by Mary Balogh
It was a depressing thought. And yet one that she had to accustom herself to. Two hours later she was dancing with Mr. Rhodes and laughing at his outrageous compliments on her hair and realizing that it was the fourth set of the evening already and that even most of the usual stragglers had finally put in an appearance.
She had been right. Edmund’s ball was one of the squeezes of the Season, for all the short notice everyone had been given. It would go down as a great success. Edmund and Alexandra were gracious hosts, and Mama and Sir Cedric were so glowingly happy that they looked ten years younger than they had looked a month before.
It was a great success. Everyone was happy. James had not come, and on the whole it was as well that he had not. Nothing should happen, even in her private world, to spoil the evening. And she must keep on remembering that she really did not want to see him ever again. For however much she loved him and longed for him, and however real her pregnancy had become, he was still an adulterer. He still had his mistress and his son. Her child would not even be his firstborn.
She was glad he had not come.
“Oh, come now,” she said to Mr. Rhodes with a giggle. “I think you have gone a little too far, sir. Are you quite sure I rival the sun? Do you find it quite impossible to look at me?”
“Quite, quite impossible,” he said, squinting his eyes and frowning as if in pain.
Madeline giggled again. And met the dark eyes of her husband across the room. He was standing in the doorway, his hands clasped behind him. He looked very noticeably different from any other gentleman in the room, dressed as he was in black evening clothes.
“And my hand is too hot to hold?” she said to Mr. Rhodes.
He winced and sucked air though his teeth. He released her hand for a brief moment. “Excruciatingly hot,” he said. “Quite like the sun, Lady Beckworth, as I said at starting.”
“Flatterer!” she said. “I like it.”
EVEN WHEN HE WAS all dressed up for the evening, James was still not quite sure that he would go to the ball. After all, she had consistently refused to see him for two weeks, though he had persisted in presenting his card at her mother’s house every day since his arrival.
And on the one occasion when he had seen her, she had not acknowledged him in any way, or shown any sign of recognition. She had merely passed on by—his wife in another man’s carriage, looking as lovely and as animated as she had ever looked. He had thought afterward—after a hard ride of at least ten miles out into the country—that it was probably a good thing he did not know the identity of her companion. He might well have sought out the man and killed him.
But she had clearly meant what she had written. She did not intend ever to come back to him. And she clearly meant her refusal to see him. It was no token refusal of two or three days before she felt she had made her displeasure sufficently obvious that she could now admit him.
James sat for a while in his carriage before directing his coachman to take him to White’s. But the words did not come out quite as he had meant them to.
“The Earl of Amberley’s house on Grosvenor Square,” he said curtly.
After all, she knew he had been invited. He had been very adamant on that point when Alex had asked him. He would go, he had said, only if Madeline clearly understood that he would be there. She knew, but she had not sent any message that he must stay away. And there was little likelihood that she would stay away herself. The ball was in honor of her mother’s betrothal.
Did she want him to come, then?
Or did she not care?
Or did she plan to make a very public scene? He shuddered at the thought. But no, Madeline was sociable and vivacious, but never vulgar.
He did not know if he would be able to bear to see her in a party mood. Glittering for other men. How would he be able to keep his hands off any man she smiled at?
He would not stop the carriage now in the middle of a busy street. He would wait until it stopped on Grosvenor Square, and then redirect it to White’s. He would call at her mother’s again the next day and send up his card.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding absently to the footman who opened the door of the carriage at the end of his journey. He stood outside his brother-in-law’s house for a few moments, looking up at the lighted windows, and then walked resolutely up the steps and into the hallway.
He was very late. The house seemed filled with the sound of music. There was no receiving line outside the doors to the ballroom. There was a set in progress. He stood watching the dancers, his hands clasped behind him.
But no, he did not stand watching the dancers. For him there was only one dancer in the room, and his eyes found her immediately. She shimmered in her gold ball gown, which caught the lights of the candles with her every movement. But if she had been dressed in drab gray, she would have shimmered just as surely.
For she was Madeline. As she always had been and always would be in his eyes. Except that he could only watch from afar. Whenever he came too close to the light and the flame, he put both out.
And so he stood and watched. And when her eyes met his across the room for the merest moment, there was only a flicker of hesitation. She danced on and talked on and laughed on.
As if he did not exist. As if he were not her husband. As if he never had been. As if he had never been anything at all to her.
And perhaps he had not.
“James!” Two warm hands were taking his, and his gaze shifted to the flushed and happy face of his sister.
“Hello, Alex,” he said, smiling. “I am sorry to be so late. But I came, you see.”
MADELINE HAD SEEN Jennifer Simpson waltzing very slowly earlier in the evening with a young man. But she had been too preoccupied with her own anxieties about James to look closely at the gentleman. Now, however, she was looking desperately about her for some distraction.
Jennifer was still with the same young man, standing and talking with Walter and his latest flirt. And Madeline realized with a start that Jennifer’s companion was Allan Penworth.
