The Devil's Web (38 page)

He laughed rather bleakly. “She seems perfectly content,” he said. “And there is no sign that she suffered greatly even at the time it was all happening, though there was some disappointment, I gather. She expected marriage to her son's father.”

“It was not your fault,” she said tightly. “You must stop blaming yourself, James. And Papa too. He did only what he thought best at the time, though it was very wrong of him not even to consult you.”

“The child is Peterleigh's,” he said.

Her arms fell from his waist. “The Duke of Peterleigh?”she said rather foolishly.

“The same,” he said. “The very duke for whom you were not good enough, Alex, after being kidnapped and forced to spend a night alone in Edmund's house.”

“Dora's child is
his
?” She stared at his back, her eyes wide and disbelieving.

“We were dupes,” he said. “Papa and I, I mean. It was better, apparently, to smear our names than to lower Peterleigh's in everyone's esteem. Not that I was blameless, of course. It might have been my child, and Dora was only seventeen at the time.”

“But …” she said, and seemed lost for words for a time. “All this burden you have borne, James. It was all unnecessary?”

His fists were clenched at his sides. “And Madeline has been destroyed by it all,” he said. “That is the worst of it. I have destroyed her.”

“No, James.” She hugged him from behind again. “No, that is not so. Nothing is ever so bad that it cannot be put right. She will understand when you have explained to her. There is still time to put everything right. You love her and I am convinced she loves you.”

He laughed. “If she had feelings for me at the start,” he said, “I don't think they could possibly have survived, Alex. And she will not see me.”

“But she will,” she said. “If you persist, she will. You won't give up, will you?”

“I will call on her every day for as long as it takes,” he said. “But I won't force myself on her. I have no right. There are other things, Alex, that you don't know and that I am not about to tell you of. Unless she has told you, of course. But I doubt it.”

“Whatever do you mean?” she said.

He shook his head. “I must leave,” he said. “I have no right in her mother's house at present.”

“Where will you go?” she asked. “Come and stay with us, James.”

He turned and smiled at her. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Would you have me put your husband in such an awkward position? I'll stay where I stayed last spring.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “How are the children?”

“Well,” she said.

“And you? Are you happy to be increasing again?”

She nodded.

“Well,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her on the cheek, “go back upstairs, Alex. I don't want to cause any dissension between you and your husband.”

“You won't,” she said. “We are very close friends, James.”

He smiled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Friendship. The essential ingredient.” And he opened the door to let her out into the hallway ahead of him.

T
HE EARL OF AMBERLEY ORGANIZED A BALL in honor of his mother's betrothal. It was hastily arranged, coming as it did two weeks after the announcement and two before the wedding. He was not at all sure that many guests would come since it was early in June and the members of the
ton
still had a vast number of entertainments to choose among.

“But enough people will come, Edmund,” his wife assured him. “And I shall put off my mourning for the occasion, shall I? Does it matter that not quite a year has passed, do you think?”

“I am longing to see you in colors again,” he said, kissing her.

“Perhaps the ball can serve another function too,” she said, looking at him a little warily. “Perhaps we can get Madeline and James together at last. May I invite him?”

“Of course,” he said. “But you must also tell Madeline, love. She has been quite adamant about not receiving him.”

“Yes, I will,” she said, and sighed. “Is she not foolish, Edmund? It is perfectly obvious that nothing can be settled between them unless they talk. And it is equally obvious that she is as miserable as he is.”

“It is their marriage,” he said. “They must work out their problems as best they can. Are you ready to take the children walking?”

“Yes, I am,” she said.

M
ADELINE ARRIVED
with her mother and Sir Cedric at the ball. She had seriously considered not going at all, but she could not absent herself from such a family celebration. Besides, she must come face-to-face with him eventually. For two weeks she had lived in terror that he would eventually stop calling at her mother's house and sending up his card. Surely the day would come when he would decide that he had had enough.

And yet she could not send down the message that he might come up. For some reason she could not bring herself to do so. She did not want to see him. She did not want to be persuaded to go back home with him. She wanted to be left to herself so that she could begin a new life. And she longed for him and pined for him.

She was altogether bewildered by her conflicting feelings.

She handed her wrap to her brother's footman and ascended the stairs at her mother's side. She smiled at the people in her direct line of vision and dared not turn her head to either side. She drew confidence from the new gold ball gown she wore and her new coiffure—her hair had grown long enough that her maid had been able to pin it on top of her head, with a liberal shower of curls cascading down the back of her head and along her neck.

