The Devil's Web (20 page)

His father's breathing was so labored it was almost a snore. His eyes were half-open. His hands lay on the covers exactly as they had earlier in the day, when James had arrived. He had not moved.

The doctor had said there was no realistic hope of recovery. His father was going to die.

James touched the back of one of his father's hands. It was cold. “Papa,” he said, “can you hear me?”

He had no memories of playing with his father. None of the sorts of memories that Alex's children would have. Only memories of standing at his father's knee, reciting Bible verses and other lessons, feeling those keen eyes on him. And memories of a rare look of pride in those eyes when he got it all right, without faltering.

He had always wondered, but had never discovered the truth, if his father had sometimes followed him with his eyes when he knew himself unobserved, as he had done occasionally with Alex. Eyes that were softened from their usual coldness and sternness. Eyes that hinted at an affection that was never allowed to show itself more openly.

“Don't die,” James said. “Open your eyes and know me.”He could remember his mother hugging and kissing them as very young children, and occasionally covering up some mischief, like the time when she had had his muddy clothes smuggled down the back stairs to the kitchen after he had been on a forbidden jaunt out onto the moors. But she had been taught in time that such displays of affection were weakness and would merely encourage waywardness in her children.

“Just one look,” he said. “One look of kindness, Papa.”

He had feared and worshipped his father. He had spent his childhood and a large part of his boyhood striving to live up to his father's expectations of him. He had not often rebelled, and when he had, he had been consumed with guilt and remorse afterward and a terror of the wrath of both his father and God. He had spent years yearning and striving for his father's love, feeding himself on those few looks of pride.

“Give me your blessing before you die,” he said to the comatose man on the bed. “Even if only in a look.”

And then there had been school and university and the realization that life was not as harsh in all homes. In some homes there were open expressions of love. In some homes weakness and waywardness and disobedience were treated leniently, smoothed over by the power of love.

And so he had rebelled against his father in the name of love. He had taken Dora, who had grown up on the neighboring estate to theirs with her brother, as wards of the Duke of Peterleigh, and he had loved her and deliberately shown her a free expression of his love. She had not been reluctant. And he had dreamed of a life of love with her.

He had dreamed of freedom. But even without his father's terrible interference, he would not have been free. He knew that now. For he carried his chains inside himself. They were part of his upbringing, part of his character. He was incapable of love, incapable of making love the guiding force of his life.

He could only look at love from the outside and know that he would never be on the inside. Madeline had been right when she had told him years before that he would never be able to run far enough because he would always have to take himself with him.

“I love you,” he said to his father. “Tell me that you love me, Papa. Set me free.”

He had destroyed Dora. It was not his father who had done that. He had done it. For if he had not lain with her in a fine gesture of defiance against what he had been taught was right, his father would have had nothing to interfere with. Dora would have been free to grow up and choose her own husband or else have someone far more suitable chosen for her.

He could not blame his father for what had happened to her. He was to blame. His one real attempt to love had ended in disaster. He had destroyed another human being.

“Forgive me,” he whispered to his father. “I forced you into that difficult situation. It was all my fault, not yours. Forgive me, Papa.”

He did not know how much later it was when his father's breathing changed. He listened to it tensely for a few minutes and then crossed the room and opened the door quietly to send the servant who was sitting outside for his sister and brother-in-law. He walked over to his mother and touched her gently on the shoulder.

It was a whole hour after that before his father died.

L
ADY
B
ECKWORTH DECIDED
that it would be madness to try to take her husband's remains back to Yorkshire for burial. The funeral would take place at Amberley, in the village of Abbotsford. He would at least be close to his daughter.

She was not capable of much decision making. She went into a state of collapse after her husband's death and no one was capable of bringing her any comfort, although both her son and her daughter spent much of their time with her, and the earl and his mother attended to her every need.

The funeral was set as far into the future as possible, five days after the death, and Lord Beckworth's sister was sent for. A letter was sent too by servant to Lord and Lady Eden.

And so Madeline had the enormous comfort on the fourth day of seeing her twin's carriage cross the bridge, skirt the formal gardens, and draw up outside the main doors. Ellen was with him.

“Dom,” she said an hour later when they had walked outside to take some fresh air. Ellen was sitting inside, holding Alexandra's hand. The babies had been taken upstairs to the nursery. “You can't know how glad I am to see you.”

