The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  She was thankful he had never asked. She was extremely fond of Howard, as who could not be? His placid temperament and good nature extended back to his early childhood. And though he had never been handsome, and already showed signs of acquiring some of his father’s portliness and of losing some of his fair hair, he was pleasant enough looking. But she had never felt more than affection for him. She was thankful that in the past few years he had kept his adoration contained if, indeed, he still felt it. She hoped he did not.

  She smiled dazzlingly at him now and hoped fervently that he would not misunderstand. For James Purnell had accused her four years before of breaking Howard’s heart.

  “Howard,” she said, “you simply must save Miss Cameron and me from the dreadful fate of having to share one gentleman between the two of us for the remainder of the morning. Will you come riding on the beach with us and Mr. Purnell?”

  Jean too turned her sunny smile on him. “Oh, will you, Mr. Courtney?” she asked. “It is such a beautiful day and simply made for pleasure. I hate to think of your riding back home in order to work.”

  Howard smiled his usual placid and good-natured smile and agreed without further persuasion.

  Madeline, riding along the valley in the direction of the beach, went to such great pains to converse with both Howard and Jean so that Howard would not think that she was flirting with him that she succeeded only too well. As their horses stepped from grass to sand and turned to walk along the beach, Howard drew his horse alongside Jean’s and proceeded to tell her of his turnip crop, for which he had great hopes.

  And so Madeline found herself looking sideways into the dark eyes of the man she had successfully avoided for almost two weeks. And so James found himself looking into the green eyes of the woman he had successfully avoided for an equal period of time.

  “You are enjoying your stay here?” she asked, and wondered immediately why she always said such foolish and unnecessary things to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “It all looks very familiar.” He glanced to the cliff that towered to their right. “The pathway we descended is somewhat farther along, I believe.”

  “Yes,” she said, pointing ahead. “It begins almost across from that black rock.”

  “The occasion of one of our more vicious quarrels, I recall,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “We have both done a great deal of living since then.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it seems to me,” he said, “that we have switched roles. I was the one at that time who was berated for answering in monosyllables.”

  “Yes,” she said. And when the silence lengthened, “I cannot speak with you. I am always conscious of what I must say, and therefore what I say is of no value at all. And you think I am foolish when in reality it is just the words I say to you that are foolish.”

  “And does my opinion matter to you?” he asked.

  “I suppose not,” she said. “But no one likes to be despised, for all that.”

  “I have never despised you, Madeline,” he said. “Oh, perhaps at first. Yes, I think perhaps I did then. But I have not in the past four years. I do not now.”

  “Have you ever thought of me in the past four years?”she asked. And she looked ahead of her and all around her, and despised herself for asking the question. As if the answer mattered to her.

  “When you are alone a great deal of the time,” he said, “you think of a great many things. The people and events of your past. Your own reactions to both. Yes, I have thought of you, as I have thought of everyone else I have ever known.”

  Well, she had asked for it, she thought, as a pain of something knifed through her heart. But she could not let it alone. “And what have you thought of me?” she asked.

  She did not think he would reply. He was silent for a long time. “That I was a fool,” he said, “ever to have allowed myself to feel an attraction for someone so eminently unsuitable for me. And someone for whom I was equally unsuitable. That I was a fool not to have stayed that night and the following morning so that I could see you with lust gone and know again and let you know how impossible it all was. That I was a fool ever to think of coming back here again.”

  “And you still think so now,” she said, her eyes directed between her horse’s ears. “That you are a fool where I am concerned.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “We understand each other, I believe. And we both know that for a reason neither of us understands fully it is impossible. When I go away, I will finally be able to leave you behind me.”

  Again that knifing pain. “Will you?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you will not think of me again,” she asked unwisely, “when you are off in the wilderness alone once more?”

  “No more than of anyone else,” he said. “Besides, I may stay in Montreal. I may have reason to ask to stay there.”

  He was looking ahead to Jean Cameron. And this time the pain came crashing at her from all directions and she could no longer ask the questions that might make it finally unbearable.

  “And you,” he said. His eyes bored into hers for a moment. “What will you do when I am gone?”

  “I am going to marry Lord North,” she said, smiling dazzlingly at him. Poor Geoffrey had not even asked her, she thought, but he would. It would take only one such smile. “We have known each other forever. We will be comfortable with each other.”

  “I see,” he said. “And you will be content to be comfortable, Madeline?”

  “Oh, yes.” She laughed. “I am practically in my dotage, you know. I think I am past anything else.”

  “And if anything you have said to me in the past month is calculated to confirm me in my old opinion that you are foolish,” he said, “those words are undoubtedly it.”

  She could not tell from his expression, though she looked directly into his eyes, whether he was serious or teasing. But how could James Purnell tease? It was surely an impossibility.

  She shrugged. “Miss Cameron is undoubtedly being unwise enough to show interest in Howard’s farming,” she said. “He may just go on forever, you know. You must do what you did the last time we quarreled on this beach. Then you told me stories about school. Now you must tell me stories about the land where you stayed for three years. What did you call it? Ath—?”

