The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  “From what I have seen,” Madeline said, “they are one as bad as the other.”

  “It seems strange to see Dominic in a nursery, doting on two babies,” Anna said with something of a sigh. “Just a year ago I was still swearing to anyone who cared to listen that I was going to marry him.” She giggled again.

  “You don’t seem to be pining away with grief,” her father said, entering the conversation unexpectedly. “Sawyer three weeks ago, Dartford two weeks ago, Bailey last week, Chambers this week.” He was counting off on his fingers. “And Ashley fits in there somewhere too. One of these days, Madeline, I am going to embarrass puss here by calling one of her young men by another one’s name. Sometimes I wish we were Catholic. I could pack her off to a convent and have some peace.”

  “William!” his wife said, horrified. “What a thing to say. Take no notice of him, Madeline. He does like to tease, you know. Everyone knows that Anna is the apple of his eye.”

  Madeline laughed and took her glass of lemonade from Colonel Huxtable.

  “Mr. Purnell is looking very handsome,” Anna said. “He always did. I wonder if he remembers me. I was just fifteen when he was at Amberley four years ago, and everyone else ignored me. But he was very kind, I remember, just as if he understood perfectly well how horrid it is to be fifteen and neither a child nor a woman. He has probably forgotten me.”

  “Ah,” Madeline said, smiling at the colonel, “it is cool and tastes very good, Jason. I wish Mrs. Denton would direct that some windows be opened.”

  “Let’s see if he does remember me,” Anna said, laying a hand on Madeline’s arm. “Do you think we can cross this crowded room without being trampled on?” She laughed lightly after ascertaining that Mr. Chambers was talking with someone else. “We can pretend that we have gone to pay our respects to Edmund and Alexandra. He really is excessively handsome, is he not, Madeline? Who is the lady with him? I am jealous already. She is very pretty.”

  “I don’t know,” Madeline said. “I have never seen her before.” They were on their way across the room already, their arms linked. She had really had no choice in the matter without making a pointed refusal. A refusal to greet her own brother and sister-in-law? It had been out of the question. Her heart felt as if it were attached to the soles of her slippers.

  And she found to her own annoyance that as usual when James Purnell was anywhere in the vicinity she could not behave with any naturalness. She did not know whether to smile or not. And when she decided to smile, she did not know how brightly. And she could fix her eyes only on her brother and felt she would surely drown or die if she let them slip anywhere else. Just as she had felt when watching the pianist earlier, without hearing one note he had played.

  She despised herself heartily. She had not felt so gauche since she had stepped out of the schoolroom a decade before.

  THE EARL OF AMBERLEY SMILED AT HIS SISTER and his cousin and kissed the latter on the cheek. “You are growing lovelier by the day, young Anna,” he said. “And what are you up to? A great deal of mischief, by the look of it.”

  “Coming to say good evening to my favorite cousin,” she said almost in a whisper, looking up at him with large and dancing eyes, “and hoping that Mr. Purnell remembers me.”

  “Ah,” he said, looking at Madeline and giving her the suggestion of a wink, “I thought it strange that you would risk being crushed and jostled coming across here just in order to get a closer look at your, er, favorite cousin, my dear.” He looked back over his shoulder and raised his voice. “James, you are to step over here immediately or sooner, if you please, to see if you recognize this young lady.”

  Anna blushed hotly and looked reproachfully at the earl. She kept her hold of Madeline’s arm. And so Madeline, who had been forming the hasty plan of paying her compliments to Lord and Lady Beckworth, was held in place as James Purnell turned toward them, his dark eyes boring into her for an uncomfortable fraction of a second.

  And the pretty young girl who had been clinging to his arm all evening was still there, looking flushed and anxious. And small and dainty and helpless and altogether as if she belonged to him.

  “Miss Carrington,” he said after his eyes had rested on Anna for a few moments. “I scarcely knew you because you have grown up since I saw you last and are considerably more lovely. But yes, I remember you perfectly well.”

  Anna’s discomfort vanished instantly. And finally, when it was too late, she released Madeline’s arm. She smiled dazzlingly up at James. “You were at Amberley the year Edmund and Alexandra were betrothed,” she said. “I was sorry when you left so abruptly. You were the only gentleman there who did not treat me as if I were a fifteen-year-old nuisance.”

  “Poor little Anna!” Edmund said, and grinned. “You would have met Madeline this afternoon, of course, James.”

  And finally there was nowhere else to look except right at him. Their eyes met at last, and held.

  “Yes,” they both said abruptly and simultaneously.

  He was the first to break eye contact and to move his head rather jerkily to one side.

  “I would like to present Lady Madeline Raine and Miss Anna Carrington, Jean,” he said. “Edmund’s sister and cousin. This is Miss Jean Cameron from Montreal in Canada.”

  From Canada. He must have brought her with him. Were they betrothed? Married? But no, something would have been said. The girl was curtsying to her and flushing. Madeline nodded to her.

  “From Canada?” Anna was saying, enthralled. “How splendid. You simply must tell me all about it at some time. Are there many bears there? And wolves?”

