The Devil's Web (34 page)

“What are you telling me?” he said—no, he whispered, so that she felt almost paralyzed with fright. “What are you telling me, Madeline?”

“You don't look pleased,” she said. “I'm sorry. I thought that that was what you wanted to hear. You would not believe me if I said there was nothing between us, would you? I always aim to please my husband.”

He grabbed her arms in a painful grip and jerked her toward him so that her head was forced back at an unnatural and painful angle.

“Don't play games with me,” he said. “You are playing dangerously with fire. Have you forgotten that you married the devil? I want to know what is going on between you and Beasley.”

“He is my friend,” she said. “I talk with him. I confide in him. I have no other man to talk with.” Her neck muscles were aching.

“You have a husband.” He spoke through his teeth.
“Have I not told you to stay away from Carl Beasley?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I choose my own friends, James.
And if it is my disobedience you complain of, then I will say this. I would obey you, perhaps, if I respected you.
Or if I liked you. Or loved you. As it is, I feel I owe you nothing.”

He took a half step back, though he did not release his bruising grip on her arms. She was able to lift her head, which felt as if it were about to drop off her neck.

“I want the truth from you,” he said. “No more games or defiance or mockery. Are you and Beasley lovers?”

She smiled. “What will you do if I say yes?” she asked.
“Spurn me? Beat me? Divorce me? Tell me, James. I must know the consequences of my answer.”

And then she was grabbing for the lapels of his dressing gown as he shook her so violently that she completely lost her balance.

“Answer me,” he said. “Have you slept with Beasley?”

She clung to him, dizzy and gasping. “No,” she said.
“We have not made a cuckold of you yet, James. Not yet. But I am thinking of it. I need a lover too. And I do not need to be very particular. I could hardly do worse than what I already have, could I?”

“By God, Madeline,” he said, jerking her against him again so that her hands were imprisoned against his chest, “you have a wicked tongue.”

She fought against his mouth when it covered her own, twisting her head from side to side. When one hand spread itself behind her head to hold it firm, she went limp in his arms until he lifted his head.

“I want to go to my own bedchamber,” she said. “if you take me tonight, it will be rape. I suppose a husband cannot ravish his own wife, can he? I am, after all, your possession to be used as you will. But in your heart you will
know that you have ravished me, James. I hate you and despise you for what you have done to me.”

“For what I have done to you!” he said, watching her lips. “And what is that, pray? Making you want me against your will? You want me already. Do you think I cannot feel the heat of you? Do you think I cannot look down and see the tips of your breasts hard against your nightgown?
Don't talk of rape to me, Madeline. Are you ashamed of wanting your own husband? Is such wantonness appropriate only between lovers?”

She made no resistance when he lowered his mouth to hers again. She would hold herself lifeless in his arms, she decided. Anything he got from her that night would have to be taken.

But it was a ridiculous resolve, as one part of her mind realized almost instantly. He had been right. She was already hot and panting for him. He was her husband and her lover and her passion, and there was no room for thoughts of his infidelity, of his long love for another woman, of the son he shared with that woman. No room for thought at all. Not yet.

There was room only for feeling. And loving. And being loved.

When he stripped away her nightgown, she matched his actions, tearing at his dressing gown and nightshirt, sending a button flying in her haste.

She could not get close enough to him. She had both arms wrapped about his neck, her naked body arched against his, her mouth wide for the invasion of his tongue.
And she sobbed to be closer.

And closer yet.

And yet after he had laid her on the bed, his hands and his mouth aroused her further, as rough as her own on
him. She twisted against him, moaned against him, begged him with eager body and incoherent pleas.

And if she had never fully known it before, she knew it then with a conviction far too deep for thought.

James. He was her world. The only world. The only place where there was air to breathe and food to eat and water to drink and beauty to delight in. The only place capable of sustaining life in her.

He was her universe.

“James. Please. Oh, please. James.”

And then he penetrated her. Deeply. To the heart of the ache that was in her. And moved and moved, thrusting and thrusting against the ache until she became mindless and twisting need. Need to be taken and held and loved. Need to give and to hold and to love.

“James!”

It sounded like someone else's voice, very far away. But it must have been her own, because the sobs that followed it gradually became hers. They were coming from inside her, hurting her chest even as the rest of her seemed to have turned to jelly.

And it was against his chest that she sobbed. He was lying on his side, holding her close against him with one arm while his free hand smoothed through her hair.

“Hush!” he was whispering. “Hush now, Madeline. My God, what have I done to you? Hush now.”

If she held her thoughts completely blank, she did not believe she had ever felt so happy. She was in James's arms, the only place where she had ever really wanted to be, and his hand was soothing in her hair and his words were gentle, his breath warm against her ear.

She wanted to stay there forever and ever. And even longer than that.

When she finally stopped sobbing—she could not even begin to explain to herself why she had been doing so—she let herself relax completely and pretended to be asleep. If she were awake, she would feel obliged to pull back from him and announce that she was a perfect goose for crying just because he had made love to her again after so many months of the other dispassionate encounters.
Or else she would have to confront him with her own accusations.

And she did not want their relationship to return to normal again. Not yet. Tomorrow there would be all sorts of things to consider, which she absolutely refused even to think of at the moment. But tomorrow would come soon enough. For now she would pretend sleep, and perhaps he would hold her awhile longer.

But not for nearly long enough. She felt obliged to continue to feign sleep when he eventually slid his arm very slowly from beneath her head and rolled away from her.
He got out of bed and she knew, though she did not open her eyes, that he stood for a long time looking down at her.

