The Devil's Web (39 page)

“Somewhere in Devonshire,” he said with a grin. “I told Jennifer last year that when I was able to walk her down the aisle of a church from the altar, I would come and ask her to walk to that altar on her grandpapa's arm. But not unless or until I was able to do that.”

“He is so foolish,” Jennifer said, clucking her tongue. “As if I could not love a man on crutches. I spent the whole winter in the sullens and swearing that Allan was the last man on this earth I would ever agree to marry.”She giggled and looked fondly up at her betrothed.

“Well—” Madeline said.

“Madeline?” The light touch on her arm burned through to the bone. The quiet voice was like a fist in the stomach, robbing her of breath. “Will you dance?”

She turned away from Jennifer and Allan without a word of farewell. She ignored three gentlemen admirers who were standing close by, walking past them without even seeing them. She had totally forgotten that one of those gentlemen had signed her card for this very set. She stopped when she reached a clear space on the ballroom floor, and turned. And she stood looking at the black embroidery on her husband's waistcoat while the orchestra prepared to play.

They began to play a waltz.

S
HE HAD DANCED
with him for all of five minutes, one hand rigid on his shoulder, the other cold in his own. Her eyes had been directed at his waistcoat the whole time. Her face was quite without expression.

“Smile,” he said. “Do you wish to draw attention to yourself?”

She raised calm green eyes to his. “Quite frankly, James,” she said, “I do not care the snap of two fingers what people think. And I have done taking orders from you. I do not feel like smiling, and I will not smile.”

He had made a disastrous beginning. That was not what he needed to say or wanted to say at all.

She looked dazzlingly beautiful. Her hair must have been growing all the time she had been living with him. But he had not noticed until tonight, when she was wearing it in a new style.

She returned her gaze to his waistcoat.

“I will be going back to Yorkshire,” he said. “Within the week. It is clearly what you wish. I will send a solicitor to your mother's house. He will have authority from me to make any settlement on you that you think acceptable.”

“Are you sure you trust me not to take your whole fortune?” she said.

“You may take it and be welcome to it,” he said, and watched her eyes lift to meet his for a moment again. “I had to talk to you before returning home, Madeline. Just once. Did you feel I was harassing you? I needed just one meeting.”

“You have it,” she said. “I am a captive audience. And though I will not smile and pretend to be enjoying myself, you know very well that I will not create a scene. Not at my mother's betrothal ball. It was cleverly done, James.”

“I told Alex I would come only on condition that you had been warned I would be here,” he said. “You could have sent word that I was to stay away, Madeline. I would not have forced myself on you as I have not done in the past two weeks. I could have done so, you know. You are my lawful wife.”

“Yes,” she said. And those icy green eyes were on his again. “I know all about that, James. It would not have been the first time you forced yourself on me, would it?”

He closed his eyes briefly and danced on. “I want you to know,” he said, “that Dora Drummond is not my mistress and has not been for ten years. I have no mistress and no casual amour, either. I have had no woman but you since our marriage or for a considerable time before that.”

Her chin lifted, but her eyes remained on his waistcoat.

“And Jonathan Drummond is not my son,” he said, and found himself looking full into her eyes again. “He might have been, Madeline. We were lovers, Dora and I, briefly, when I was twenty and she seventeen. And I thought he
was
my son until just over a month ago. But he is not. He is Peterleigh's son.”

He watched her swallow and look down again.

“Dora was forced to marry,” he said, “and move away from Yorkshire when she was found to be with child. I was at university at the time and knew nothing about it until it was too late. I did not see her or hear from her again until I took you home as my bride. I have talked to her twice since, once when I took one of her younger children home after finding him on the road with a sprained ankle, and once at Peterleigh's ball. I discovered the truth there.”

“How nice for you,” she said.

“But it was too late,” he said. “For years my life had been blighted by guilt and bitterness because of the lies I had believed. And now it has been destroyed by the same person's lying to you.”

“Mr. Beasley?” she said.

“Beasley, yes,” he said. “He has been wreaking a little revenge for a thorough beating I gave him after Dora disappeared.” “

A sad story,” she said. “She had the wrong man's child and married the wrong man. Quite tragic, really.”

“I have no feelings left for her, Madeline,” he said. “It was a young man's infatuation blown out of all proportion by the events that followed. I have no feelings for her at all. Or she for me.”

