The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  “Oh.” Henrietta flushed painfully. “I did not mean to suggest …”

  “Of course you did not,” Carl said with an easy laugh. “Have another scone, Miss Trenton.”

  Mark jumped into the conversational gap. “Papa thinks the waters at Harrogate may help his gout,” he said. “I believe we will be spending a month there before Christmas.”

  “Harrogate is somewhere I have always wanted to visit,” Madeline said.

  Less than half an hour later she was riding across the stream with the Trentons, waving good-bye to Mr. Beasley, who had accompanied them as far as the boundary, and riding in the direction of home.

  James was thirty years old. He had, of course, done a great deal of living in that time. And this was his home, the place where he had lived most of the first twenty-six years of his life. Of course there would be people and events from his past that she could not be expected to know about. Perhaps one day she would persuade him to tell her more of his past.

  Though it really did not matter. It would take her a week of nonstop talking to tell him all about her own past. And that did not matter at all. She was his wife now. His. All those others meant nothing whatsoever to her in comparison with what he meant.

  “Mark,” Henrietta said, turning to him accusingly when they were a safe distance from the stream, “whatever did you mean by hissing at me during tea? What had I said?”

  “Nothing,” he said, frowning at her crossly. “Nothing at all, Henrietta.”

  “But Mr. Beasley seemed to think that I had been suggesting that Jonathan Drummond does not really belong to his mama and papa,” she said. “And you must have thought so too or you would not have said ‘Henrietta!’ in such an agonized voice. I could have died, Mark. If I had ever thought such a thing, I certainly would not have said it aloud. Did you have to draw attention to me?”

  “Drop it,” he said, glancing uneasily at Madeline and away again. “I didn’t mean anything, and neither did you.”

  “But is there any such possibility?” she asked him.

  “Henrietta!” he said sternly. “Mind your manners. We are in company.”

  She flushed. “I do beg your pardon, Lady Beckworth,” she said. “But I was so mortified I could have died.”

  “That is quite all right,” Madeline said. “Sometimes we all say embarrassing things without at all meaning to do so.”

  “But you will see what I mean when you see those children,” Henrietta said. “You would never guess that Jonathan is brother to the other three.”

  “Have you ridden out onto the moors yet?” Mark asked Madeline.

  “No,” she said. “But my husband has promised to take me riding there within the next day or two. It seems that I am not permitted to ride on the moors alone.” She smiled.

  “It is easy to get lost,” he said, “especially in winter. People have died out on the moors in the snow, sometimes within easy reach of some habitation.”

  They chattered easily on, Henrietta riding silently at their side for a few minutes.

  JAMES HAD PROMISED TO TAKE MADELINE riding on the moors within the week. And finally, after the rain, the weather seemed to have settled into an early autumn beauty and warmth. It was perfect for riding, better than the heat of summer.

  He looked forward to the afternoon ride. They had both been busy about other business during the morning. After a lengthy session with his man of business the day before, he had met with his bailiff that morning to give orders that his laborers’ wages be raised and repairs be made to their homes before winter set in.

  Madeline was dressed in a royal blue velvet riding habit and jaunty hat to match. He had seen neither before. She looked very vividly beautiful, he thought, waving aside a groom and tossing her into her sidesaddle himself. She settled herself and smiled down at him.

  “I finally believe you about the moors,” she said as he mounted his own stallion. “Mr. Trenton said the same thing yesterday, though he did say they are more dangerous during the winter when the snow falls.”

  “So you will believe a neighbor and not me,” he said, leading the way from the cobbled stable yard. But he did not speak with annoyance. He knew she was teasing, and he knew that having given her promise, she could be relied upon not to worry him by riding out alone.

  “Sometimes I think you are overprotective,” she said, but she smiled and looked as if she really did not mind if he was.

  They had settled in the past week into an almost comfortable sort of amity. They had both found plenty to do during the days that did not include the other, and spent little time together. And when they were together, they did not converse a great deal. But it seemed that they were learning to adjust to each other. They were learning to avoid confrontations that could only leave both angry and frustrated.

  He was beginning to dare to hope that they could be contented together. And he was trying hard to bring about that desirable state. He was not the sort of man who could make Madeline sparkle, but he was learning to live on her smiles. And she smiled at him frequently. He was pleased even though he knew that she did so in a conscious effort to keep the peace between them. He knew that she was working as hard on their marriage as he was.

  “The world seems to be a vaster place here than at Amberley,” she said, as they rode out north of the house. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Amberley is in a valley enclosed by hills. The slopes are covered with trees. The beach is bordered by high cliffs. It is a small, though lovely world. This is far less picturesque, far more elemental.”

  “I am not sure it is less beautiful, though,” she said, “though I was prepared to find it so.”

  They did not pursue the conversation. They were far more often silent together. But she looked relaxed. She did not seem any longer to squirm with embarrassment and anger with him for not talking.

  She had taken tea with Beasley the day before. She had come to him immediately on her return home and told him so, that familiar defiant lift to her chin as she did so.