She watched him for a few minutes as he stood at the window again, looking out from a darkened bedchamber onto a darkened world. He was still naked and magnificent in his nakedness.

She closed her eyes as he turned his head toward her once more. And then she heard the door into his dressing room open and close.

He did not return for the rest of the night. Nor was he at breakfast the next morning. He had ridden out, Cockings told her when she asked. But by that time it no longer mattered. She did not want to see him.

Ever again.

• • •

H
E HAD RAPED HER
. The thought pounded through his brain like the regular beating of a drum for the rest of the night and on into the following morning as he rode, he did not know where, out on the moors. He had raped his wife.

He had raped Madeline. The woman he loved.

Some love! Some way of showing an emotion that was supposed to be all giving. He had taken from her in the worst possible way a man could take from a woman.

He had raped her.

Oh, it was true that she had been willing after he had actually started to do it to her. More willing than he had ever known her. Wild and wanton in her desire. He could still feel the sting on his back from the raking of her fingernails.

But she had not wanted it to happen. She had told him before it started what he would know in his heart afterward. And he knew. It did not matter that she had enjoyed it while it was happening every bit as much as he had. She had cried immediately after.

Her sobs had killed something in him. He had exulted in their lovemaking, in the sound of his name as she begged him to come into her and shouted out as he took her through the climax. He had been finding her ear with his own mouth so that he might whisper her name.

And then had come the sobs, tearing at her, tearing into him. Telling him what he had become.

A man who would force his own wife against her will.
A man who found it necessary to do so. “I hate you and despise you,” she had said to him.

James spurred his horse into a fresh gallop.

And why had it all happened? Did he really believe that
she had given herself to Beasley? He would not believe it of her, could not do so. Not Madeline. She was not the sort of woman who would be unfaithful to a husband, no matter how she hated and despised him.

And if she ever were and was confronted with her infidelity, then she would react with tears or some sign of inner torment, not with laughter and defiance.

She had not been unfaithful to him. She had met Beasley, she said, because she could talk with him and confide in him. She had no other man to talk with.

And whose fault was that? It certainly was not hers. He could distinctly remember that at the start of their marriage she had made an effort to speak with him, to make a friend of him. And he had found himself unable to respond.

If she did take a lover, the fault would be more his than hers.

He looked about him in some surprise to see that he was riding in daylight and that the sun was not even newly risen. It must be well past breakfast time already.
He ran a hand over the rough bristles on his jaw and grimaced.

He should go back to her. Talk to her. But what did one say to the woman one had raped the night before? I'm sorry? It will not happen again? I was distraught with the fear of losing you to another man? It was not really rape because you enjoyed it?

What could he say to her?

But he was free at last. Free to love her. He had not ruined another woman's life. He had no son.

He was free and whole for Madeline. That was what he had wanted to celebrate with her the night before.

If it were possible for him now to love openly.

Perhaps it was too late.

Perhaps the events of last night had proved that. Perhaps he was incapable of giving love. Perhaps he could only take it for himself with violence, destroying what he loved most in the world.

But he must try. If he did not try, he would never know.

Perhaps it was not too late.

“I hate you and despise you for what you have done to me,” she had said.

He frowned. For what he had done to her? Shutting her out of his life? Killing the glow that had always been the main source of beauty in her?

“I need a lover too,” she had said.

Too?
As well as whom? Him? Did she think he had a lover? Had she seen him with Dora? Or more to the point, had she seen him leave the ballroom with Dora? And did she know about Dora? About Jonathan?

She was friendly with Carl Beasley. Once Carl had vowed to get revenge on him for what he had done to Dora. But what had he done to her beyond lying with her when she was already with child? And Carl had known that. Why the threat of revenge, then? Carl had allowed him to believe a lie all those years ago. But he must surely have forgotten that foolish threat. He had smiled the evening before, though. Not a pleasant smile.

What had he been telling Madeline?

There really was only one thing to do. If he had the courage to do it, that was. He must go home to her and somehow persuade her to sit down and have a long talk with him. He must tell her everything—the whole of his past and the whole of his present. Dora and Madeline.

Madeline. His present and the whole of his future if she
would forgive him. He must make her understand. He must somehow find the words.

He did not know when he reached the house whether he should go up to his room first and change his clothes and shave before finding her, or whether he should find her out immediately. But he would lose his courage if he put off the moment. And he would lose the words, which were now bursting from his lips.

Surely after she had heard him out she would understand the reason for his haggard and untidy appearance.

“Where is her ladyship?” he asked Cockings, handing him his riding whip and hat.

The butler coughed. “Not at home, my lord,” he said. “I believe she left a note with your valet.”

James went very still and looked closely at the man.
“Then send him to me without delay,” he said, striding in the direction of the library.

She had not even taken a carriage from their coach-house. She had taken a gig into the village and presumably the stage or the mail coach from there. Her destination was undoubtedly London, though she did not say so. She knew no one in York or Harrogate or any other northern town.

“If you follow me and bring me back,” she had written, “you will have to keep me locked up. I shall leave again whenever I am able.”

She would be going to her mother. And to her twin.
They would both be in London. She would be safe.

“I will not be a thing to you,” she had written, “to be used as a toy for your pleasure. If you still love Mrs.
Drummond, then I am sorry for you. And if you pine for your son, then I feel for you. But under the circumstances you should not have married me, James. I am a person
and I have feelings and needs, and I am not the sort of wife who will turn a blind eye to her husband's philanderings and smile bravely for the benefit of the rest of the world.”

God!