“A house of death is not a happy place to be,” he said. “And he lingered for several days? That must have put an extra strain on everyone.”

“James arrived here in time at least,” she said. “For that I will always be thankful. Imagine how dreadful it would have been for him, Dom, to have got here the next day to find his father dead already.”

Dominic shrugged his arm free of hers and put it about her shoulders. “He looks as if he is turned to stone,” he said. “Quite as he used to look when we first knew him. He looks as if he does not feel a thing.”

“But he does,” she said. “I can look at him now and know that there is a great deal going on behind the granite exterior.”

“You are privy to Purnell's feelings, then, Mad?” he asked. “He speaks to you? Things are better between you?”

“He has not spoken to me since the afternoon when he arrived back here,” she said. “And as far as I know, he has not once looked at me or shown any awareness of my existence. No, things ended when he left here after Edmund's ball, Dom—if they had ever begun, that is. I thought it would be difficult having him back here again. But it is not so. We are like strangers who are not even aware of each other any longer.”

“Except that you know he is suffering,” he said.

“Except that I know he is suffering,” she agreed.

“Well,” he said, squeezing her shoulder, “I daresay he and his mother will leave here soon after the funeral. And even if they don't, Ellen and I have come for only a week. You will come back with us and stay for as long as you wish. We are finding that Amberley is not the only place that has friendly neighbors. We will be able to offer you an almost active social life. And a few eligible bachelors too.”

She rested her head briefly against his shoulder. “The poor gentlemen,” she said. “Do they know that you have designs on their freedom, I wonder? I will come. And I warn you that I have vowed to marry within the year. I don't at all relish my present situation as everyone's spinster aunt. Four times already. You don't have another set of twins on the way yet, by any chance?”

“After only four months?” he said. “Poor Ellen. No, I thought perhaps you would want to take a turn next.”

“Then for sure,” she said, “I must find a husband. I cannot keep you and Ellen waiting indefinitely. Are any of those neighbors of yours tall and blond, Dom? And below five and thirty years of age? And charming? With at least ten thousand a year?”

“I can think of three without even trying,” he said. “Wiltshire breeds them handsome, Mad.”

“Ah,” she said, “now you tell me. Oh, Dom, I am so happy, happy, happy to have you home again.”

Mrs. Deirdre Harding-Smythe arrived later the same evening with her son, Albert. She hugged and cried over Alexandra and her sister-in-law while Albert shook hands with his cousin and congratulated him on his newly acquired title.

James looked at him coldly and blankly.

“You are Beckworth now,” Albert said. “Your life's dream has been fulfilled, James, and you no longer have need to go back to the new world to seek adventure.”

“So I am,” his cousin said with a stiff inclination of the head, “and so it has and so I don't.”

Albert looked a little confused and turned away to take Alexandra's hand and raise it to his lips. “My dear cousin,” he said. “How very well you look in black. It complements your dark coloring.”

Alexandra frowned and said nothing.

Albert looked up into James's stern and immobile face, flashed him a foolish smile, and turned to Lady Beckworth.

“Aunty!” he said, his voice vibrant with soft sympathy. “It is really for the best, you know. This world was not good enough for Uncle. I always did say so, as I am sure you will recall, and I have been consoling Mama with the same sentiment all the way from London.”

Lord Eden spoke into his sister's ear. “Are you quite sure he has to be blond and tall with ten thousand a year?”he murmured. “Perhaps I can find you someone closer to home.”

She gave him a speaking glance. “I always did say he was a toad,” she whispered to him, “as I am sure you will recall. And I will regale your ears with the same sentiment all the way to Wiltshire.”

“Ah, Lord Eden, Lady Madeline,” Albert said graciously. “So pleased to renew our acquaintance and so sad that it has to be in such very sad circumstances. My uncle was a saint, you know. But then, of course, you had the pleasure of his company here for a month before his tragic demise.”

He sat down beside them and favored them with his superior conversation for half an hour. Both Madeline and Dominic found themselves envying Ellen. She was upstairs in the nursery consoling her son, who had not taken kindly to the journey.

J
AMES SAT CLOSE
to one of the windows in the drawing room, occasionally looking out at the darkness. The curtains had not been drawn even though it was quite late in the evening already. And he looked down at his black clothes and across the room at his mother's and his aunt's.

