The Gilded Web

by Mary Balogh

  “In his room, you said, Nanny?” Alexandra said. “I shall go now and be two minutes early. You have finished? Yes, I like it. Thank you.” She stood up, turned around, and surprised her old nurse by bending and planting a kiss on her withered cheek.

  “There,” Nanny Rey said. “Get along with you now.”

  Alexandra did not look forward to the interview with her father, but she did not feel afraid, as she usually did. She took a deep breath before tapping at his door, and waited for his valet to open it to her.

  “Good morning, Papa,” she said, looking around the dressing room when she went in and seeing that they were alone. She folded her hands in front of her, drew back her shoulders, and lifted her chin.

  “I don’t know what is good about it, Alexandra,” he said, turning at the opposite end of the room and glaring severely at her. “Your mother is unwell and confined to her bed until luncheon time at least, and our grand gentleman insists that an interview between himself and me is not satisfactory. It seems that you and your mother and his mother must be there too. So we must be kept waiting until this afternoon. A pretty situation this has turned out to be.”

  “But Lord Amberley is quite right, Papa,” she said calmly. “What we have decided concerns both him and me, and it is right that we should communicate that decision to our parents and discuss the matter in a civilized manner.”

  “Silence, girl!” he roared. “When I want your opinion, I will ask for it. And you may be sure that you will have a long wait before that happens. Is a man not to be master of his own family any longer?”

  Alexandra swallowed. “I will not be silent, Papa,” she said evenly. “This is a matter that concerns me very directly. I will have a voice in what happens to me.”

  She wondered for a moment what he was about to do. He stood arrested, staring at her. She did not move or remove her eyes from his.

  “What is this?” he said, his voice ominously quiet. “What ways have you picked up in this place of iniquity, Alexandra? Do you know that you are talking to your father, girl? And do you dare look me in the eye while you defy me? You had better go to your room and spend the hours until you are summoned downstairs on your knees begging for mercy. I shall make your excuses at luncheon.”

  “No,” she said, “I will not do that, Papa. I will not be praying to that imaginary God of wrath and vengeance ever again. And I intend to ride out onto the cliffs this morning if our interview with his lordship has been delayed. I am a grown woman, Papa. I am one-and-twenty. And I have decided to take my life into my own hands. I do not know what I will do with it. I suppose I will have to take a position as a governess or something like that. I will decide that after I have left here.”

  “I will decide what is to happen to you after we have left here,” Lord Beckworth blustered, striding across the room and glaring down at her. “I see that I will have to take responsibility for your immortal soul myself, Alexandra. You have let it slip to the devil.”

  “Papa,” she said, letting her shoulders relax and her chin fall an inch, “must we be like this? Can we not just love? When you arrived here a few days ago, I was so happy to see you. I realized how much I love you. You are my father, and I have spent my life with you. And you have cared for me. I know that you love me and James too. But you are so afraid to show it, so afraid of appearing weak and sinful. It is not sinful to love, Papa. God is love.”

  He gazed at her incredulously while she talked. One hand opened and closed at his side. “You are preaching to me?” he said.

  She shook her head. “I just want to hug you, Papa,” she said. “I just want to love you.”

  “I never heard such nonsense in my life,” he said. “I would think you should love me too, Alexandra. Your soul would be in a sorry state if you did not. And I would think I love you too. Have I not devoted the past twenty-one years to bringing you to eternal salvation?”

  “Papa,” she said almost in a whisper, “I love you.”

  “Hm.” The hand was opening and closing convulsively at his side. “I cannot think what can have come over you, Alexandra. You must be sickening for something. Go to your room, girl. I would advise you to lie down for an hour or two. I shall have to summon a physician when we return to town.”

  Alexandra closed the small distance between them and kissed him on the cheek before turning and whisking herself out of the room.

  “What in thunder has come over the girl!” were the last words she heard before she closed the door behind her.

  LORD AMBERLEY WAS IN his mother’s sitting room. He was standing before her, both his hands in hers.

  “Dear Edmund,” she was saying. “I have been so happy for you. I love Alexandra very dearly, and she has seemed so right for you. I thought that finally my son was to be rewarded for a lost youth and years of service to others. My firstborn son, Edmund. You are so very precious to me.”

  He was smiling. “You make it sound as if I have lived a life of misery and hardship, Mama,” he said. “How very untrue. I have had you and Dominic and Madeline. I have had this home and wealth and comfort. Many people would give an arm and a leg for the privilege of enjoying such misery. Don’t make a tragedy of what is happening now, dear. Alex and I are not right for each other. That is all. We will both be happier away from each other.”

  She looked searchingly into his smiling eyes. “Liar, Edmund,” she said. “Oh, liar! Do you think I do not know you a great deal better than to believe that? You love her, do you not?”

  “Yes, Mama,” he said gently. “I love her. She is everything in life to me.”

  She looked stricken and squeezed his hands more tightly. “And there is no hope?” she asked. “None, Edmund?”

  “No, Mama,” he said. “I have given Alex her freedom because that is what she wants most and has been without all her life.”

