The Gilded Web

by Mary Balogh

  “I am afraid I put you in a very awkward position last evening,” he said. “I had not meant so to force your hand. Under the circumstances, I could think of no other way to act.”

  “At the time I believe I was grateful to you,” she said.

  “At the time?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “It is not a pleasant feeling,” she said, looking steadily at him, “to be stranded in the middle of a crowded drawing room surrounded by people who stare and whisper and are hostile. It is even less pleasant to be snubbed very deliberately and very publicly by the gentleman one has been brought up to consider one’s betrothed.”

  “Peterleigh is not worth upsetting yourself over,” Lord Amberley said, taking a few steps toward her. “A true gentleman would stand by his lady even if she were indeed guilty of some active indiscretion. Forgive me if my words pain you, but I believe you are well rid of such a man.”

  She raised her chin. “I was sickened by everyone’s behavior last evening,” she said in a low, rather hurried voice. “It was bad enough that they chose to judge me so harshly for something that was none of my own fault. For that alone I would wish to have nothing more to do with society for the rest of my life. What was worse was the way almost everyone changed as soon as you hinted that we might become betrothed. If last evening is an example of what ‘gentility’ means, then I am ashamed of the name ‘lady.’”

  “You are quite right in your judgment,” he said gently. “Unfortunately, Miss Purnell, there is no perfect person on this planet and certainly no perfect institution. Our society protects itself through its strict moral and social standards. And such high standards inevitably lead to corruption on the one hand and to the type of hypocrisy of which you have been a victim on the other. But perhaps it is possible to overreact. There are good, if not perfect, people in this world. And an institution can have its value even if it is flawed.”

  “Then I am to accept that I must be a pariah unmarried, but perfectly respectable as your wife?” she asked, looking very directly at him again.

  He smiled. “You have a way of putting things, Miss Purnell,” he said, “a very direct way that makes a person feel uncomfortable. The answer to your question seems so obviously to be no. But the world is not such a black-and-white place as you imply. Life is what it is. Society is what it is. There is very little we can do to change either. We must accept what we must and change what we can. And somehow preserve our own integrity.”

  “I cannot be such a creature of compromise,” she said. “I have been in town for a month, my lord, and I do not like what I have seen. I would like to go home and forget I have ever been here.”

  “And is that possible?” he asked. “Have you put the idea to your father? Is he willing that you return home and remain there for the rest of your life?”

  She looked back at him silently.

  “I hate to say this, Miss Purnell,” he said. “I really do. But I do not think you have any choice at all about your future, do you? You must marry me.”

  He expected her to argue. Her chin was at a decidedly stubborn angle. Her jaw was set in a hard line. She said nothing. He walked even closer until he stood just a few feet in front of her and the tilt of her chin became necessary so that she might see up into his face.

  “I give you my word, Miss Purnell,” he said, “that it will not be such a bad bargain. I do not believe I am either an evil or a hard-hearted man. I do not know of any particular vice in my character. I have managed to live close to a younger brother and sister whose behavior is occasionally wild without ever resorting to violence or undue irritability. And I have position and wealth to offer you as well as a home of which I am inordinately proud. Will you marry me of your own free will?”

  Her eyes did not waver before his. They were dark, luminous eyes. “I will marry you,” she said.

  He smiled half-ruefully. “But not of your own free will?” he said.

  She was silent.

  “Will you tell me what it is in particular that makes you reluctant?” he asked.

  She said nothing. He took one step forward and reached for her hands, which were clasped in front of her. They were very cold.

  “You resent the chain of events that has made this necessary?” he asked. “It has all been quite overwhelming, has it not? The unfortunate mistake of identity; the fact that my brother did not return home in time to discover you and perhaps return you to the ball before you were missed; the fact that I had a new and prattling footman in my employ. You must feel that fate has been unduly unkind to you. But I am here now to protect you and care for you. Is that not enough?”

  “I have accepted your offer,” she said tonelessly.

  “But you do not want to be married to me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He let go of her hands and walked away from her toward the window. He sighed. “I wish I did not have to persuade you into this, Miss Purnell,” he said. “It has never been my wish to coerce any lady into marriage. The very idea of doing so is abhorrent to me.”

  “As you say, my lord,” she said, her voice tight and controlled, “there seems to be little alternative now to what you have offered and I have accepted. Circumspection this morning seems somewhat pointless.”

  He turned and looked at her with a troubled frown. “I hate to see you unhappy with the situation,” he said. Then he sighed. “But I suppose I can hardly expect you to be ecstatic about finding yourself betrothed quite unexpectedly to a stranger. I can only hope that in time I can teach you to be less reluctant. I shall spend my life as your servant, ma’am.”

  She dropped her eyes for the first time.

  “Your father advised me,” Lord Amberley said quietly, looking at her lowered head, “to keep you on a tight rein and not to hesitate to beat you when occasion arises. Why would he give me such advice?”

  “I frequently disappoint him,” she said, not looking up. “I am weak and thoughtless and often disobedient, even when I do not mean to be.”

  “Does he mistreat you?”

  Her jaw tightened. “He is my father,” she said. “He has the right to correct me in the way he thinks best.”

