The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  They were shameful thoughts. Was the responsibility of making something of their marriage entirely his? Was she content to be a passive victim? But under the circumstances, she had not even had a chance to be that. He had decided to be noble and give her the freedom he thought she wanted. He had neither asked nor commanded.

  And so she was free. Free to live where and how she wanted, though of course she would always be bound to him by the ties of marriage. She was free.

  An empty victory.

  She could just see James as he had been the first time she saw him. He was standing in the middle of Lady Sharp’s drawing room the night the ton decided to snub Alexandra. She, Madeline, had been the only person to cross the room to them, though she had never seen either one before. He had been looking as if he could commit murder, his face thunderous, his eyes burning with fury. She had felt unaccountably frightened of him.

  And it was a feeling that had persisted all that summer, while their dislike for each other had grown alongside their attraction to each other.

  She could remember him kissing her with fury in the valley at Amberley and with passion and tenderness on the night of Edmund’s ball. The night he had put her away from him and told her that his feelings were lust only. The night he had ridden away. The last time she had seen him for four years.

  She remembered listening to Alexandra read aloud his letter in which he told her he was coming home the following summer. And her feelings afterward: excitement, hope, caution. She had spent a year persuading herself that his coming meant nothing to her.

  And then seeing him again last spring. And the rekindling of passion and dislike.

  Their good-bye at Edmund’s ball again.

  It would have been far better if he had not come back, if he had already sailed for Canada before news of his father’s heart seizure could reach him. By now she would have put him from her mind again.

  Again? Had she ever put him from her mind from that first meeting on? Would she ever be able to do so?

  And if she could go back, knowing then what she knew now, would she choose not to marry him? The nine and a half months of their marriage had been hell.

  And heaven.

  She had lived almost eight months of that marriage with James. Miserable much of the time, but with him nonetheless. And there had been good times. Precious few, it was true, but a few nevertheless.

  There had been that afternoon on the moors before their bitter quarrel. The rare feeling of togetherness. The rare openness of his conversation. The magic of their shared lovemaking. They had been so close on that afternoon. So close to bursting through the barrier that always held stubbornly between them.

  So very close. One word, perhaps, by one of them might have changed the course of their lives. If he had said her name, if she had called him her love, perhaps they would have gone crashing through that barrier together.

  And there was nothing between him and Dora Drummond. He had no son. He had had no woman but her since their marriage. Carl Beasley had lied to him and to her—from what particular motive she could not fully understand. Mr. Beasley had destroyed him, James had said.

  And James had destroyed their marriage. She had agreed with him on that. He had forced himself on her at a time when she was hurt and bewildered and had asked to be left alone. He had taken her anyway.

  But it had not been rape. She had said that she did not want him, but she had wanted to be ignored. She had wanted him with a powerful need and an overwhelming passion. Just as she had wanted two evenings ago to be overpowered. She had refused for two weeks to see James, but she had wanted desperately for him to break in upon her. She had left him, but she had wanted him to tell her that she was going back with him.

  Madeline opened her eyes and stared upward again. How difficult it was, sometimes, to know and understand oneself. She had always thought of herself as a forceful character who knew her own mind and who would never stand for anyone else walking all over her. And yet her relationship with her husband proved her wrong on all counts. She wanted to be mastered and dominated. And when finally James had refused to do either and had left her free, she must take to her bed in order to wallow in misery and self-pity.

  Self-knowledge could be the most distressing knowledge of all.

  Madeline was off the bed and jerking on the bell pull before another ten seconds had passed.

  “My blue walking outfit,” she told her maid, her voice almost panicked. “And before you get it, send word that a carriage is to be sent around without delay.”

  She was sitting in the carriage less than half an hour later, having rejected a number of options. She might have sent a note around to him asking him to call. She might have driven over to Lord Harrowby’s to ask Dominic to accompany her or to Edmund’s to ask him. Or if she was wary of involving her brothers, Walter would doubtless have come with her. Certainly it was not the thing for an unaccompanied lady to call on a gentleman in the particular club where James had his lodgings, even if that gentleman was her husband.

  But she had decided to go herself and to go alone. There was too much inaction involved in sending a note. And it would be wasted time to go in search of a male escort. He was to return home within a few days, he had said. And he had said it two days before. Perhaps he had gone already. Perhaps even now she would be too late.