He waited for her to say something, but she said nothing. Her eyes were lowered again.

“But it was not Beasley who destroyed our marriage,” he said. “I did that.”

“Yes,” she said.

He spoke very softly. “I ravished you, Madeline,” he said. “I took what were my rights as your husband, but it was ravishment for all that. And I have no excuse. I cannot even apologize to you, for an apology would be totally inadequate. I can only promise to stay away from you and take care of your needs for the rest of your life. You may have whatever you want that is mine to give. You have only to tell my solicitor.”

“You are generous,” she said.

“And you are bitter.” He looked down at her bowed head with an ache of remorse for what he had done to her life in less than a year. “I cannot blame you, Madeline. I told you you were marrying the devil, that you were caught in the devil's web. I did not even realize myself at the time how close to the truth my words were. I did not mean to destroy you.”

“You have not done so,” she said, looking him very directly in the eyes. “No one has the power to destroy me, James, unless I choose to be destroyed. You are not important enough to me to have accomplished anything quite so devastating. We shared a physical obsession. We were both agreed on that when we married. Well, nine and a half months have been long enough to satisfy that obsession. Quite long enough. And there really is not anything else between us, is there?”

“No,” he said after gazing down at her for a long moment. “There is nothing else. Only that. This is good-bye, then, Madeline. After five years we will finally be free of each other, apart from the small matter of a marriage that binds us legally, of course. But you need not fear that I will ever press any claim on you that relates to that. You can be free of me at last. And you are still young and still beautiful.”

He watched her lift her hand from his shoulder and felt her fingers brush back a lock of hair from his forehead. And he watched her frown and bite her lip and lower her eyes again.

He schooled his expression to blankness and watched her. For the last time. A five-year obsession. Finally at an end. For her. For him it would end when he drew his final breath. And perhaps not even then.

He had loved her and married her. But they had not lived happily ever after. He had lost her. Not through Carl Beasley's fault or his father's or Dora's or Peterleigh's or anyone else's.

Through his own fault.

He led her to Lord Eden's side when the music came to an end, bowed to both of them, said a few words to Alex—he could never afterward remember what—and left the ball, half an hour after he had arrived.

A
T LEAST HE CAME, MAD,” DOMINIC HAD SAID. “All the way from Yorkshire, I mean. He has been trying every day for a fortnight to see you. And it seemed to me, watching the two of you dance, that he was doing a great deal of talking.”

“Yes, he did,” she had said. “He said a lot.”

“But nothing to persuade you to reconsider?”

“He is going back home within the next few days,” she had said. “I will not be seeing him again, Dom. I don't want to see any more of him. I just want to forget and start again.”

He had led her into the next set.

And she had danced for the rest of the evening.

She lay on her bed two days later staring at the canopy above her. Her mother was out somewhere with Sir Cedric. Madeline had been invited to take tea with Edmund and Alexandra but had declined. Aunt Viola and Anna had invited her to accompany them on a shopping expedition. She had declined. Lord and Lady Carstairs had invited her to join them and Lady Carstairs's gentleman cousin on a drive to Kew. She had declined. The day before she had sent her excuses to avoid an afternoon picnic and an evening visit to the opera.

She could no longer pretend that she was Lady Madeline Raine again, free to enjoy all the pleasures the Season had to offer. There was no enjoyment and no pleasure. She must plan for her future.

And her future would be independent of Mama and Edmund and Dominic. They had their own lives to lead and it would be unfair to burden any one of them with her presence. Much as they loved her, she would nevertheless be an intruder on their domestic happiness. And besides, she had no wish to be dependent upon them.

She was dependent upon James. That was the way of the world. But at least he was going to allow her some measure of freedom. She would use it. She would decide where and how she wished to live, and she would arrange for the financing of those needs when his solicitor called on her.

It was all very simple really. All she needed to do was do it.

She should have told him about the baby. He would have to know about that. And that fact might change everything. He might insist after all that she go back home with him. She would write to him within the next week or so.

She closed her eyes. She had so wanted him to ask her to come back to him. It was shameful to admit. Did she have no strength of will and no pride? She had wanted him to ask or even insist. It would have been easy if he had insisted. There would have been no decision to make. She could have gone with him because she had no choice, and she could have blamed him for the rest of their lives if they had continued unhappy.

