The Devil's Web (30 page)

“When did you and James become friends?” she asked.
“And your sister?”

He smiled. “I imagine your husband is reluctant to talk about either of us, isn't he?” he said. And he proceeded to tell her about the times they had spent together, he and James, and later Dora too, whenever James could get away from his father's watchful eye.

She soon forgot her embarrassment, and the telltale marks of her tears disappeared long before they stopped talking.

“I must be getting home,” she said at last. “I have been away longer than I intended.”

He got to his feet and helped her to hers. “You may
safely go home,” he said with a grin. “No one will know of your tears. It will be a secret between you and me.” He winked at her.

Somehow, without their ever making any definite plans, they began to meet at the stream every few days.
And they fell into an easy friendship. He was someone to talk to, someone to help her break the terrible silence or the bitter quarrels of home.

She never discussed her relationship with her husband with him, but she knew that he knew. And so she never pretended, either, to a marital happiness that she did not feel. They talked on topics that interested them both. Or he talked about the past. Her hunger to know what James had been like as a boy was insatiable.

He told her, at her request, about the love that had blossomed between James and Dora during that one summer.
But he did not make a great deal about it or mention the child.

“You must not feel threatened by it,” he said. “It was a very long time ago. And Dora is contentedly married to John Drummond now. Have you been made uneasy by the fact that Beckworth has called on her a few times? You need not, you know. It has been merely one old acquaintance calling on another.”

“I did not know he had called there,” she said.

“Did you not?” He grimaced. “Then I should not have mentioned it. I am sorry. But really it has been nothing at all. I know. My sister has talked of his visits with the greatest placidity. You must forget that I committed the
faux pas
of telling you something you did not know.”

She changed the subject and thought of nothing else for days and even weeks afterward. Why had James been visiting Dora Drummond? And why had he said nothing
to her? But then he very rarely talked to her about anything.

She had made several friends in the neighborhood and had been well accepted by everyone. But she particularly enjoyed her friendship with Carl Beasley because it was a private one in which she could relax and talk about anything that came to mind.

“My nephew Jonathan has taken to spending more and more time with me,” he told her with a laugh one day. “I'm afraid the lad does not get treated very well by his father. John is always impatient with the boy. I suppose most families have one member who is very different from all the others. Poor Jonathan. He even looks different. The proverbial black sheep. A somewhat moody lad, but he has potential. I enjoy his company.”

“Perhaps he does not have enough to do to keep him amused,” Madeline said. Her friend did not realize how he was twisting the knife in her wound.

“He will be sent to school when he is old enough,” he said. “He will find plenty to occupy him there.”

“Mr. Drummond will send him to school?” Madeline asked.

Carl Beasley smiled. “John is not a wealthy man,” he said. “But somehow it will be arranged, you may be sure.
The money will be found to give Jonathan an education to suit his birth.”

They moved on to talk of other matters.

It was Carl too who told her that the Duke and Duchess of Peterleigh were to come sometime after Christmas, though the news was soon generally known in the neighborhood. The duchess, it seemed, was expecting their first child and was to be brought to the country for her confinement.

There was some comfort in the news. The duke and duchess had been married for almost four years.

J
AMES SAW
D
ORA
for the first time at church. After her husband had recovered from his lengthy illness, they came together with their four children, the youngest a mere baby in arms.

It was a shock to see her. For so many years he had lived through the agony of having lost her beyond trace. He had always imagined their reunion, if ever it was to occur, as a moment of great emotion, when their eyes would meet and all they had meant to each other would be there in their look.

And he had always imagined her pale and haggard, a ruined and an unhappy woman. And seeing her he would know again his guilt in all its rawness. He would still feel as guilty as if he had abandoned her knowingly.
He had been enjoying himself at university, enjoying the freedom from his father. And he had not been living a celibate life.

It came as a shock to see her in church, then, and to discover the same Dora ten years later. She had been prettily plump as a girl. Now that plumpness had a matronly quality about it. She had been a placid and trusting girl, always willing to please. He had not had to use many wiles to persuade her to lie with him. And there had been only a few tears afterward.

She looked placid still. There were no outward signs of the dreadful suffering he had imagined. Of course, many years had passed.

She saw him as they were leaving the church, and he inclined his head to her, unsmiling. She colored up and
bobbed a curtsy, and turned to say something to one of her children. Not to the eldest, Jonathan.

There was a certain nightmare quality to the moment.
He had his wife on his arm, her head turned away as she exchanged some pleasantry with one of their neighbors.
And his former mistress was in the church with their child, who looked so much like himself.

How could he have been so mad as to come back? For weeks the whole situation with Dora had lain dormant, almost as if he had thought he could go through the rest of his life without encountering her.

But she was there and could not be ignored. At some time he must talk with her, get some answers finally to questions that had gnawed at him for years. And his son was there. His son. He must do something about the boy.
Arrange something for his future. Send him to a good school, perhaps. Arrange for a good career for him.

Yet Madeline was on his arm. And she knew nothing of either Dora or Jonathan. Unless Beasley had told her, of course. She was friendly with Beasley, and years before the man had promised revenge.

She should be told. Sooner or later she was bound to find out. He should tell her. Better that it should come from him than from someone else.

But how could he tell his wife such a thing? Especially when his relations with her were on such shaky ground. How could he convince her that it was a thing of the past, something for which he still felt responsible, but nothing to interfere with his love for her?

What love? she would ask.

And he would be unable to reply. He seemed quite incapable of telling her that he loved her.