  She nodded. “You have given,” she said. “Yes, Edmund. And all is now said. I will not keep you. You must want to get away about your own business. Such meetings are a strain on you, are they not? I will see you at luncheon, dear.”

  She held up a cheek for his kiss and watched him leave the room. Sometimes he looked so much like his father that her heart ached with pain. But he was so much more vulnerable than his father, though not many people would suspect the fact. And she knew from long experience that the worse Edmund was hurting, the more firmly and gently he would smile.

  How dreadful it was to be a mother, to have borne a child and suckled him at one’s breast, to have watched him grow into manhood, and to know oneself powerless to shield him from harm and from suffering.

  Lady Amberley sighed and turned back to her embroidery frame.

  HE COULD NOT LEAVE her alone. He knew she had left the house. She had gone minutes before he had left the chapel, the butler told him. And when he stepped outside, he saw her ride alone up the hill to the west, on her way surely to the cliff top. It was where Alex would go this morning. And he had to follow her there. Perhaps she wanted to be alone. But there was so little time left. This might be his final chance to be alone with her. He had to go after her.

  Lord Amberley rode up the hill slowly, battling with himself. Perhaps he should turn back and leave her to herself. There really was nothing more to be said, nothing more to be done. Better to remember those magical early hours of the morning and their silent, strangely peaceful walk back to the house together as his final encounter with her. Better not to spoil it now with the awkwardness of a lone meeting in the cold light of day, when as like as not they would not be able to find one thing to say to each other.

  But he rode onward. He had to be alone with her one last time. Once more to see her, to look into her eyes, to touch her perhaps. He had not allowed his mind to dwell upon what had happened up in his hut early that morning. There was too much to be said and done that day, too much for which he must keep himself alert. He would open up the treasure of his memories when she was gone—tomorrow or the next day.

  But he could not sto
p the memories and images as he rode on. Alex naked and unembarrassed and more beautiful than any woman he had seen or imagined. Alex hot and fierce with passion in his arms. Alex above him, moving to his rhythm, gazing down into his face with dark, luminous eyes and voluptuously waving hair. Alex with her soft, wet, womanly depths opening to him and giving all of herself so that they had met and united in an ecstasy of giving and receiving.

  Alex!

  He could see her as he rode across the plateau toward the cliffs. She stood looking out to sea, her hands at her sides. She was hatless. Her horse was grazing on the coarse grass a safe distance from the cliff.

  She turned as he approached, and stood watching him. She did not come toward him or turn to move away. He left his horse beside hers and walked toward her. She did not smile or take her eyes from his face.

  He smiled and stood beside her. He looked down at the sea below them. “It is almost calm today,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Alex,” he said, “you will not regret last night?”

  “No.”

  “You will not forget?”

  “No, never,” she said. “How could I?”

  “I am glad,” he said.

  There seemed to be nothing else to say. He stood beside her, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the water, which he did not see.

  “You will be leaving tomorrow?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You will be happy, Alex?” he said. “You do not regret your decision?”

  There was a pause. “No,” she said.

  He nodded and lifted his eyes to the distant horizon.

  “What about you?” she asked suddenly, turning to look at him. “Tell me about you, Edmund. How do you feel about all this? How do you feel about last night? Will you be happy? Do you have any regrets?”

  He turned his head to look back at her. His eyes were smiling. “I have grown fond of you, Alex,” he said, “and I do not need to tell you how I felt about last night. I want you to be happy. If you are happy in what we have decided, then I am content. No regrets, dear.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her head shaking slowly from side to side. “No,” she said. “That is not good enough, Edmund. I do not want to know how you think you should feel, or what you think you should do. You have given me so much, Edmund. You have always been so selfless. But you have never given me yourself. Your body, yes. But not you. I don’t know you at all.”

  His smile spread downward to his mouth. “You are the important one here,” he said. “I have had a happy life, Alex, and have been abundantly blessed. You have not. And if I can do one small thing to make you happy, then I will do it willingly. I have done it. I have set you free. It is what you wish, is it not?”

  “Show me you are vulnerable,” she said. “Show me one sign, Edmund. Are you hurt in any way? Even in the smallest way? Have I hurt you at all? Show me one chink in the armor. Show me that you are not all saint. Show me that you are a man who can feel and suffer. Please, Edmund. Tell me what I have done to you, what I am doing. If anything. Or tell me that you are happy to see me go.”

  For once his smile seemed frozen in place. And then it faded as she waited, her eyes holding his. “I love you,” he said. “And I am raw with the pain of losing you. I have given all I can, Alex, because you are more important than anything else in my life. I will hurt and hurt when you leave, and I cannot see any end to the pain. Although my mind knows that I will live on and continue to function, and that I will laugh again and that a day will pass eventually in which I will not think of you, my heart cannot believe it today. There. Now, are you satisfied?”