“Edmund,” she said, hugging him after he had released her mother. “There will be a veritable squeeze here this evening, believe me. Everyone I have spoken to in the past week is coming. Alexandra, what a lovely shade of blue. It seems strange to see you again without your blacks.”

“I am not at all sure it is the thing to be hostess of such a very
tonnish
function in my present, ah, shape, though,” Alexandra said, flushing.

“What nonsense!” Madeline said.

Alexandra smiled. “Edmund's exact words,” she said.

Madeline turned her attention to Dominic and Ellen and Lord Harrowby, who had also arrived early. She had not told anyone of her own almost certain pregnancy. Five weeks late now. And her feelings about it were as ambivalent as her feelings about seeing James. She did not want a child now. A child would complicate her plans to live apart from her husband and begin a new life. And yet beyond the realm of rational thought there was a warmth and a complaisance and a joy that she would not allow to bubble to the surface.

She was going to have a child. She was going to be a mother at last. And it was to be James's child. She was carrying a part of him within her.

She had seen him once. For the first week after his arrival, she had been afraid to go out. She had received her friends at her mother's house and made laughing excuses not to go riding with them or to the theater with them or anywhere else with them. But after that week she had resumed her normal way of life—or what had become normal since her arrival in town. She would not hide from him or anyone else. And she would not care what sort of gossip was going on about her living apart from her husband. She would not cower indoors for fear that he was waiting in ambush beyond the front doors, ready to bear her off back to Yorkshire.

She had been riding in Lord Carrondale's phaeton when she saw him. He was on foot, walking along a busy thoroughfare. He had seen her too. But he had made no sign and kept on walking. And she had smiled and twirled her parasol and turned to say something to her companion. But every part of her insides had performed a somersault, and she had still felt weak at the knees and short of breath when Lord Carrondale had handed her down outside her mother's door a full half hour later.

Madeline stood in the doorway of the ballroom, lifted her chin, and looked deliberately about her. But of course there was scarcely anyone there yet. And he was not among those few who had come very early.

And how foolish she was to take for granted that he would come. It was very possible that he would stay away. After all, she had been snubbing him for all of two weeks. And he was under no great obligation to come. Mama was not his mother. Perhaps she could after all relax and enjoy the evening.

It was a depressing thought. And yet one that she had to accustom herself to. Two hours later she was dancing with Mr. Rhodes and laughing at his outrageous compliments on her hair and realizing that it was the fourth set of the evening already and that even most of the usual stragglers had finally put in an appearance.

She had been right. Edmund's ball was one of the squeezes of the Season, for all the short notice everyone had been given. It would go down as a great success. Edmund and Alexandra were gracious hosts, and Mama and Sir Cedric were so glowingly happy that they looked ten years younger than they had looked a month before.

It was a great success. Everyone was happy. James had not come, and on the whole it was as well that he had not. Nothing should happen, even in her private world, to spoil the evening. And she must keep on remembering that she really did not want to see him ever again. For however much she loved him and longed for him, and however real her pregnancy had become, he was still an adulterer. He still had his mistress and his son. Her child would not even be his firstborn.

She was glad he had not come.

“Oh, come now,” she said to Mr. Rhodes with a giggle. “I think you have gone a little too far, sir. Are you quite sure I rival the sun? Do you find it quite impossible to look at me?”

“Quite, quite impossible,” he said, squinting his eyes and frowning as if in pain.

Madeline giggled again. And met the dark eyes of her husband across the room. He was standing in the doorway, his hands clasped behind him. He looked very noticeably different from any other gentleman in the room, dressed as he was in black evening clothes.

“And my hand is too hot to hold?” she said to Mr. Rhodes.

He winced and sucked air though his teeth. He released her hand for a brief moment. “Excruciatingly hot,” he said. “Quite like the sun, Lady Beckworth, as I said at starting.”

“Flatterer!” she said. “I like it.”

E
VEN WHEN HE WAS
all dressed up for the evening, James was still not quite sure that he would go to the ball. After all, she had consistently refused to see him for two weeks, though he had persisted in presenting his card at her mother's house every day since his arrival.