And so he led Madeline out of the church and directly
to their waiting carriage, helped her inside, and sat beside her all the way home, looking out through the window in silence. Composing an explanation to her that he never delivered. Composing a speech in which he told her of his true feelings for her. And never speaking the words aloud.

He should not have come home. He should not have married Madeline. He should have returned to Canada and the fur trade, where he could be alone and harm no one but himself.

One afternoon he was riding home from a lengthy visit to one of his tenants, having listened to and finally approved the man's schemes for clearing more arable land, when he saw two small figures walking along the laneway ahead of him. Or rather, the larger child was walking with one arm around the smaller, who hopped on one leg.

Jonathan and Patrick Drummond, he saw as he rode closer. Jonathan glowered up at him as he drew rein beside them. Patrick was sobbing.

“What has happened?” James asked.

“I told him he was not to come,” Jonathan said, “but Father said I must let him. And then I told him not to jump down from the top of the stile but to climb down properly. But jump he did and hurt his foot and now it will serve him right if Father thrashes him.”

The younger child hiccuped.

“Mother sent me on an errand to Mrs. Potter,” Jonathan said by way of explanation.

“Well,” James said, resisting the urge to tell his son that he could do with a lesson in compassion and remembering that many children are by nature cruel to each other, “you have a long hop home, Patrick.”

The child sniffed and took one hop forward, clinging to his brother's shoulder.

“Unless you would like me to lift you up before me and see if I can coax a gallop out of this stallion,” James said.

Two red-rimmed eyes looked up at him.

“Father will be cross,” Jonathan said. “He will say that we have inconvenienced you, sir.”

“Perhaps I can stay long enough to convince your father that I have not been inconvenienced at all,” James said, leaning down from the saddle, taking the smaller child beneath the arms and swinging him up to sit before him. He lifted the child's injured leg with one hand and felt the ankle with gentle fingers. “Can you walk, Jonathan?
There must be more than a mile to go.”

“Easily, sir!” his son said with some contempt.

“Will Papa be cross?” Patrick asked, looking up at him with wide gray eyes and a running nose.

James took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the nose. “I don't know your papa,” he said. “But I'll wager that your mama will bathe your foot and make it feel better. And probably cover you with kisses too.” He winked at the child, who proceeded to burrow his head beneath his cloak and against the warmth of his coat.

Dora came out of the house behind her servant when the horse stopped at her gate.

“Hello, Dora,” he said, swinging down from the saddle and lifting the child down into his arms.

She curtsied. “My lord,” she said.

“I am afraid we have one wounded soldier here,” he said. “It seems the climb down from a stile was a little much for him, and his ankle turned under him. It is not broken, I think, just badly swollen.”

He followed her into the house and parlor, where he set
Patrick down on a sofa. And only then discovered that John Drummond was from home.

He stood watching, his hands clasped behind him, as the servant brought in a basin of water and Dora proceeded to bathe her child's foot. She had first smoothed back his hair and kissed him, as James had expected, and assured him that his papa would not beat him for falling and hurting himself.

“But Jon said he would,” the child said accusingly.

“Then you must be thankful that Jonathan is not your papa,” she said, kissing him again.

“Won't you take a seat, my lord?” she said finally, flustered, when she realized that James was still standing behind her. “I will have tea brought.”

“Don't trouble yourself, Dora,” he said. “I merely wanted to see the child safe. How are you?”

Patrick's foot had been bandaged and elevated on a cushion. She turned to her visitor.

“Well,” she said. “My last confinement was a difficult one, but I have recovered fully.” She flushed.

“Are you happy?” he asked, and wished immediately that he had not tried to make the conversation personal.

“Yes,” she said. “I have a good home and a good husband and a growing family. What more could I ask for?”

“It has been a long time,” he said.

“Yes.” She flushed again. “A long time.”

“I have often wondered,” he said, “if you were happy.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. It was kind of you.”

“My foot still hurts, Mama,” Patrick wailed from behind her.

Jonathan came into the room as Dora turned back
to the invalid. “I told him he shouldn't jump, Mother,” he said. “He is such a nuisance. He will not do as he is told.”

“He fell, Jonathan,” she said, whirling on him. “You will say nothing to your father about his jumping. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mother,” the boy said, that hint of contempt in his voice again.

“This is Lord Beckworth, who was so kind as to bring your brother home,” she said. “Did you know? Make your bow to him, Jonathan.”

The boy bobbed his head in James's direction. “Yes, I knew,” he said.

James took his leave of them. Strange, he thought. It had been so very different from the way he had imagined it would be—he and Dora and their son all in one room together. In the event, he had been able to see her only as the mother of those children. Someone whom he could surely never have desired.

Was it really she he had raged over and almost driven himself mad over?

And for his son he felt nothing but a mild animosity. If he were that child's father in fact as well as in body, he had a conviction the boy would feel the flat of his hand more often than he seemed to do. No son of his would speak to his mother with contempt and escape without a stinging rear end and an earful of home truths.

A strange meeting indeed when he remembered all the passions that had raged more than nine years before.
There was an unreality about the whole situation. Almost as if none of it had ever happened. Except that there was Jonathan as living proof that it had.

It was a meeting he did not repeat or want to repeat.
Though he did want to question her. He would never be completely satisfied until he heard the answers to some questions.

It was also a meeting he did not find the right opportunity to tell his wife about. But then he did not tell her a great deal about any of his daily activities. And she told him as little about hers. They were strangers who happened to live in the same house and sleep in the same bed.
Strangers who were intimate with each other for a few minutes of each night for a little more than three weeks out of each month.