  There were tears in his eyes and he smiled at her again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  She watched him swallow and bring himself under control, as the smile took firm control of his blue eyes again. “I thought it was freedom I wanted,” she said, “until I had it and realized that that was not it at all. What I wanted, Edmund, what I have always wanted, is to be needed. I have always been cared for and trained and disciplined by Mama and Papa. I have been loved and protected by James. And I have been sheltered and treated with incredible kindness and courtesy by you and by your family. But I have never been needed. Feelings have always come to me from others. No one has ever seemed to need my feelings to flow back again. No one has ever really needed to be loved by me.”

  “I need you,” he said. “My God, Alex, I need you.”

  “I know,” she said. And suddenly she smiled dazzlingly at him. “Will you marry me, Edmund?”

  He searched her eyes. “You know I will marry you anytime you say the word,” he said.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not good enough. I don’t want you to marry me because I want you to. Not at all. I would rather be companion to a ninety-year-old crosspatch in the farthest corner of the Scottish Highlands. I really would. I want you to marry me because you want to. Or not marry me, as the case may be. But because of your feelings and your needs, Edmund.”

  “I don’t want to continue living without you,” he said. “I suppose I will if I must. I am not the suicidal type. But I don’t want to, Alex. I want to take you up to my stone hut and keep you there all to myself for the rest of our lives. I want to love you and love you and forget that there is anyone else on this planet who might need me at some time in the future. I need you as I need this air we are breathing. Have I reassured you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “Will you allow me to be the man here? I know that you do not think our society is very fair to women, but this is the society we live in, my dear. It is the only one we have, and if there is any marriage proposal to be made here, I am the one who is going to make it. Understood?”

  “Yes, Edmund,” she said.

  “And you need not look so meek,” he said. “You may fight me and fight me on this theme for the rest of our lives, but on this one occasion I insist on being the man. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes, Edmund,” she said.

  His hands were cupping her face, his fingers threaded into the soft waves over her ears, his thumbs rubbing against her cheeks. He gazed into her eyes for several moments, his own serious and searching.

  “Will you really?” he said. “It is not just because of the sad story I just told you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “it is entirely because of that, Edmund. I would not marry you if my own need was the only inducement. I was never sure that that was not all until you said that you really wanted and needed me. I never knew that your wish to marry me was not just your excessive kindness and desire to protect what was weaker than yourself.”

  “Alex,” he said. He was shaking his head. “Even after last night?”

  “I asked you to do it,” she said. “It could have just been that you wanted to make me happy.”

  “If you had had any experience in such matters,” he said, “you could not possibly have just said that. I could not have done what I did to you, dear, and in just that way, if I was just intent on giving you a pleasant sensual experience. I was loving you, Alex, loving you with all of me. Yes, and asking and begging for all of you. You would have known that had it not been your first time. You would not have had to ask me this morning.”

  “Well,” she said, placing a hand against his coat. “Well.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, Edmund, I don’t have to go away after all. I don’t have to leave you. And I won’t have to keep taking and taking from you. I will be able to give. You need me. You really need me! I think I need to shout or scream. I cannot grasp the truth of this yet. I don’t have to go, Edmund?”

  He was grinning at her when she opened her eyes. “I might ask you to move a hundred yards away if you really are going to scream,” he said.

  She giggled suddenly and threw her arms up around his neck. “Oh, Edmund,” she said, “how I do love you. And you are quite right. Love is what is most important. But love that goes two ways.
Love that gives and love that receives.”

  “You will have to teach me the latter,” he said. “I am not used to being vulnerable, Alex. I will doubtless close up against you the very next time I feel hurt or suffering approaching and try to cope with it alone. You will have to teach me to let you in. It will not be easy, dear. I am afraid of disappointing you.”

  “No,” she said. “Now that I know you need me, I am never going to forget it, and I am not going to let you forget it.”

  He bent his head and kissed her.

  She clasped her arms more tightly about his neck when he lifted his head again. “Edmund,” she said, “I have to get something off my conscience. It is wrong to keep a secret from one’s betrothed, is it not? Especially a guilty one?”

  He looked inquiringly and a little warily into her eyes. “What is it, love?” he asked.

  “I lied,” she said. “Last night I lied because I wanted you so badly. I really do not know when is the most likely time or the most unlikely to be got with child.” She flushed quite hotly after the words were out of her mouth.

  He laid his forehead against hers. “It seems I have no choice then, love,” he said. “I will have to make an honest woman of you, won’t I?”

  “Yes, Edmund,” she said.

  “Soon,” he said. “Very soon, Alex. And we will have to hope that you can lie as convincingly as you did last night if our first child is born a little less than nine months after the nuptials.”

  “Oh, Edmund,” she said with perfect seriousness, gazing into his eyes, “I hope he is. Oh, I do hope he is. What a beautiful way for a child to begin.”

  He kissed her again. “All our children will begin as beautifully, Alex,” he said. “I promise you.” He grinned suddenly. “All one hundred and two of them. No, don’t flinch, love. Remember there are twins on my side of the family.”

  “I want to go and tell Mama and Papa,” she said. “Can we go and tell them, Edmund? Please?”