The Devil's Web (3 page)

“I have just had a thought,” she said, and heard in some dismay the high pitch and volume of her voice. But she seemed unable to do anything about it. She turned to Lord North and laid a hand lightly on his sleeve. “When a gentleman offers to take me driving, I immediately visualize a curricle or a phaeton. You were not by any chance offering a closed carriage, were you, Geoffrey?”

“It could certainly be arranged,” he said, brightening.

“I should not even dream of accompanying you in a closed carriage without the presence of my maid, of course,” she said gaily. “But one advantage of having been on the town forever is that one does not have to pay heed to all that faradiddle.”

“On the town forever, Lady Madeline?” Lord North said gallantly. “Why, you look not a day older than the newest young lady in town.”

“Gracious!” she said, tapping his arm and laughing merrily and altogether too loudly across at the colonel. “I am not at all sure I take that as a compliment, sir.”

She was aware of Sir Cedric and Mr. Brunning in the other group smiling across at her. And she could not stop herself from smiling. She could not force herself to be quiet and let the conversation continue around her.

She was behaving as she had always behaved in the presence of James Purnell. He had always despised her as silly and empty-headed. She had always been aware of his contempt. And yet she had always lived up to his expectations when he was in the same room. She had never been able to act naturally with him. Except perhaps on that last occasion, when she had offered herself to him and told him she loved him.

Her cheeks burned with shame at the memory.

She wished she could relive the last half hour, have another chance to do it right, to greet him civilly, to behave with the coolness and poise of a mature woman. Oh, she wished she could have the time back again.

When Lord North rose in order to return home for his town carriage, all the guests took his doing so as a cue to take their own departure.

“I shall look forward to seeing you again this evening,” Alexandra said, kissing her mother-in-law's cheek.

“Of course, dear,” the dowager said. “We will see you there as well, Mr. Purnell?”

He answered her question, bowed, and extended a hand to her. Madeline turned away and took an effusive farewell of Colonel Huxtable.

“I
AM QUITE SURE
this cannot be real. Any minute now I am going to wake up and find it is all a dream.” Jean Cameron clung to James's arm and looked behind her at the grand carriages that were disgorging their elegant passengers and ahead to the shallow marble steps leading to the open front doors of Mrs. Denton's house and numerous impeccably clad footmen.

“But it is real,” he said very quietly so that Alexandra and Edmund, walking behind them, and his parents walking ahead, would not hear. “And I can pinch you to prove it if you wish, though I assure you the pain is not necessary. And moreover, you look quite as pretty as any other young lady within my line of vision.”

She had wanted to come. He had seen that in her face as soon as he had called on her at her father's house. At the same time she had been filled with misgivings. Her clothes, which had been perfectly fashionable in Montreal, would be laughed at in London, she had said. And her manners, which had been quite acceptable in Montreal society, would appear awkward here. Besides, he was being kind. He could not really want her with him when he would have his mother and father and his sister and brother-in-law, the earl, for company.

But he had wanted her with him. He had not had to use any hypocrisy in assuring her of that. Her anxiety and her eagerness had appeared very endearing to him after the artificiality of Madeline's behavior earlier that afternoon. But he would not think of that, or of her, again. He had been right in his original impression of her. She was shallow and silly. Certainly not worthy of the kind of obsession that had haunted him for four years. He would put her from his mind. He was free of her now at last.

Jean blushed and looked at him with large, questioning eyes when Alexandra turned to her inside the crowded hallway and suggested that they go together in search of the cloakroom. She seemed quite overawed by the fact that she was being addressed by a live countess. His parents proceeded on their way upstairs.

He found himself smiling gently down at the girl as he released her arm and feeling a definite surge of tenderness for her. And of nostalgia for Canada, where he had met her and where he had learned to live in relative peace with himself. He wished he were there now. He wished he had not come back.

There was no sign in the hallway of the dowager Lady Amberley's party. They might be upstairs already in the concert room. Or theirs might be among the crush of carriages still outside. He hoped Alex and Jean would not be long. He felt alone and exposed, standing with his brother-in-law, his hands clasped behind his back.