  “The Athabasca country,” he said. “Very well, then, Madeline. I shall do as I did then. I shall tell you to relax and merely add a ‘Really?’ and a ‘How splendid!’ in the appropriate places. I will entertain you.”

  And she was entertained, too. For the very first time, she realized much later as she rode back up the valley with Jean while Howard told a new audience about his turnip crop, she had forgotten herself and him and their surroundings and had been enthralled by his stories of a northern land that sounded as if it must be on a different planet, so remote was it from anything in her experience.

  She did not think she had removed her eyes from his face during the telling. But she had seen the thin, angular, darkly handsome face and the live, dark eyes of a fascinating storyteller. Not the forbidding, rather frightening face of the James she knew.

  And now she was almost sorry that she had not allowed them to ride along in their customary uncomfortable and rather hostile silence. For she had had a rare glimpse of him as a real person. And it had been a glimpse of a person she could like and be drawn to. Not just by the power of a physical attraction but by the compelling fascination of his character.

  She fought, as she had fought for four years, not to put her feelings into words. For if she did so, then the pain would be unbearable indeed. Dominic had put it into words, of course, two days before they left London. But she would not remember the words or acknowledge their truth. She would not admit to herself—and never would—that she loved James Purnell.

  And James, for his part, riding along the valley with Howard, listening with part of his attention to an enthusiastic account of turn
ip crops and boars that might one day rival his father’s and drainage schemes that would increase his acreage, watched Madeline and marveled at what had just happened.

  For though he was accustomed to people’s curiosity about life in the far Northwest, both in Canada and in England, and though he had accustomed himself to answering that curiosity, no one else had ever opened the floodgates of his memories and observations as she had just done. Though she had only requested the stories. She had not said a word once he had begun.

  It had been like talking to himself, thinking to himself, a skill he had become expert at. And when he had glanced at her in the telling, it had not been Madeline he had seen, the Madeline with whom he always felt taciturn and watchful and gauche, the Madeline he had always been convinced would not care a fig for him or his life. It had been a vibrantly beautiful woman whose green eyes and parted lips had shown her engrossment in what she heard.

  He had spoken to her for how long—twenty minutes? half an hour? longer?—without any self-consciousness at all or any danger of running out of words. Just as if she were a silent but totally sympathetic part of himself.

  Damnation!

  ARE YOU NOT READY YET TO GIVE UP THIS whim of yours, James?” Lady Beckworth was leaning heavily on her son’s arm and taking a turn with him about the formal gardens in front of Amberley Court.

  “Whim, Mama?” he said, shortening his stride to match hers.

  “That is all it ever was,” she said. “Done in order to defy your father and break his heart. Is it not time to come back home?”

  “Do you mean to England as opposed to Canada?” he asked. “Or are you talking about Yorkshire and Dunstable Hall?”

  “Your father is a sick man, James,” she said, “for all he does not show it. You are his only son. Despite everything, despite your stubborn and wayward disposition, you are still his son. Do you think it does not hurt him to see you engaged in vulgar trade? Do you think it does not break my heart?”

  “Mama,” he said, covering her hand with his own, “don’t say such things. I remained your son and his through all the trouble with Dora. I stayed for five years afterward, living in hell, because I was your son. And it was hell. You must admit that.”

  “If it was, it was of your own choosing,” she said, drawing a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbing at her eyes with it. “Though how you can say such a thing, I don’t know. Beckworth is a saint, James. He has never ceased praying for your soul. And besides, it was Alexandra who kept you at home, not your papa. And not me.”

  “Mama,” he said, “I love you. I have always loved you. But it became impossible for me to live at home any longer. You must have seen that. And it would be impossible now. I cannot talk with Papa. He cannot see me as a person at all. He can see me only as a sinner.”

  “If you came back home,” she said, “and were a dutiful son, perhaps he would see that you are repentant.”

  “It cannot be done,” he said, taking his own large handkerchief from a pocket and stopping to dry her eyes himself. “Don’t cry, Mama. You have Alex and the children. And I will continue to write to you, as I have done over the years. It will be better that way.”

  “And you will probably marry that dreadful girl merely to spite him,” she said, sniffing and resuming their walk.

  “Jean?” he asked in amazement. “Jean a dreadful girl?”

  “Her father is in trade,” she said, “and her brother. And she speaks with such a dreadfully vulgar accent, James, and is such a colonial. Will you shame your father with such a bride?”

  His face became instantly hard and expressionless, his eyes burning and inscrutable. “When I choose a bride, Mama,” he said, “I will, I hope, choose someone for my own comfort. And she will be no one to shame either me or you. I have not asked Jean yet.”

  “You ought to offer for Lady Madeline,” she said. “She can be shockingly vulgar and flirtatious, and Amberley allows her altogether too much freedom, but she has the birth and breeding, James. You must remember that you will be Beckworth yourself one day.”