He was dead, then, and buried. It was all over. Alex's neighbors, who had filled the church and come back to the house, many of them, at Amberley's bidding, had all returned home. They had been unstinting with their sympathy. They were kind people. He wished he had been able to respond better to them.

Lord and Lady Eden were sitting on either side of his mother. Lady Eden had an arm linked through hers and was talking earnestly to her. She was a gracious lady. But then, of course, she knew all about the loss of a husband. She had lost her own only the previous year.

Amberley had taken Alex upstairs just a short while before. She was close to exhaustion after all the tensions of the past several days.

He had hardly spoken with her since his return from London. What was there to say? That she was taking it hard was clear to him, and she doubtless knew that he was not unmoved either by the death of their father. But what could he say to her when even the thoughts inside him were leaden?

The dowager countess had stepped outside with Sir Cedric Harvey a few minutes before, leaving Madeline talking with his aunt and his cousin.

He looked at her—for the first time since his return. She was wearing a gown of subdued lavender. She was sitting very straight on her chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. The customary sparkle was missing from her face. She was pale and looked as if she had not slept for several nights. She looked very beautiful.

That worm Albert was ogling her and trying to charmher.

But then Albert could probably do her a great deal less harm than he could. The chains were still locked about his heart and always would be now. He was a force only of destruction for other people. If his father died, his mother had said to him a few weeks before, he would be responsible for that death.

He would not believe it. With his head he did not believe it. But with his heart? He had not been the son his father wanted, the son he had striven for so many years to be. And whose fault was that? His father's or his own?

He would never now know for sure if his father had loved him. He would never be free.

Madeline was flushing. Her lips had tightened. Albert was smirking and saying something to her that James could not quite hear.

He felt a flash of anger. But she was capable of taking care of herself. He must leave her alone. He must make no move toward her.

He got to his feet and walked across the room. “Would you care for some fresh air, Madeline?” he asked.

She looked up at him, startled.

“Fresh air would be good for you, I am sure, James, my dear,” his Aunt Deirdre said. “If you think it would be showing the proper respect for your father, of course. But I cannot see any great impropriety when you will be on Lord Amberley's land.”

James kept his eyes on Madeline.

“Lady Madeline will need a chaperone, cousin,” Albert said. “It would not do to start any gossip at such a time, as I am sure you are well aware. You must remember now that you are no longer simply Mr. James Purnell. You are Beckworth.”

“Thank you,” Madeline said, getting to her feet. “I shall fetch a cloak.”

T
HE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF AMBERLEY AND Sir Cedric Harvey crossed the stone bridge and turned to walk slowly up the valley.

“It is always something of a relief to have a funeral over,” she said. “But then, of course, the real pain begins for close family members. The emptiness, the full realization of their loss. Oh, Cedric, I do feel for Lady Beckworth. She doted on her husband, did she not?”

“One wonders if she has the inner resources to combat such a loss,” he said. “Of course, she has Alexandra and the children. And her son was brought back in time and will surely not now return to Canada—not this year, anyway.”

Lady Amberley sighed. “The cool air feels so good,” she said. “And I do feel like a truant from school, Cedric. Should I have stayed, do you think?”

“Ellen was doing very well with Lady Beckworth when we left,” he said. “You have a gem of a daughter-in-law there, Louisa. And Mrs. Harding-Smythe was all ready to offer consolation when needed, you may be sure. Relax and enjoy your walk.”

“Oh, I will,” she said. “I am so thankful that it is not this year you are away. I don't know what I would have done without you in the past month or so. You are so very sane.”

“That is the strangest compliment I have ever been paid,” he said. “
Is
it a compliment?”

“Of course,” she said. “Cedric, I cannot help thinking constantly of what you said a while ago. Did you mean it?”

“About wanting to marry you?” he said. “It is hardly the sort of thing I would say in jest, Louisa.”

“I cannot get beyond the barrier of our friendship,” she said. “It embarrasses me to think of you in any other way, you know. And that is foolish, for you are a handsome man. I have looked at you with new eyes in the past week or so, and I have seen that. But I have never seen it before. You have been just Cedric, my friend.”

“We have the trees and the river and the moonlight,” he said. “The perfect setting for romance. Why do we not put the matter to the test? Let me kiss you.”

“Here? Now?” she said. “It seems very foolish.”