And he wished again that he could relive that afternoon, or rather that he had lived it differently at the time. It could have been all over now, just as it was in his emotions. He had seen her and realized that she was every bit as lovely and as attractive as she had ever been. And he had heard her and known that she was as foolish as he had ever thought her. He had understood and accepted that he could never have loved her, that he had invented the woman who had lived unwillingly in his dreams throughout his exile from England.

But he had ignored her. And having done so once, he had set up an awkward situation that could only get worse with every meeting. Or with every nonmeeting. Why had he put himself in this ridiculous situation when she was nothing to him?

He listened to his brother-in-law's amiable chatter and watched the doorway with unease and the hallway leading to the ladies' withdrawing room with impatience. Just like a schoolboy who did not know how to conduct himself in company.

“Ah,” the Earl of Amberley said from beside him, “we have not been abandoned after all, James. The ladies are returning, having assured themselves, doubtless, that the unthinkable has not happened and a curl worked loose during the carriage ride here.” He smiled at his wife.

“Are you satisfied that you are as beautiful as I told you you were when I helped you down from the carriage, Alex?”

“Yes,” she said. “Having looked in the mirror, I can safely say that you were quite right, Edmund. I apologize for having doubted your word.”

The earl chuckled and Jean looked up into James's face in some surprise. It seemed to amaze her that an earl and his countess could joke with each other. James offered her his arm and smiled reassuringly at her.

“I am so afraid to walk into that room,” she said breathlessly as they climbed the stairs. “You will let me hold to your arm the whole time, James?”

“Of course,” he said. “And then all the gentlemen will look at you and from you to me with envy.”

“Oh, how silly,” she said, and giggled.

What she did not know was that he was as nervous about walking into the concert room as she was. They were among the last to arrive, and the room was crowded already. He was very glad of the excuse of having Jean on his arm to save him from having to look all about him. And he was not sorry for the crowded room and the necessity of sitting on some of the few vacant chairs close to the doors.

But for all that he did not need Alex's words.

“Your mother is sitting clear across the room,” she said to her husband. “And Madeline and Aunt Viola. What a shame there are no empty seats near them, Edmund.”

“But you can all content yourselves with smiling and nodding at one another,” he said, “something you would all feel foolish doing if you were sitting next to one another. There are compensations for every annoyance, you see, Alex.”

“I see you are in one of your nonsensical moods,” she said, tapping him on the arm with her fan. “I shall confine my conversation to James and Miss Cameron. Perhaps I will have some sense from them.”

“If I were you,” the earl said, “I would satisfy myself with no conversation at all. The music is about to begin, and you may annoy your neighbors if you chatter.”

But crowded as the room was, and as much as he had not looked about him, James had known exactly where Madeline was the moment he walked through the doors. She was wearing a jonquil-colored gown and she was seated between her mother and the Guardsman who had been paying court to her that afternoon. The one she was about to marry, according to Alex.

And he was welcome to her, too.

The pianist was seated at the grand pianoforte in the middle of the room. Looking at him, James found it very difficult to keep his eyes focused there and not to let them stray beyond to fair curls and flushed cheeks and shining eyes, which he knew to be green, and an enticing mouth curved upward into a smile. He was surprised to see that she concentrated on the music, her eyes not moving from the pianist.

Just as his own did not.

“Which is the earl's mother?” Jean whispered. Her voice became anxious. “I will not have to meet her, will I, James?”

He assured her at the time that she would probably not, since the room was so crowded. And indeed, he was proved correct. During the interval, when Sir Cedric Harvey went for refreshments, the dowager countess stayed where she was, talking with her sister-in-law, Mrs. Carrington.

But Madeline did not stay where she was, although for a while she spoke with the colonel and with the couple who sat in front of them. After a few minutes, she got to her feet with the young lady with whom she had been talking, and the two of them began to make their way across the crowded room.