They were shameful thoughts. Was the responsibility of making something of their marriage entirely his? Was she content to be a passive victim? But under the circumstances, she had not even had a chance to be that. He had decided to be noble and give her the freedom he thought she wanted. He had neither asked nor commanded.

And so she was free. Free to live where and how she wanted, though of course she would always be bound to him by the ties of marriage. She was free.

An empty victory.

She could just see James as he had been the first time she saw him. He was standing in the middle of Lady Sharp's drawing room the night the
ton
decided to snub Alexandra. She, Madeline, had been the only person to cross the room to them, though she had never seen either one before. He had been looking as if he could commit murder, his face thunderous, his eyes burning with fury. She had felt unaccountably frightened of him.

And it was a feeling that had persisted all that summer, while their dislike for each other had grown alongside their attraction to each other.

She could remember him kissing her with fury in the valley at Amberley and with passion and tenderness on the night of Edmund's ball. The night he had put her away from him and told her that his feelings were lust only. The night he had ridden away. The last time she had seen him for four years.

She remembered listening to Alexandra read aloud his letter in which he told her he was coming home the following summer. And her feelings afterward: excitement, hope, caution. She had spent a year persuading herself that his coming meant nothing to her.

And then seeing him again last spring. And the rekindling of passion and dislike.

Their good-bye at Edmund's ball again.

It would have been far better if he had not come back, if he had already sailed for Canada before news of his father's heart seizure could reach him. By now she would have put him from her mind again.

Again? Had she ever put him from her mind from that first meeting on? Would she ever be able to do so?

And if she could go back, knowing then what she knew now, would she choose not to marry him? The nine and a half months of their marriage had been hell.

And heaven.

She had lived almost eight months of that marriage with James. Miserable much of the time, but with him nonetheless. And there had been good times. Precious few, it was true, but a few nevertheless.

There had been that afternoon on the moors before their bitter quarrel. The rare feeling of togetherness. The rare openness of his conversation. The magic of their shared lovemaking. They had been so close on that afternoon. So close to bursting through the barrier that always held stubbornly between them.

So very close. One word, perhaps, by one of them might have changed the course of their lives. If he had said her name, if she had called him her love, perhaps they would have gone crashing through that barrier together.

And there was nothing between him and Dora Drummond. He had no son. He had had no woman but her since their marriage. Carl Beasley had lied to him and to her—from what particular motive she could not fully understand. Mr. Beasley had destroyed him, James had said.

And James had destroyed their marriage. She had agreed with him on that. He had forced himself on her at a time when she was hurt and bewildered and had asked to be left alone. He had taken her anyway.

But it had not been rape. She had said that she did not want him, but she had wanted to be ignored. She had wanted him with a powerful need and an overwhelming passion. Just as she had wanted two evenings ago to be overpowered. She had refused for two weeks to see James, but she had wanted desperately for him to break in upon her. She had left him, but she had wanted him to tell her that she was going back with him.

Madeline opened her eyes and stared upward again. How difficult it was, sometimes, to know and understand oneself. She had always thought of herself as a forceful character who knew her own mind and who would never stand for anyone else walking all over her. And yet her relationship with her husband proved her wrong on all counts. She wanted to be mastered and dominated. And when finally James had refused to do either and had left her free, she must take to her bed in order to wallow in misery and self-pity.

Self-knowledge could be the most distressing knowledge of all.

Madeline was off the bed and jerking on the bell pull before another ten seconds had passed.

“My blue walking outfit,” she told her maid, her voice almost panicked. “And before you get it, send word that a carriage is to be sent around without delay.”

She was sitting in the carriage less than half an hour later, having rejected a number of options. She might have sent a note around to him asking him to call. She might have driven over to Lord Harrowby's to ask Dominic to accompany her or to Edmund's to ask him. Or if she was wary of involving her brothers, Walter would doubtless have come with her. Certainly it was not the thing for an unaccompanied lady to call on a gentleman in the particular club where James had his lodgings, even if that gentleman was her husband.

But she had decided to go herself and to go alone. There was too much inaction involved in sending a note. And it would be wasted time to go in search of a male escort. He was to return home within a few days, he had said. And he had said it two days before. Perhaps he had gone already. Perhaps even now she would be too late.