He stopped walking and turned her to him. “If it turns out to be foolish,” he said, “it will remain our secret. There are absolutely no witnesses, you see.”

He lowered his head and kissed her on the lips, a light kiss, with his hands on her shoulders.

“I am very thankful for the darkness,” she said when he lifted his head again and looked down at her. “I am quite sure I am blushing like a girl. You will think me gauche, Cedric. It has been a long time, you know.”

“Well, then,” he said, “we must try kissing like a man and woman rather than like a boy and girl.”

He drew her into his arms and kissed her again, openmouthed. His hands moved over her back, holding her full against him. Her own hands came to rest on his shoulders.

“Not so gauche after all,” he murmured against her mouth several minutes later. “Beautiful, Louisa.”

She rested her forehead against his shoulder. “It has been fourteen years,” she said, “and only ever with Edward before that. You have not been celibate since Anne, have you? I am afraid you are far beyond me in experience, Cedric. You showed me that just a moment ago. I will not be able to satisfy your needs. I think it would be best for us to remain just friends.”

“But I am not offering you the position of mistress,” he said. “I am not hiring you to cater just to my physical needs. I want you as my wife—companion, friend, and lover. I know there has been only Edward, Louisa. I do not expect an experienced courtesan. But if you think that you do not stir my blood, you have not been paying close attention in the past five minutes.”

“This is so foolish,” she said. “I have three grown children and four grandchildren.”

“Are you afraid, Louisa?” he asked.

“Yes.” She lifted her head and looked up at him. “I had thought that part of my life was long over, you see. I have learned to take pleasure from my children's lives. And I have built a life of my own, with a circle of good friends. A quiet life of dignity and refinement. And now I find that after all there are sensual pleasures still within my reach. With my closest friend. Yes, I am afraid, Cedric. I am afraid that all will be ruined. It is like stepping out into the darkness when one has a world of light and warmth behind one.”

“I always thought you were an expert on love,” he said. “You and Edward had a perfect marriage. And your children are capable of deep love, an apparent testament to your teaching and example.”

“I have always believed that it is love that has given my life meaning,” she said.

“But you are now afraid of love?”

She frowned. “Of physical passion,” she said, “not of love.”

“Are the two quite separate things, then?” he asked. “Will you destroy the love between us, which has shown itself so far in friendship, if you marry me and share my bed? And—heaven forbid—enjoy doing so?”

“Ah,” she said, turning and gazing down at the dark waters of the river, “now I see you are using our friendship against me. You have always been so sensible—so sane, as I was mad enough to put it only a few minutes ago—and I have been in the habit of listening to you and thinking that anything you said must be wisdom.”

“And what I have just said is not?” he asked. “Is it because of Edward, Louisa? Is it because you loved him totally and lost him and almost lost yourself in the process? If you could go back, would you reject him or else keep yourself aloof from him so that you would not suffer as much from his passing?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “I would not have had one moment of my marriage with him different, even knowing what the end was to be.”

“Is it that you cannot free yourself of your love for him to love again?” he asked. “Or is it that you are afraid to love me because I must die one day and may do so before you?”

She turned to him and smiled. “I agreed to be kissed,” she said, “not to have my soul searched. I also agreed to walk, not to stand on the riverbank being interrogated. Well, sir?”

“Well, madam,” he said, “I perceive you are a coward. For shame, Louisa. Now, has a definite answer been given here? Have I been rejected out of hand? Or have I been given a maybe?”

“A definite maybe, Cedric,” she said. “Will you give me time? I must confess that you have me mortally terrified. I had hoped that when you kissed me, we would both discover how foolish it would be to change the nature of our relationship. But instead I have found that the idea has its attractions. I am just very much afraid.”

He took her arm, drew it through his again, and patted her hand. “We will walk on and change the subject, then,” he said. “I shall stay until the end of August, Louisa, if I may, but I must put in an appearance at my own estate then. Will you be going to London soon?”

“Yes,” she said, “once the household is back to normal again after this dreadful upset. With a wife and two children, Edmund has every right to be left alone. Besides, my interests are in my own home in town.”

“I shall be sure to be there by the end of September,” he said.

“The Bassets should be back from their tour of Europe by then,” she said. “We must invite them for dinner one evening, Cedric. They are sure to have no end of interesting stories.”

They resumed their stroll along the valley.