  “He asked us onto the duke’s land,” she had said, “and Miss Trenton accepted because she wanted to see the puppies, and it would have been churlish of me to refuse. And then the housekeeper saw us outside the house and sent a message that tea was to be served. I could hardly refuse. And I enjoyed my hour there, James, and found Mr. Beasley to be very amiable. I am telling you only so that you will not find out later and think that I did something forbidden behind your back.”

  He had looked closely into her eyes and nodded his head. There had appeared to be only defiance in her eyes, nothing else.

  It had all been a long time ago. Perhaps he was being absurd to imagine that a grown man would hold a grudge for so many years. Beasley had not been entirely unfriendly at the Hoopers’. His vow of revenge had been made nine years before. It was true that the enmity had been kept very much alive during the following five years, while they had both still lived in the same neighborhood. But four years had passed since then. Dora had been married a long time and had four children now. He himself had a new bride.

  James had blamed Beasley for writing to Peterleigh as soon as Dora’s condition became known. He had thought Beasley his friend, and the man had known about his love for Dora and hers for him. The three of them had spent time together during that summer when he had been home from university. Yet after he had gone back and her brother learned that Dora was with child, he had not written to him at all, or allowed Dora to do so.

  He had conspired with Peterleigh and James’s father to avert scandal and marry off Dora as fast as could be to John Drummond, who had doubtless been paid handsomely for his compliance.

  James had never blamed Peterleigh. He had been far away in London at the time and doubtless did not know the full truth of the matter. Dora was his ward. His chief concern must have been for her reputation. And so he had married her to a willing man and packed her off with her new husband to one of his estates in the south of England so
that the scandal could blow itself out. If he knew that the father was James Purnell, then he would also have been anxious to avert scandal in that direction. There had always been an understanding that he would marry Alex when she grew up.

  No, he had never blamed Peterleigh. He had always blamed his father and Beasley. Neither had written to him until Dora was married and gone away already, although both had known the state of his heart and hers. His father, of course, had seen her as a whore under the circumstances, and had been willing to do anything to avoid having her associated with his family. Besides, although she was a cousin of sorts to the duke, she was not quite the bride he would have chosen for his only son.

  And so, with a terrible interference, he had helped arrange the marriage, had doubtless contributed financially to it, and informed his son only afterward. Informed him in such a way that only his displeasure with his son’s loose morals was conveyed in the letter.

  And when he had come home, in a rage of panic and despair, it was to find Dora indeed gone and no one willing to tell him where she was or exactly how she had been persuaded into doing what she had done.

  Not that he had ever blamed her. She had always been sweet and placid and somewhat timid. He had cried many tears of despair, imagining her alone and with child and frightened. It would not have taken a great deal to bully her into an unwanted marriage. Had she been told that he did not want her? That question had always haunted him. He still did not know the answer. He had not seen or heard from Dora since the day he had loved her and kissed her good-bye before returning to university.

  Now he had avoided seeing her, even though he had known for a week that she was back. He had spent so long trying to find her, yet now he was as diligently avoiding her.

  “Alexandra told me that you used to come out here riding with her,” Madeline said, “and that you used to gallop. It was strictly forbidden, she said.”

  “It was Alex’s one defiance of authority,” he said. “She used to ride neck or nothing and laugh and shriek with excitement. My father would have had an apoplexy if he had ever found out. Fortunately, he never did.

  “Shall we gallop now?” she asked, her eyes shining across at him.

  “No!” he said firmly. “You are not used to the terrain, Madeline. You have to learn to walk before you can run. Literally.”

  She made a face at him. “Killjoy!” she said without any particular venom.

  “I would not particularly enjoy writing to your mother and your brothers to inform them that you had broken your neck,” he said. “They might think I had throttled you, and they would probably scarcely blame me.”

  She looked at him and laughed, her eyes dancing with merriment. He felt his breath catch in his throat.

  “I am not quite as bad as that, am I?” she said.

  “Worse sometimes,” he said merely for the pleasure of watching her laugh again.

  “We will not gallop, then,” she said. “I shall allow my horse to trot sedately at your side, my lord. You see how docile a wife I have become? Soon I shall be quite unrecognizable to my mother and brothers.”

  “Amberley will doubtless have my likeness cast in marble and set in the middle of the formal gardens for achieving the impossible,” he said.

  This time she actually giggled. He looked at her sternly, though he thought she knew that he did not feel stern.

  Carl Beasley was the one he had blamed the most. For one thing, he was the person closest to Dora, the one she relied most heavily upon. And yet knowing that she loved him, knowing that it was his child she had conceived, knowing that he loved her and would have been only too happy to do the honorable thing by her, Carl had concealed the truth from him and allowed his sister to be forced into an unwanted marriage with the dull and unattractive John Drummond.

  Carl had betrayed his own sister. It was for that as much as for his own agony that he had fought with his former friend until his hands had been slippery on the other’s face. He had broken Carl’s nose.