“You may take me to my cousin, Mr. Carrington,” she said to Mr. Rhodes when the set was at an end. And she smiled dazzlingly at him just in case she was being watched.
“Allan!” She held out both hands to her former fiancé as she drew close. “I did not even recognize you. How splendid you look.”
He took her hands and raised one to his lips. “I could say the same of you, Madeline,” he said. “How are you?”
She pulled a face. “Perfectly fine,” she said.
He squeezed her hands. “I have heard,” he said quietly. “I am very sorry, you know.”
“But I have just realized why I did not recognize you,” she said. “You no longer look like a pirate, Allan. Whose idea was it to wear a flesh-colored eye patch instead of the black one?”
“My mother’s, actually,” he said with a grin. “Inspired, don’t you agree?”
“You look quite dashing,” she said. “But Allan—” she paused and gaped quite inelegantly at him for a moment, “you were waltzing. You were dancing with Jennifer.”
“So I was,” he said. “With my betrothed—though the announcement is not to be officially made until next week when Jennifer’s grandfather is hosting a grand dinner in our honor.” He smiled down at the girl, who had slid a hand beneath his arm. “You don’t mind my telling Madeline, my love?”
“Not really,” Jennifer said smiling impishly. “I suppose former fiancées should be the first to know such things. Wish us happy, Madeline?”
“But of course I do,” Madeline said. “Were you really dancing, Allan? And where are your crutches?”
“Somewhere in Devonshire,” he said with a grin. “I told Jennifer last year that when I was able to walk her down the aisle of a church from the altar, I would come and ask her to walk to that altar on her grandpapa’s arm. But not unless or until I was able to do that.”
“He is so foolish,” Jennifer said, clucking her tongue. “As if I could not lov
e a man on crutches. I spent the whole winter in the sullens and swearing that Allan was the last man on this earth I would ever agree to marry.”She giggled and looked fondly up at her betrothed.
“Well—” Madeline said.
“Madeline?” The light touch on her arm burned through to the bone. The quiet voice was like a fist in the stomach, robbing her of breath. “Will you dance?”
She turned away from Jennifer and Allan without a word of farewell. She ignored three gentlemen admirers who were standing close by, walking past them without even seeing them. She had totally forgotten that one of those gentlemen had signed her card for this very set. She stopped when she reached a clear space on the ballroom floor, and turned. And she stood looking at the black embroidery on her husband’s waistcoat while the orchestra prepared to play.
They began to play a waltz.
SHE HAD DANCED with him for all of five minutes, one hand rigid on his shoulder, the other cold in his own. Her eyes had been directed at his waistcoat the whole time. Her face was quite without expression.
“Smile,” he said. “Do you wish to draw attention to yourself?”
She raised calm green eyes to his. “Quite frankly, James,” she said, “I do not care the snap of two fingers what people think. And I have done taking orders from you. I do not feel like smiling, and I will not smile.”
He had made a disastrous beginning. That was not what he needed to say or wanted to say at all.
She looked dazzlingly beautiful. Her hair must have been growing all the time she had been living with him. But he had not noticed until tonight, when she was wearing it in a new style.
She returned her gaze to his waistcoat.
“I will be going back to Yorkshire,” he said. “Within the week. It is clearly what you wish. I will send a solicitor to your mother’s house. He will have authority from me to make any settlement on you that you think acceptable.”
“Are you sure you trust me not to take your whole fortune?” she said.
“You may take it and be welcome to it,” he said, and watched her eyes lift to meet his for a moment again. “I had to talk to you before returning home, Madeline. Just once. Did you feel I was harassing you? I needed just one meeting.”
“You have it,” she said. “I am a captive audience. And though I will not smile and pretend to be enjoying myself, you know very well that I will not create a scene. Not at my mother’s betrothal ball. It was cleverly done, James.”
“I told Alex I would come only on condition that you had been warned I would be here,” he said. “You could have sent word that I was to stay away, Madeline. I would not have forced myself on you as I have not done in the past two weeks. I could have done so, you know. You are my lawful wife.”
“Yes,” she said. And those icy green eyes were on his again. “I know all about that, James. It would not have been the first time you forced yourself on me, would it?”
He closed his eyes briefly and danced on. “I want you to know,” he said, “that Dora Drummond is not my mistress and has not been for ten years. I have no mistress and no casual amour, either. I have had no woman but you since our marriage or for a considerable time before that.”
Her chin lifted, but her eyes remained on his waistcoat.
“And Jonathan Drummond is not my son,” he said, and found himself looking full into her eyes again. “He might have been, Madeline. We were lovers, Dora and I, briefly, when I was twenty and she seventeen. And I thought he wasmy son until just over a month ago. But he is not. He is Peterleigh’s son.”
He watched her swallow and look down again.
“Dora was forced to marry,” he said, “and move away from Yorkshire when she was found to be with child. I was at university at the time and knew nothing about it until it was too late. I did not see her or hear from her again until I took you home as my bride. I have talked to her twice since, once when I took one of her younger children home after finding him on the road with a sprained ankle, and once at Peterleigh’s ball. I discovered the truth there.”
