1850s and the Crimean War. TANGLED is the story of a love triangle involving the distraught widow of a man who was killed in the war and his best friend, who fought alongside him and then had the task of bringing the news back to England—back to the woman he had always loved while she had always hated him.
There are differences from one era to another, and I have always tried to remain true to history. Yet human nature and human passions remain the same. And every age has its love stories that beg to be told. I tell them. That has been and will remain the one constant in every work of fiction I have written.
Mary Balogh
www.marybalogh.com
“TANGLED” Copyright © 1994 by Mary Balogh
TANGLED First Ebook edition April 2022 ISBN: 978-1-944654-35-1
All rights reserved. No part of the eBook may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both copyright owner and Class Ebook Editions Ltd., the publisher of the eBook. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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“Balogh is today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier)!” – New York Times Bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips
With her brilliant, beautiful and emotionally intense writing Mary Balogh sets the gold standard in historical romance.” – New York Times Bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
“When it comes to historical romance, Mary Balogh is one of my favorites!”— New York Times Bestselling author Eloisa James
“One of the best!” –New York Times Bestselling author Julia Quinn
“Mary Balogh has the gift of making a relationship seem utterly real and utterly compelling.” – New York Times Bestselling author Mary Jo Putney
“Winning, witty, and engaging…fulfilled all of my romantic fantasies.” – New York Times Bestselling author Teresa Medeiros
Tangled
Mary Balogh
Class Ebook Editions, Ltd.
New York, NY
Table of Contents
Cover
Dear Reader
Copyright
Praise for Mary Balogh
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
More by Mary Balogh
Biography
Also by Mary Balogh
Chapter 1
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 Hartington, 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 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
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 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 her 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 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 worlds 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. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I love you.”
He patted her shoulders briskly and moved back from her to check the sword at his side and reach for his cap. He was smiling again. “You’ll take the train back to Craybourne tomorrow morning,” he said. “You’ll be there before dark and Father will have the carriage at the station to meet you. You will be quite safe. Miss Houghten will be with you.”
“Yes, I’ll be quite safe, Julian,” she said. “You must not worry about me. Go now. It would not do to be late.”
“And have to swim after the ship?” he said, grinning. “No, by Jove it wouldn’t. My men would not have been so well entertained in a decade.” He was opening the door and stepping through it.
There was a moment when panic grabbed at her, when instinct would have had her across the distance between them, grabbing at him for one last kiss, one last goodbye. A moment when she wanted to plead with him to take her with him after all. But she was not a creature of instinct. She was a disciplined, rational being—or so she told herself.
“I’ll wave to you from the window,” she said.
“Yes, do that, Becka,” he said. “Remember that it is only as far as Malta. There is more danger on the streets of England than there will be there.”
“Yes,” she said.
The door closed.
He was gone.
She stood where she was for a few moments, drawing steadying breaths, resisting the temptation to tear open the door and go hurtling down the stairs after him. She crossed the room to the window on trembling legs instead and looked down.
Most of the red-coated soldiers had disappeared. David stood on the pavement below, facing away from the hotel. She felt a surging of resentment against him. It was his fault that Julian was going away, perhaps to war, perhaps to his death. If David had not bought a commission in the Guards and come home several times looking dashing in his uniform and bringing stories that had sounded unutterably romantic and exciting to a country-bred young man, Julian would not have thought of buying one for himself just before their marriage. Julian had always looked up to David, had always tried to keep up with him and emulate him. Though Rebecca could not imagine why it was so. David had always been wild and thoughtless. Sometimes cruel.
Her lips tightened. Yes, cruel. Flora Ellis had been their playmate and friend all through their growing years. She had been of thoroughly respectable lineage even though she was only the daughter of the vicar of Craybourne, whereas Julian was a baronet and David was a viscount and son and heir of an earl.
And yet now Flora was living alone and disgraced with her infant son while David was sailing away with his battalion, unconcerned about their fate. He had refused to marry Flora even though she had been abandoned by her family and ostracized by everyone else for a long time.
For that, Rebecca thought, she would never forgive David.
And then Julian came out of the hotel and joined him, and the two men turned to hurry along the street in the direction of the quay. For a few sickening moments Rebecca thought that he would not look back. But he did, removing his cap and waving it jauntily in the air, grinning up at her. A boy on his way to some exciting adventure, eager to be gone.
Julian. Her husband. Her love. The man she had adored from childhood on. She raised a hand, palm out, though she did not wave it. She did not smile. She stood thus until long after he had disappeared from view. Until there was a knock at the door and it opened behind her.