She was. The doorman at the gentlemen's lodging house bowed stiffly, looked her over from head to toe in the not-quite-insolent manner that some servants could achieve to perfection, and informed her that his lordship had left.

“Left for the afternoon?” she asked. “Or left for good?”

He bowed again and looked at her with the pity and scorn he might accord to an abandoned courtesan. “We are not expecting his lordship,” he said.

He was gone. She was too late. She looked haughtily along her nose at the doorman and enjoyed watching him bow obsequiously as she handed him a coin he had done nothing to earn.

He was gone. She placed a gloved hand in that of her mother's footman and climbed wearily back into the carriage.

“Take me to Lord Amberley's,” she said on sudden impulse, and sat back against the seat, her eyes closed, willing it not to be true, willing some other explanation of his absence to be waiting for her when she reached Alexandra.

“Where is her ladyship?” she asked Edmund's butler coolly, handing the man her bonnet and gloves.

“In the drawing room, my lady,” he said, bowing.

But she could not hold on to her coolness. Instead of waiting for the butler to climb the stairs ahead of her and announce her, she went flying up the stairs and pushed open the double doors of the drawing room without even knocking.

“Alexandra,” she cried, oblivious to all but the figure of her sister-in-law, on her knees beside Caroline on the floor, “has he left already?”

And then her eyes traveled past Alexandra and Edmund and Dominic and Ellen and all four children to focus on her husband, dressed for travel and standing before the empty fireplace, his hands clasped behind him.

H
E HAD DONE
everything he could. Having ruined his own life and ruined Madeline's chance of ever making a happy marriage unless he were to die young, he had done everything possible to make matters as right as they could ever be.

He had engaged a solicitor to handle her affairs and had given the man strict instructions to grant her every wish, regardless of expense. And he had called upon his mother-in-law and both his brothers-in-law.

“I am sorry,” he said to the dowager countess. “You must dislike me quite intensely. And you are right to do so. All this has been my fault. But I want you to know that I am making all the reparation I can, ma'am. Your daughter will never be in need. She has only to wish for something and I will grant it.”

“You talk of money,” she said, surprising him by crossing the room to where he stood and taking both his hands in hers. “She has other needs, James. Can you grant those too?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I am afraid not. I have made her very unhappy.”

“Then I am afraid that no one will ever be able to make her happy,” she said, “if you cannot. I know my daughter very well, James.”

He returned the pressure of her hands. “I am sorry,” he said. “I truly am. I do love her, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling rather sadly at him. “Sometimes it just seems that love is not enough, does it not?”

He said much the same to her brothers. Neither heaped blame on his shoulders, though he had fully expected that Dominic at least would do so.

“Do you love my sister?” Dominic asked.

“Yes,” James said.

“You have not thought of insisting that she go back home with you?”

“No.” James looked his brother-in-law squarely in the eyes.

“You know,” Dominic said, “Madeline likes a confrontation. She likes to fight. She hates it when there is nothing to fight against. She tends to give in.”

“I will not force her into anything,” James said. “Not anymore.”

Dominic raised his eyebrows.

“You are her twin,” James said. “I know she is closer to you than to anyone else. Will you write to me occasionally and tell me how she is? It is a great deal to ask, I know. Alex will write to me, of course, but with you I will know that what you say is true, and not what Madeline wants people to believe is true. Will you let me know if she is in any need?”

“She is already in need,” Dominic said.

James raked a hand through his hair. “I meant a need I can supply,” he said.

“That is what I meant too,” Dominic said.

At the end of it all he was not sure he had accomplished anything by his journey to London. He wanted to talk to Madeline again, explain himself to her more clearly, make sure that she understood that her life was now her own to do with as she wished. He wanted to see her again, to have one more chance to imprint the image of her on his memory.

And he wanted to go away, to have done with it all. Two days after Edmund's ball he called upon Douglas Cameron. His old friend was planning to return to Montreal at the end of the summer, even though he was tempted to stay yet another winter in order to see Jean safely through her confinement.

“But she doesn't need me any longer, lad,” he said with a laugh. “There comes a time when one must kiss a lass good-bye and be on one's way. Especially when there's another man become the apple of her eye.”