  “I will never marry Lady Madeline Raine,” he said quickly. “Mama, I have been back in England for a month. I have a month left. Can we not just enjoy being together? I am thirty years old. Can you not accept me as I am? I so long for reconciliation with you and Papa. I long for the peace of your love.”

  “Well, of course we both love you, James,” she said. “The very idea that we might not! The Good Book tells us we must love, and your Papa lives by its word. It is your own love that is lacking. You will persist, then, in returning to that heathen land and in marrying that vulgar girl?”

  “I will be returning to Canada in August,” he said. “I have made no offer for Jean.”

  “But you will,” she said bitterly. “I can see, James, that you are bound and determined to kill your father. I wonder how you will live with yourself or ever reconcile your soul with your Maker when you hear that he is dead.”

  “Mama.” They had reached one of the stone fountains in the gardens. He released her arm and stood with both hands on the edge of the basin, gazing into the water that was spraying into it. “Please don’t lay such a burden on me. I will speak with him again before I leave. I will try to reconcile with him. Will that please you?”

  She was crying again. “Will you?” she said. “And beg his pardon for all the shame you have brought him in the past? And assure him that you will come back home and be his dutiful son? And that you will offer for Lady Madeline? Will you, James? For my sake, will you? I want my son back. I lost you and Alexandra both together. I miss you.”

  “Oh, Mama!” He took her into his arms and let her sob on his shoulder. And he threw his head back, his eyes tightly closed, his teeth clenched hard together.

  MADELINE WAS LYING flushed and laughing in the grass later that same afternoon. She was out of breath after having played an energetic game of chasing with her nephew, with a few pauses to swing Caroline around in a circle. Christopher was now lying on his stomach at the bank of the river, watching for fish. Caroline was picking off the heads of the daisies, which dotted the grass despite a gardener’s care.

  Alexandra was sitting on a wrought-iron bench, sewing.

  “Poor Madeline,” she said. “You will be exhausted. You should not encourage the children to drag you all to pieces, you know. They have learned that there are certain things that Mama will do with them and certain things that are quite beyond the limits of her energy.”

  “Ah, but I do not see them as often as you do,” Madeline said. “It is easy to be an aunt, Dominic assures me.”

  “You should be a mother,” Alexandra said. “You should not delay much longer, Madeline. Having children is very uncomfortable for nine months—or for much of that time, anyway—and downright painful for several hours. But it is a glorious experience, nonetheless, and one not to be missed.”

  Madeline grinned at her. “I would need a husband,” she said. “The world would be scandalized if I tried it without.”

  “I wish …” Alexandra said. And then in a rush, “I wish you would find someone with whom to settle down happily, Madeline. I had hoped … Oh, never mind.”

  “No,” Madeline said, closing her eyes and plucking at the grass on either side of her, “never mind.”

  “You did not want to go with Anna and Miss Cameron?” Alexandra asked cheerfully.

  “No.” Madeline smiled without opening her eyes. “I must be getting old. They seem such children to me. Going off giggling with Walter to call on Colin and Hetty, who seem equally infantile for all that they are married already and not so very much younger than I. And planning then, the lot of them, to visit Howard. No, such an outing is not for me, Alexandra. Howard has become a dreadful bore since acquiring his own farm.”

  “But he is working so very hard,” Alexandra said, “and is a very worthy citizen, Madeline. He will doubtless be as prosperous and as respectable as his father.”

  Madeline pulled a face. “He us
ed to be in as much mischief and earn as many punishments as the rest of us as a child,” she said. “Oh, dear, Alexandra, we are all grown up, aren’t we? And Howard is doing what he should be doing. He is settling to a life of sober hard work. And Dom is doing what he should be doing. He is making a home of his estate and raising a family. And then there is me.”

  “Some people take longer to find what they want,” Alexandra said, putting aside her sewing. “It will happen eventually. The summer is very dull for you, is it not?”

  Madeline sat up and brushed at her hair and dress. She smiled. “Not at all,” she said. “There is the Mortons’ party tonight and the Courtneys’ two nights hence. And Aunt Viola cannot decide between a grand picnic and another evening party. But you may be sure that there will be something. And there is the summer ball here. And the regiment is back and some of the officers invited to the Mortons’ tonight. They must be handsome. It is a necessary qualification for a commission, you know. And the Lampmans were expecting visitors to arrive yesterday, including one gentleman who seems to be unattached and is almost bound to be youngish and handsome and rich and eligible.” She laughed. “My choices are about to become dizzying, Alexandra.”

  “Well.” Alexandra reached down to take the palmful of daisy heads her daughter was offering. “How very lovely, angel. We shall put them in water as soon as we go inside. I hope you are right, Madeline. I know you miss Dominic. I am sorry he did not come this year, but I fully understand, of course, and am very delighted that he and Ellen are happy enough to want to be at home alone together.”

  “Me, too,” Madeline said, and lay back down and yawned.

  “James is off on his own,” Alexandra said, looking briefly down at the closed eyes of her sister-in-law. “He would not even come to luncheon, and then he went galloping off up the hill onto the cliffs. I would have gone with him if he had given me one word of encouragement.”