  The girl laughed and immediately looked even prettier than she had a minute before. “People here have funny ideas about Canada,” she said. “But then, I had funny ideas about England, too. I don’t think I would have been wholly surprised to find the streets of London paved with gold.”

  The two girls began to chatter. And Alexandra drew her husband’s attention to something her mother had said. Madeline was aware suddenly that she was standing silently beside an equally silent James Purnell. She looked up at him rather nervously to find his eyes on her.

  And she was dismayed a moment later to find that she had immediately lowered her eyes to the fan she held in one hand.

  “The pianist is marvelously accomplished, is he not?” she said. “I was held spellbound throughout his recital.”

  If anyone had said those very words to her, she would have been hard put to it to keep a straight face. All she needed to add was a titter. And then she heard it, a moment after the words were spoken.

  “The pianoforte is not my favorite instrument,” he said.

  His voice always surprised her. One did not expect a man of such vivid and almost harsh looks to be so soft-spoken or to have such a cultured voice. But it angered her, too. He never had known how to conduct polite conversation.

  “Well, then,” she said, opening her fan and fluttering it before her face, “perhaps you will enjoy the soprano better in the second half. Or do you not enjoy sopranos, either?”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked down at her. “Not particularly,” he said. “I would prefer a contralto voice.”

  And she was left staring at him, while conversation flowed around them. He made no attempt to continue their own conversation. Memory stabbed at her. He had always been this way, looking at her with unconcealed contempt and showing his scorn for her conversation by not participating in it beyond monosyllables.

  How could she ever have persuaded herself that she loved him? How could she have convinced herself that for a short while at Edmund’s ball he had returned that love? How could she have so humiliated herself as to pine for him after he had gone?

  She turned sharply away. “I think the concert is about to resume,” she said to Anna. “We should find our way back to our seats.” She smiled at Jean Cameron and raised a hand in farewell to her brother and sister-in-law. She ignored James Purnell.

  And James bowed and smiled a
t a bright-eyed Anna and watched her turn to make her way through the crush of people toward the other side of the room again. Or rather, to be quite honest with himself, he watched her companion.

  She was more beautiful than she had been. Indeed, she had never been an unusually lovely woman. It had always been the glow and vitality in her face that had drawn all eyes her way. But she was that rare kind of woman who grows more beautiful with age and the development of character. He had felt his breath catch in his throat when he had finally looked full into her face from close quarters.

  And he was as awkward with her as he had ever been. Unable to think of anything witty or profound to say to her, and taking refuge in surliness and silence. He had always been thus with her, and when she had flared up at him on a few occasions when they had been together at Amberley that summer, then he had lashed out at her, accusing her of an empty-headedness that could find entertainment only in meaningless chatter.

  He had even convinced himself that it was true. And could still do so, he supposed. Her behavior that afternoon in her mother’s drawing room had been loud and silly. Her remarks of a few minutes before had been mundane. But he need not have answered as he had. He might have agreed with her for the sake of civility.

  He found it possible to be civil with all the world, it seemed, except with Madeline. And except with his father, perhaps. He glanced uneasily Lord Beckworth’s way. They had scarcely spoken since his return. And he still had not decided whether it was not better that way.

  “They were very civil, were they not, James?” Jean was saying from beside him. Two spots of color high on her cheekbones gave her a glow of prettiness.

  “And why would they not be?” he asked, his eyes twinkling down at her, “unless they were jealous of your loveliness, of course.”

  Her face lit up with merriment. “You say the silliest things,” she said. “Miss Carrington is very amiable, James. And Lady Madeline is quite lovely. I am amazed that she would condescend to take notice of me at all. She is with that splendidly handsome officer, is she not?”

  “It would seem so,” he said. “And now it would seem we are to be entertained by a famous soprano. Are you enjoying the music, Jean?”

  She turned bright eyes on him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I am enjoying every single moment,” she said. “I am storing up the memories to tell Papa and Duncan and Miss Hendricks. And to last me a whole lifetime. This is me, sitting shoulder to shoulder with members of the ton.”

  He laughed at her and squeezed her hand as it rested on his arm. And across the pianoforte he caught the eye of Madeline, who was also laughing and tapping the colonel’s arm with her fan. They both looked quickly away again.

  THE COUNTESS OF AMBERLEY had persuaded her husband to host a dinner and ball in honor of her brother’s return to England. It had not been difficult to do since she had discovered long before that the earl found it impossible to refuse her anything that was within his power to give. And yet it had been difficult to ask for since she knew that he was a hermit at heart and did not enjoy grand social occasions.

  “But just this once,” she had said, twining her arms about his neck and looking apologetically up at him. “Because James is here, Edmund, and is not like to be here again for many years or perhaps ever.”

  “If you wish us to give a ball,” he had said, “then we will do so, Alex. You do not have to win me over with arguments.”

  “I think perhaps he will go back to Canada and marry Miss Cameron,” she had said. “She is a very sweet girl, though very young. Do you think they will suit?”

  “I have no idea,” he had said, “not being of a matchmaking turn of mind. All I know and care about is that you suit me.”