“How nice for you,” she said.
“But it was too late,” he said. “For years my life had been blighted by guilt and bitterness because of the lies I had believed. And now it has been destroyed by the same person’s lying to you.”
“Mr. Beasley?” she said.
“Beasley, yes,” he said. “He has been wreaking a little revenge for a thorough beating I gave him after Dora disappeared.” “
A sad story,” she said. “She had the wrong man’s child and married the wrong man. Quite tragic, really.”
“I have no feelings left for her, Madeline,” he said. “It was a young man’s infatuation blown out of all proportion by the events that followed. I have no feelings for her at all. Or she for me.”
He waited for her to say something, but she said nothing. Her eyes were lowered again.
“But it was not Beasley who destroyed our marriage,” he said. “I did that.”
“Yes,” she said.
He spoke very softly. “I ravished you, Madeline,” he said. “I took what were my rights as your husband, but it was ravishment for all that. And I have no excuse. I cannot even apologize to you, for an apology would be totally inadequate. I can only promise to stay away from you and take care of your needs for the rest of your life. You may have whatever you want that is mine to give. You have only to tell my solicitor.”
“You are generous,” she said.
“And you are bitter.” He looked down at her bowed head with an ache of remorse for what he had done to her life in less than a year. “I cannot blame you, Madeline. I told you you were marrying the devil, that you were caught in the devil’s web. I did not even realize myself at the time how close to the truth my words were. I did not mean to destroy you.”
“You have not done so,” she said, looking him very directly in the eyes. “No one has the power to destroy me, James, unless I choose to be destroyed. You are not important enough to me to have accomplished anything quite so devastating. We shared a physical obsession. We were both agreed on that when we married. Well, nine and a half months have been long enough to satisfy that obsession. Quite long enough. And there really is not anything else between us, is there?”
“No,” he said after gazing down at her for a long moment. “There is nothing else. Only that. This is good-bye, then, Madeline. After five years we will finally be free of each other, apart from the small matter of a marriage that binds us legally, of course. But you need not fear that I will ever press any claim on you that relates to that. You can be free of me at last. And you are still young and still beautiful.”
He watched her lift her hand from his shoulder and felt her fingers brush back a lock of hair from his forehead. And he watched her frown and bite her lip and lower her eyes again.
He schooled his expression to blankness and watched her. For the last time. A five-year obsession. Finally at an end. For her. For him it would end when he drew his final breath. And perhaps not even then.
He had loved her and married her. But they had not lived happily ever after. He had lost her. Not through Carl Beasley’s fault or his father’s or Dora’s or Peterleigh’s or anyone else’s.
Through his own fault.
He led her to Lord Eden’s side when the music came to an end, bowed to both of them, said a few words to Alex—he could never afterward remember what—and left the ball, half an hour after he had arrived.
AT LEAST HE CAME, MAD,” DOMINIC HAD SAID. “All the way from Yorkshire, I mean. He has been trying every day for a fortnight to see you. And it seemed to me, watching the two of you dance, that he was doing a great deal of talking.”
“Yes, he did,” she had said. “He said a lot.”
“But nothing to persuade you to reconsider?”
“He is going back home within the next few days,” she had said. “I will not be seeing him again, Dom. I don’t want to see any more of him. I just want to forget and start again.”
He had led her into the next set.
And she had danced for the rest of the evening.
She lay on her bed two days later staring at the canopy above her. Her mother was out somewhere with Sir Cedric. Madeline had been invited to take tea with Edmund and Alexandra but had declined. Aunt Viola and Anna had invited her to accompany them on a shopping expedition. She had declined. Lord and Lady Carstairs had invited her to join them and Lady Carstairs’s gentleman cousin on a drive to Kew. She had declined. The day before she had sent her excuses to avoid an afternoon picnic and an evening visit to the opera.
She could no longer pretend that she was Lady Madeline Raine again, free to enjoy all the pleasures the Season had to offer. There was no enjoyment and no pleasure. She must plan for her future.
And her future would be independent of Mama and Edmund and Dominic. They had their own lives to lead and it would be unfair to burden any one of them with her presence. Much as they loved her, she would nevertheless be an intruder on their domestic happiness. And besides, she had no wish to be dependent upon them.
She was dependent upon James. That was the way of the world. But at least he was going to allow her some measure of freedom. She would use it. She would decide where and how she wished to live, and she would arrange for the financing of those needs when his solicitor called on her.
It was all very simple really. All she needed to do was do it.
She should have told him about the baby. He would have to know about that. And that fact might change everything. He might insist after all that she go back home with him. She would write to him within the next week or so.
She closed her eyes. She had so wanted him to ask her to come back to him. It was shameful to admit. Did she have no strength of will and no pride? She had wanted him to ask or even insist. It would have been easy if he had insisted. There would have been no decision to make. She could have gone with him because she had no choice, and she could have blamed him for the rest of their lives if they had continued unhappy.