James became engrossed in his conversation with Jean and Alexandra. And felt again like the schoolboy he had not been for more than twelve years.

M
ADELINE APPLAUDED
with enthusiasm at the end of the pianoforte recital. She was enjoying herself immensely. The music was good, she had Jason Huxtable sitting beside her, easily outshining any other gentleman in the room with his scarlet regimentals, and she had her mother and Sir Cedric on one side of her, and Aunt Viola and Uncle William on the other side of Jason, and her cousins Anna and Walter Carrington in front of them, Anna with Mr. Chambers and Walter with Miss Mitchell.

Edmund and his party were clear across the crowded room. She had scarcely noticed their entrance and had paid them no attention beyond a smile and a nod in their direction. Except that he put even Jason in the shade with his dark evening clothes and his vividly dark hair and complexion. James Purnell, that was. And except that there was a young lady clinging to his arm, even after they had seated themselves. A very young lady, a stranger. A pretty young lady, on whom he looked with a fondness he had never directed her way.

Not that it mattered one little bit, of course. She was having a marvelously enjoyable evening with the company she had.

“Mama and I called on Dominic and Ellen at Lord Harrowby's this afternoon,” Anna said, turning around in her seat. The gentlemen had gone to fetch some lemonade. “We went to see the babies really, of course, though we pretended to be calling on Dominic and Ellen.” She giggled.

“I know,” Madeline said. “I find myself doing the same thing.”

“They were awake,” Anna said, “and I was allowed to hold Olivia. She is quite adorable, isn't she? Charles would not be picked up. He was exercising his lungs. Ellen says that he has still not reconciled his mind to the fact that he is a twin and must share everyone's attention. He deserves to be ignored, she said, when he is being so cross. But for all that she picked him up and kissed him and soothed him, and Dominic laughed at her and told her that he could see already that all the disciplining of their children was going to fall on his shoulders.”

“From what I have seen,” Madeline said, “they are one as bad as the other.”

“It seems strange to see Dominic in a nursery, doting on two babies,” Anna said with something of a sigh. “Just a year ago I was still swearing to anyone who cared to listen that I was going to marry him.” She giggled again.

“You don't seem to be pining away with grief,” her father said, entering the conversation unexpectedly. “Sawyer three weeks ago, Dartford two weeks ago, Bailey last week, Chambers this week.” He was counting off on his fingers. “And Ashley fits in there somewhere too. One of these days, Madeline, I am going to embarrass puss here by calling one of her young men by another one's name. Sometimes I wish we were Catholic. I could pack her off to a convent and have some peace.”

“William!” his wife said, horrified. “What a thing to say. Take no notice of him, Madeline. He does like to tease, you know. Everyone knows that Anna is the apple of his eye.”

Madeline laughed and took her glass of lemonade from Colonel Huxtable.

“Mr. Purnell is looking very handsome,” Anna said. “He always did. I wonder if he remembers me. I was just fifteen when he was at Amberley four years ago, and everyone else ignored me. But he was very kind, I remember, just as if he understood perfectly well how horrid it is to be fifteen and neither a child nor a woman. He has probably forgotten me.”

“Ah,” Madeline said, smiling at the colonel, “it is cool and tastes very good, Jason. I wish Mrs. Denton would direct that some windows be opened.”

“Let's see if he does remember me,” Anna said, laying a hand on Madeline's arm. “Do you think we can cross this crowded room without being trampled on?” She laughed lightly after ascertaining that Mr. Chambers was talking with someone else. “We can pretend that we have gone to pay our respects to Edmund and Alexandra. He really is excessively handsome, is he not, Madeline? Who is the lady with him? I am jealous already. She is very pretty.”

“I don't know,” Madeline said. “I have never seen her before.” They were on their way across the room already, their arms linked. She had really had no choice in the matter without making a pointed refusal. A refusal to greet her own brother and sister-in-law? It had been out of the question. Her heart felt as if it were attached to the soles of her slippers.