  “And will Madeline marry Colonel Huxtable?” she had asked him. “He is quite splendid, Edmund, and is one of the few gentlemen I have seen with Madeline who has the strength of mind she needs in a husband. Will they suit?”

  He had smiled and kissed her. “Go and make up your invitation list,” he had said. “With any luck ours will be named the ball of the year, with two betrothal announcements during the course of it. How about Anna and Chambers? And Walter and Miss Mitchell? Have I forgotten anyone?”

  “Horrid man,” she had said, laughing. “You are quite odious.”

  But plans for the dinner and ball were put into action from that moment on. Whether he liked it or not, James thought rather ruefully as he ruffled his nephew’s hair and kissed his niece the following morning as he left the nursery with Alexandra.

  “You will bring Miss Cameron?” Alexandra asked. “She is a very sweet girl, James, and has quite unaffected manners.”

  James hesitated. He could see how easy it would be to fall into a trap. There was a certain security in clinging to Jean. And yet he was not sure that he wished the two of them to be considered a couple. He was not sure at all.

  “She is enjoying London vastly,” he said. “I am sure the chance to attend a ball would be the pinnacle of bliss to her. Perhaps you would send invitations to both her and her brother, Alex. Will you?”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Yes, that will be the way to do it,” she said. “Am I being overeager, James? Edmund always laughs at me and tells me that I have become a committed matchmaker since my marriage. But can I help it if I wish everyone to be as happy as I am? I thought perhaps Miss Cameron was the one. Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I am fond of her, Alex. At the moment that is all. Maybe there will never be anything else. And maybe there will.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and offering her cheek for his farewell kiss, “I will not complain. I am only too happy to see that you are alive again, James, and not looking at the world with cynical eyes, as you were still doing four years ago. I am so glad you closed the book on the past.”

  He kissed her and left. And wondered for surely the dozenth time whether he had done the right thing in coming home. For Alex was wrong. He had not put the past behind him. He had shut it beyond his consciousness for several years so that he had been able to live again. But with every day he now spent in England he felt himself more and more hemmed in by it all.

  Douglas had said that he might take time off if he wished, since there was really very little to keep two clerks busy in London. And a part of him felt pulled back to Yorkshire. There was nothing to take him there. The home there was his father’s. Even in the years following his attainment of his majority, when he had still been at home, he had not been allowed any hand in the running of the estate.

  And there was nothing else to go back for. She had not lived there for nine years. For five of those years he had been unable to discover where she had gone or whether she was contented or desperately unhappy. It was improbable that he would be able to find her now. And what would he be able to do even if he did discover her whereabouts? It was nine years after the event.

  There was nothing he could do, no point in going back. And yet he was being haunted again by the old sense of helplessness and guilt, by the old chains that robbed him of all freedom and that made it impossible for him to grasp at any happiness for himself.

  He had destroyed so much: the honor and the happiness and the freedom of another person, one whom he had loved. More than one person, in fact. All through his own carelessness and thoughtlessness. And because he had never been given the chance to atone, he must carry around the guilt for the rest of his life. He must be his own unending punishment.

  He had not talked with his father. Every time he went to visit Alex, he persuaded himself that he would arrange for time alone with his father and have some plain speaking with him. It was something they had not done in years, if ever. Nine years before, they had talked. But there had been raw passion then to stand between them and communication. And after that, five years of near silence. And now four years of total silence.

  He must speak with his father. Perhaps there could be some releasing of the burden.


  Or perhaps he would live out the summer and go back to Canada to forget again, or to put the whole thing so far back in his consciousness that it would be as good as forgotten. Perhaps he would go back into the interior and take himself a native woman as wife. Perhaps he would stay there, as a few men did, for the rest of his life, and never return either to Canada or to England.

  Or perhaps he would marry Jean and settle with her in Montreal. He could do worse. A great deal worse.

  And he wondered again, as he had wondered before, why he could contemplate marriage with Jean but not with Madeline. Why was it that he was in reality as free to marry either woman, but felt that there was some insurmountable barrier that kept him from Madeline?

  Was it that she lived in England and he would be forever tied to his memories if he married her? If she would have him, of course. Hell would probably freeze over before she would. Though, of course, there had been an occasion when she had told him she loved him, when she had been his for the taking. A long time ago.

  He shook off the thought. He could not even begin to understand his conflicting feelings for Madeline. Attraction, revulsion; love, hate; admiration, contempt; longing, dread; how could he possibly contemplate a courtship and marriage with her?

  Whereas his relationship with Jean was pleasant and tranquil. There was no deep love, perhaps, on either side. But then affection was a far more soothing emotion than love.

  And now, on the very day when he had decided to keep himself away from places where Madeline was likely to be, he found himself committed to attending a ball at his sister’s house. The best thing he could do, perhaps, was something he had grown quite expert at doing. He must just block his mind until the evening came and he could not avoid the meeting. He would think of Duncan Cameron, whom he was about to take along to White’s Club, and imagine what his friend’s reaction would be to the news that he was about to be invited to a grand ball at the home of the Earl of Amberley.