And on the one occasion when he had seen her, she had not acknowledged him in any way, or shown any sign of recognition. She had merely passed on by—his wife in another man's carriage, looking as lovely and as animated as she had ever looked. He had thought afterward—after a hard ride of at least ten miles out into the country—that it was probably a good thing he did not know the identity of her companion. He might well have sought out the man and killed him.

But she had clearly meant what she had written. She did not intend ever to come back to him. And she clearly meant her refusal to see him. It was no token refusal of two or three days before she felt she had made her displeasure sufficently obvious that she could now admit him.

James sat for a while in his carriage before directing his coachman to take him to White's. But the words did not come out quite as he had meant them to.

“The Earl of Amberley's house on Grosvenor Square,” he said curtly.

After all, she knew he had been invited. He had been very adamant on that point when Alex had asked him. He would go, he had said, only if Madeline clearly understood that he would be there. She knew, but she had not sent any message that he must stay away. And there was little likelihood that she would stay away herself. The ball was in honor of her mother's betrothal.

Did she want him to come, then?

Or did she not care?

Or did she plan to make a very public scene? He shuddered at the thought. But no, Madeline was sociable and vivacious, but never vulgar.

He did not know if he would be able to bear to see her in a party mood. Glittering for other men. How would he be able to keep his hands off any man she smiled at?

He would not stop the carriage now in the middle of a busy street. He would wait until it stopped on Grosvenor Square, and then redirect it to White's. He would call at her mother's again the next day and send up his card.

“Thank you,” he said, nodding absently to the footman who opened the door of the carriage at the end of his journey. He stood outside his brother-in-law's house for a few moments, looking up at the lighted windows, and then walked resolutely up the steps and into the hallway.

He was very late. The house seemed filled with the sound of music. There was no receiving line outside the doors to the ballroom. There was a set in progress. He stood watching the dancers, his hands clasped behind him.

But no, he did not stand watching the dancers. For him there was only one dancer in the room, and his eyes found her immediately. She shimmered in her gold ball gown, which caught the lights of the candles with her every movement. But if she had been dressed in drab gray, she would have shimmered just as surely.

For she was Madeline. As she always had been and always would be in his eyes. Except that he could only watch from afar. Whenever he came too close to the light and the flame, he put both out.

And so he stood and watched. And when her eyes met his across the room for the merest moment, there was only a flicker of hesitation. She danced on and talked on and laughed on.

As if he did not exist. As if he were not her husband. As if he never had been. As if he had never been anything at all to her.

And perhaps he had not.

“James!” Two warm hands were taking his, and his gaze shifted to the flushed and happy face of his sister.

“Hello, Alex,” he said, smiling. “I am sorry to be so late. But I came, you see.”

M
ADELINE HAD SEEN
Jennifer Simpson waltzing very slowly earlier in the evening with a young man. But she had been too preoccupied with her own anxieties about James to look closely at the gentleman. Now, however, she was looking desperately about her for some distraction.

Jennifer was still with the same young man, standing and talking with Walter and his latest flirt. And Madeline realized with a start that Jennifer's companion was Allan Penworth.

“You may take me to my cousin, Mr. Carrington,” she said to Mr. Rhodes when the set was at an end. And she smiled dazzlingly at him just in case she was being watched.

“Allan!” She held out both hands to her former fiancé as she drew close. “I did not even recognize you. How splendid you look.”

He took her hands and raised one to his lips. “I could say the same of you, Madeline,” he said. “How are you?”

She pulled a face. “Perfectly fine,” she said.

He squeezed her hands. “I have heard,” he said quietly. “I am very sorry, you know.”

“But I have just realized why I did not recognize you,” she said. “You no longer look like a pirate, Allan. Whose idea was it to wear a flesh-colored eye patch instead of the black one?”

“My mother's, actually,” he said with a grin. “Inspired, don't you agree?”

“You look quite dashing,” she said. “But Allan—” she paused and gaped quite inelegantly at him for a moment, “you were waltzing. You were dancing with Jennifer.”

“So I was,” he said. “With my betrothed—though the announcement is not to be officially made until next week when Jennifer's grandfather is hosting a grand dinner in our honor.” He smiled down at the girl, who had slid a hand beneath his arm. “You don't mind my telling Madeline, my love?”

“Not really,” Jennifer said smiling impishly. “I suppose former fiancées should be the first to know such things. Wish us happy, Madeline?”

“But of course I do,” Madeline said. “Were you really dancing, Allan? And where are your crutches?”