  Carl had merely laughed at him—before his nose was broken, that was—and told him it was time he grew up and learned not to live in a fool’s paradise. Did he think Dora would have been allowed to marry a Purnell when Miss Purnell was to be the duke’s bride?

  No amount of pleading or bullying or punching had been able to prize from Carl the whereabouts of Dora—Mrs. John Drummond.

  “Everything has been settled satisfactorily for my sister,” Carl had said. “But I will not forgive you for all this, Purnell. If you had only kept yourself for the barmaids of Oxford and left Dora alone, perhaps things would have worked out differently for her. Stranger things have happened. I won’t ever forgive you. And one day I will get my revenge on you. I will destroy your life as you have destroyed my sister’s.”

  The only time they had spoken after that, until they met again at the Hoopers’ dinner, was when James had gone to him almost a year later, almost mad with frustration, to choke from him the information that the child was a boy and healthy, and that Dora had come safely through her confinement. Nothing of her whereabouts.

  It was ancient history. He had not seen Dora, but he did not believe there would be any traces left of his old attachment to her. Indeed, he had thought treacherously in the past few years, if he had not impregnated her, if there had not been all the drama of what had followed, perhaps the great love of his life would have died a natural death even before his next holiday from university.

  Perhaps.

  And certainly she was not the great love of his life. Only perhaps the great burden of his life. But that was unfair to her.

  He turned to Madeline. “Would you like to get down and rest for a while?” he asked.

  “In the middle of nowhere?” She looked about her and laughed. “Yes, it would be the perfect thing to do. I love the moors, James. For how many years did I promise?”

  “Five!” he said firmly.

  She sighed as he lifted her from the saddle and set her feet on the ground. “Four years and fifty-one weeks left,” she said. “How slowly times goes.”

  “Would you prefer to be here without me, then?” he asked, and wished he had not done so. He was feeling so warm about the heart today that her answer might be more than usually painful.

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “I am afraid I would be horribly lost, James. There is not a human habitation or a recognizable landmark in sight. And you have my permission to say, ‘I told you so,’ sir. Not that you need my permission, of course.”

  “I told you so,” he said.

  They were beside a slight and grassy hollow, which he knew from experience would be warm and sheltered from the breeze.

  “The horses will not wander far,” he said, setting them free and taking Madeline by the elbow to lead her down into the hollow.

  “These are what make the land so treacherous during the winter,” he said. “They fill with snow, and the unwary traveler can fall into them and flounder around and panic.”

  “But today it is beautiful,” she said, sitting down on the grass and hugging her knees. “So quiet, James. Listen.”

  A faint sound of the breeze. A lone bird. A horse snorting. Not silence. There was never silence in nature. But peace. Perfect peace.

  James stretched out on the grass, one arm beneath his head, and watched a few white clouds scudding across the sky. He lay there in silence for a long time.

  • • •

  MADELINE FOUND THE SILENCE quite unembarrassing. Indeed, she was almost unaware of her companion after a few minutes, except that there was the comfortable, unconscious knowledge that she was not alone. All her senses had awakened to her surroundings.

  Strange that they should do so here where the landscape was stark, where there was so little that might be called obviously beautiful. Amberley was steeped in beauty, and she had known it, but she could never remember all her senses being stretched to appreciate it all as they were here.

  She had tossed her hat aside and could feel the warmth
of the sun on the top of her head and the back of her neck. She could hear insects and smell heather and grass. She could feel the grass beneath her. And although the hollow had seemed so slight from horseback that it was scarcely noticeable, they were surrounded by it now, grass meeting sky, all the world contained in one small circle of vastness.

  She rested her chin on her knees.

  She was feeling cautiously happy. Yes. She sat very still and tested her feelings. She was feeling happy. Perhaps after all her hasty and inexplicable decision to marry James was turning out to be not such a disastrous one. Perhaps they could learn to adjust to each other’s ways enough that they could live together in relative peace.

  They were already doing so. They had learned not to spend too much time together and not to converse too much when they were together. Those facts did not sound promising when stated in just those words, but they were promising nevertheless. They had had no real quarrel in the past week, only a few bickering words. And more important, there had not been those spells of silent anger and hostility.

  She had learned to accept his silences, not to be offended by them, but to recognize them as part of his nature. And James on his part had seemed to accept her need to talk sometimes with light banter. He was even capable on occasion of joining in as he had done just this afternoon during their ride.

  It was a cautious beginning to a marriage that must last for many years if their lives took their natural course. Who knew whether their natural antipathy for each other or their mutual desire for peace in their relationship would finally prevail? Or perhaps they must always tread the fine line between the two. Perhaps they would never know total peace.

  But then perhaps married couples never did.

  “This reminds me somewhat of the Athabasca country,” James said from behind her.

  She said nothing but gave him the whole of her attention. It was so rare for James to initiate any conversation.

  “Perhaps that was why I was able to settle to the life there,” he said. “Some men were restless and bored almost from the moment of their arrival.”