J
AMES TURNED TO THE RIGHT
when they were outside the door. But he did not walk along the valley toward the sea, but up into the hills. He did not keep to the path that would have taken them up onto the cliffs, but moved across the hill, following no path at all. Madeline doubted that he even knew where he walked or had any planned destination.

His arm was taut beneath her own. His face was hard and set, his eyes fixed ahead of them. She wondered if he even remembered that she was with him.

She did not speak. She could feel need in him with every nerve ending in her body. And whether he remembered it or not, whether he regretted it or not, he had chosen her as his companion. He had shown a need for her.

She was content to walk at his side, to give him, perhaps, some measure of comfort. Perhaps she would never walk with him again, never have another chance to give him anything, even her silent support.

But he had need of more. She knew as soon as he stopped walking and swung her around against him and held her to him and lowered his mouth to hers. She knew, and she yielded to the pressure of his arms, and lifted her face to his.

She knew that he needed a great deal more, that this was no romantic night of love, that his kiss was no embrace in itself. She felt his need as a tangible thing, and whether he knew her clearly or knew clearly what he did, it did not matter. For he had chosen her and now he was turning to her in his need.

And there could be no thought of denying him, for love can only give. As soon as it began to demand something in return, even if only a promise, then it was no longer love. And finally, without the medium of thought or reason, she knew that she loved him, that it was him, the world was him and life was him and ultimately nothing else mattered. Or ever would.

There was nothing gentle about either his mouth on hers or his tongue, which ravished. And nothing gentle about his hands, which first strained her to him and then explored with unsubtle desperation. She held her mouth open for him and relaxed to the roving and searching of his hands. And her fingers smoothed gently through his hair.

The ground was hard beneath her back, despite the grass, when he tumbled her down. But she reached for him and took his mouth to hers again while his hands pulled roughly at her clothes and dragged away undergarments. And when he came down on top of her, she ignored the discomfort of a hard ground that did not give beneath their combined weights, and allowed herself to be positioned for the ultimate giving. She stroked her fingers through his hair.

The shock of pain as he stabbed into her had her closing her eyes very tightly and biting down hard on her lower lip, but she did not cry out and she kept her trembling fingers gentle against his head.

It was all discomfort and pain: the uneven hardness of the ground, his weight on her, his ungentle entry, the deep urgent movements that followed, each stroke pushing her more firmly against the ground, the growing soreness. She was biting both lips before he finished, and concentrating every effort of will on not sobbing aloud.

But the need to sob was occasioned only in part by the physical discomfort. It had far more to do with a full realization of what was happening, of what she was doing, and of what the probable consequences would be.

He was using her for his need. Not really Madeline, but a woman's body with which to soothe his grief. When it was over, he would take her back to the house. He would leave within a few days, and she would never see him again. And all her carefully made plans for the future would be useless. There could never now be anyone else, not even for a comfortable marriage of convenience.

There could never now be anyone but James.

And perhaps he would leave her with child.

But she would have cried, if she had allowed herself to do so, not with misery or remorse, but with a realization that it was all inevitable. This was the way it had to be, the way it had always been and always would have been however much she had tried to delude herself in the future. For James was as much as a part of her as her heart was or her brain, and quite as essential to her being as either.

And so after he had finished in her, his face pressed to her hair, she did not push against him as she might have done, to release herself from some of the pain. She kept one hand in his hair and rested the other about his shoulders, and let him relax his full weight against her. And she would have endured the pain all night. She closed her eyes and concentrated on memorizing every touch of his body against hers and in hers.

But he moved away far too soon and lay on his back at her side, not touching her, one arm beneath his head, staring up at the stars.

“Albert was right, you see,” he said tonelessly. “You should have brought a chaperone.”

She did not reply.

“So, Madeline,” he said after another minute of silence, “you have been caught in my web.” He turned his head to look at her, his face taut and hard, his eyes mocking. “The devil's web.”

She looked back at him but said nothing.

He looked at her with a twisted smile. “It seems that you have no choice but to marry the devil,” he said. “You will doubtless be delighted. I am sure that becoming Lady Beckworth will be a dream come true for you. You were a fool not to bring that chaperone.”

Madeline sat up sharply and hugged her knees. “I don't regret what has happened,” she said. “And I have been caught in no web. This was not ravishment. And you have no need to offer me marriage.”

“Brave words,” he said. “You would risk bearing my bastard?”