  “Does he beat you?”

  “He has not since I was sixteen,” she said.

  “I see,” he said. “And what punishments has he substituted for the corporal ones?”

  “They are not called punishments,” she said, raising her eyes and looking steadily and almost defiantly at him. “They are called corrections. I am required to pray and read Scripture when I have forgotten the peril in which I often place my soul.”

  “I see.” But Lord Amberley was not at all sure that he did see. And he could not tell what her attitude was to what she described—whether bitter and cynical or accepting. He had an almost panicked feeling that he was betrothing himself to some alien creature, a woman with whom he might never find a point of likeness. “I assume that you would spend the rest of your life on your knees with an open Bible before you if you were to dare to refuse me?”

  He supposed he had meant the words as something of a joke. But she did not smile or reply. She clasped her hands before her and raised her chin once more.

  He strode over to her again and repossessed himself of her hands. “Listen to me, Miss Purnell,” he said. “We both know that this betrothal must happen. I wish it did not, not so much for my sake as for yours. But the announcement must be made. Your father and society must be satisfied. Society will not be allowed to gloat, however. I shall see that you are taken away from here. I shall invite you and your family to Amberley Court. There you may spend the summer away from the public eye, getting to know me and the home that will be yours.

  “And I hope—I will make every effort to ensure it—that you will find after all that this marriage is not so repugnant to you. I will care for you, Miss Purnell. I will lift this burden that accident and my family’s carelessness have placed on your shoulders and give you contentment in its place. And I will not press for an ear
ly marriage. You may decide the date for yourself if you will. Will you agree to this?” He squeezed her hands.

  “Yes,” she said, looking him steadily in the eye.

  “Splendid!” he said. “You have made me happy, Miss Purnell.” He raised her right hand to his lips and kissed the palm. She flushed deeply, he noticed.

  “I have accepted your father’s invitation to dinner this evening,” he said, “conditional on your acceptance of my offer, of course. Will you object to my inviting you to join me at the theater tonight with your family? I will not make the invitation public if you would rather not.”

  “It is necessary, is it not,” she said, her tone bitter, “to show the respectable members of the ton that I am indeed now to be taken back into their favor.”

  “Yes,” he said gently, “it is necessary.”

  “Very well,” she said. “I am sure Mama and James will be delighted.”

  He smiled faintly to himself at her failure to assure him that she too would be delighted. “I will go one step further,” he said. “I will arrange some sort of betrothal celebration at my town house here. You will be presented to the ton, Miss Purnell, as my honored bride-to-be. I will leave you now.” He raised her left hand to his lips and kissed the back of her fingers.

  He turned to leave. But he stopped as he reached the door and turned back to her. “I want you to know one thing,” he said. “When you do marry me, Miss Purnell, you must rest assured that I will never under any circumstances lay a violent hand on you or on any children of our marriage. Neither will I ever impose prayer or Bible reading on you or them. God’s word was never intended as an instrument of torture. It is the word of inspiration and of love in its purest and most unconditional form. I will never impose any form of punishment on you. And although in the marriage service you will promise me obedience, I will not hold you to that promise. Obedience is for servants, who are paid for their services, not for a wife, who is a man’s companion and lover.”

  She did not turn before he left the room.

  “GOOD LORD, MAMA, IT ISN’T true, is it?” Lord Eden looked very tall and restless, standing in the middle of his mother’s sitting room.

  “I am afraid it is, Dominic,” she said, looking up from her needlepoint at her younger son. “Do sit down, dear. You give me the headache, pacing about like that. Madeline will be home at any minute, and she is bound to be in the highest of spirits after driving with Sir Derek Peignton. He is her latest true love, you see. It will be too, too much for my nerves to have both of you prancing about before me. Not at your ages and with your sizes.”

  Lord Eden sat. “Edmund is to marry Miss Purnell,” he said, stunned. “But she refused him the day before she refused me.”

  “It seems that Edmund did not consider his responsibility at an end there,” Lady Amberley said, resuming her needlework. “The whole thing turned into something ridiculously nasty, as you must know, Dominic. And that poor girl was in the thick of it. Of course Edmund offered for her again—at least, I assume he is making the offer official sometime today. He certainly made it clear to several people last evening that he intended to do so. And it is only what we might have expected. Edmund can always be depended upon to look to the well-being of people he feels responsible for. Sit down, dear.”

  Lord Eden had leapt to his feet, but he sat again at his mother’s quiet bidding. “And I can’t, I suppose?” he said. “It should have been me, should it not? I should have been the one to see that I must go back and persuade her to reconsider. I should not have felt the relief I did when she refused. I had no right to feel relief. It is not right that it is Edmund doing this, Mama. It should be me. It must be me.”

  “I think not, Dominic,” his mother said placidly, stitching on. “It is true that you were the one who unwittingly caused the girl’s character to be destroyed. And I am proud that you acknowledged the fact and went to make your apologies and your offer to Miss Purnell. But it is true too, dear, that you are very young. Two-and-twenty is too young for a man to marry. Men, alas, do not grow up as quickly as women. That is not to say that they do not grow up at all. You have only to consider your brother to know that extraordinary steadiness of character can develop before a man’s thirtieth birthday. But you are too young for marriage, Dominic. You would not do either yourself or Miss Purnell any good if you married her. Edmund would have realized that.”

  Lord Eden leapt to his feet again. “What nonsense, Mama!” he said, before flushing as she raised her head and her eyebrows. “Pardon me. I did not mean to sound so ill-mannered. But I am a man. It is just that I am your younger son and you see me as a boy still. And you have insisted on protecting me from any experience that will make me more of a man.”

  “The army,” she said wearily.

  “I was made to be a soldier, Mama,” he said. “Can you not see that? I can find nothing else in my life to make it a joy to live. I need action and responsibility. I would find the latter at least if I were to acquire a wife. Miss Purnell is my responsibility, and I shall tell Edmund so.”

  “She is not a commodity to be wrangled over,” his mother said with gentle firmness, folding her needlepoint and putting it to one side. “She is a person, dear, and undoubtedly a bewildered and unhappy person too. All her plans for her life have been totally overset in the past few days.”

  “And so have Edmund’s,” Lord Eden said. “I had not heard that he was even considering marriage yet, Mama, and he seemed quite happy with Mrs. B—. Well, anyway, he seemed quite happy. It is not right that he should be forced into this marriage. Miss Purnell is not remarkably pretty and she seems an overly serious female.”

  “Mrs. Borden is not right for Edmund either,” Lady Amberley said. “I am quite relieved that he will be forced to give her up. And Edmund will—he is not the type to keep a wife and a mistress. I was very much afraid that he would drift into a permanent relationship with her, even marriage perhaps. I am not sure that Miss Purnell is the right wife for him either. Unfortunately, I have not even met the girl. But you can be sure that Edmund will make the best of the marriage. If the girl is at all likable or lovable, Edmund will both like and love her and bring her to like and love him.”

  Lord Eden sat silent, his hands dangling between his knees.

  “We all owe it to Edmund to accept Miss Purnell as if she had become betrothed to him in the most regular manner,” Lady Amberley continued. “I was extremely proud of Madeline last evening. Everyone else in that Sharp woman’s drawing room was behaving with perfect snobbishness, avoiding the girl as if she had the plague. Madeline went and talked to her and risked being looked upon askance herself. I wish I had not been playing cards. I would have taken the girl on my arm and strolled from group to group with her. I would have dared anyone to snub her. Ridiculous people!”

  Lord Eden had no chance to reply. The door to the sitting room swung open and his sister burst in, still wearing a lavender pelisse and chip straw bonnet. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling.

  “I heard you were here, Dom,” she said, “and came right up. Mama, I thought I would be late for tea. What a love you are to have waited for me. Sir Derek’s phaeton was the most splendid in the whole park, I do declare.”

  Lord Eden stood up and grinned at his twin. “Would it have looked so splendid with another gentleman in it?” he asked.

  She put her head to one side and a finger to her chin, considering. “Well, perhaps with you, Dom,” she said. “And now you have got the compliment you were looking for. Are you satisfied?”

  “Do I hear wedding bells—again?” her brother asked.

  “With Sir Derek?” she asked, removing her bonnet and twirling it by the ribbons before tossing it toward an empty chair. “How would I know, Dom? He has not asked me yet. But he is most excessively handsome. Even Mama admits that.”

  “So were Prescott and Mitchell and Roberts and What’s-his-name from Dorset, and one or two others,” Lord Eden said.

  “You are not to
tease me,” Madeline said, tossing her pelisse in the same general direction as her bonnet. “You know you fall in love quite as often as I do, Dom, and I am always interested and sympathetic when it turns out that the girl is not quite the right one after all. Have you heard about Edmund?”

  “Of course I have heard about Edmund,” he said, scowling. “I have never heard such depressing news. Will she have him, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t believe she will have much choice,” Madeline said. “You cannot imagine what it was like for her last evening, Dom. I felt dreadfully distressed to think that you and I were the cause of it all. But Edmund was perfectly splendid. You should have seen the way he turned on his famous charm for Miss Purnell. Even I was impressed. And the way he pokered up for Lady Sharp and all the tabbies! He had everyone in the room fawning over him and practically eating out of his hand.”

  “Edmund ought not to do it,” Lord Eden said, sitting down again as his sister seated herself on an ottoman beside her mother. “She isn’t the wife for him, Mad.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “You would have admired her last evening, Dom. She was really quite magnificent. When everyone was loudly ignoring her, she looked just like a queen. I would have been howling with misery and mortification if it had been me. She did not break even when that horrid man, the Duke of Peterleigh, cut her very deliberately. And when Edmund took her about, she looked along her nose at the lot of them as if she were a dowager duchess. I think I am going to like her.”

  “We must all try to, dear,” Lady Amberley said, turning to receive the tea tray that a footman had carried into the room. “She is to be part of our family. Edmund’s wife. I shall try to love her.”

  “I just hope we do not have to see too much of her brother,” Madeline said. “He gives me the shudders. He has such a dark and hostile look. And those eyes of his gaze quite through one as though one were a moth caught on a pin and spread out for his inspection. I have not once seen him smile.”