  She was. The doorman at the gentlemen’s lodging house bowed stiffly, looked her over from head to toe in the not-quite-insolent manner that some servants could achieve to perfection, and informed her that his lordship had left.

  “Left for the afternoon?” she asked. “Or left for good?”

  He bowed again and looked at her with the pity and scorn he might accord to an abandoned courtesan. “We are not expecting his lordship,” he said.

  He was gone. She was too late. She looked haughtily along her nose at the doorman and enjoyed watching him bow obsequiously as she handed him a coin he had done nothing to earn.

  He was gone. She placed a gloved hand in that of her mother’s footman and climbed wearily back into the carriage.

  “Take me to Lord Amberley’s,” she said on sudden impulse, and sat back against the seat, her eyes closed, willing it not to be true, willing some other explanation of his absence to be waiting for her when she reached Alexandra.

  “Where is her ladyship?” she asked Edmund’s butler coolly, handing the man her bonnet and gloves.

  “In the drawing room, my lady,” he said, bowing.

  But she could not hold on to her coolness. Instead of waiting for the butler to climb the stairs ahead of her and announce her, she went flying up the stairs and pushed open the double doors of the drawing room without even knocking.

  “Alexandra,” she cried, oblivious to all but the figure of her sister-in-law, on her knees beside Caroline on the floor, “has he left already?”

  And then her eyes traveled past Alexandra and Edmund and Dominic and Ellen and all four children to focus on her husband, dressed for travel and standing before the empty fireplace, his hands clasped behind him.

  HE HAD DONE everything he could. Having ruined his own life and ruined Madeline’s chance of ever making a happy marriage unless he were to die young, he had done everything possible to make matters as right as they could ever be.

  He had engaged a solicitor to handle her affairs and had given the man strict instructions to grant her every wish, regardless of expense. And he had called upon his mother-in-law and both his brothers-in-law.

  “I am sorry,” he said to the dowager countess. “You must dislike me quite intensely. And you are right to do so. All this has been my fault. But I want you to know that I am making all the reparation I can, ma’am. Your daughter will never be in need. She has only to wish for something and I will grant it.”

  “You talk of money,” she said, surprising him by crossing the room to where he stood and taking both his hands in hers. “She has other needs, James. Can you grant those too?”

  He shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I am afraid not. I have made her very unhappy.”

  “Then I am afraid that no one will ever be able to make her happy,” she said, “if you cannot. I know my daughter very well, James.”

  He returned the pressure of her hands. “I am sorry,” he said. “I truly am. I do love her, you know.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling rather sadly at him. “Sometimes it just seems that love is not enough, does it not?”

  He said much the same to her brothers. Neither heaped blame on his shoulders, though he had fully expected that Dominic at least would do so.

  “Do you love my sister?” Dominic asked.

  “Yes,” James said.

  “You have not thought of insisting that she go back home with you?”

  “No.” James looked his brother-in-law squarely in the eyes.

  “You know,” Dominic said, “Madeline likes a confrontation. She likes to fight. She hates it when there is nothing to fight against. She tends to give in.”

  “I will not force her into anything,” James said. “Not anymore.”

  Dominic raised his eyebrows.

  “You are her twin,” James said. “I know she is closer to you than to anyone else. Will you write to me occasionally and tell me how she is? It is a great deal to ask, I know. Alex will write to me, of course, but with you I will know that what you say is true, and not what Madeline wants people to believe is true. Will you let me know if she is in any need?”

  “She is already in need,” Dominic said.

  James raked a hand through his hair. “I meant a need I can supply,” he said.

  “That is what I meant too,” Dominic said.

  At the end of it all he was not sure he had accomplished anything by his journey to London. He wanted to talk to Madeline again, explain himself to her more clearly, make sure that she understood that her life was now her own to do with as she wished. He wanted to see her again, to have one more chance to imprint the image of her on his memory.

  And he wanted to go away, to have done with it all. Two days after Edmund’s ball he called upon Douglas Cameron. His old friend was planning to return to Montreal at the end of the summer, even though he was tempted to stay yet another winter in order to see Jean safely through her confinement.

  “But she doesn’t need me any longer, lad,” he said with a laugh. “There comes a time when one must kiss a lass good-bye and be on one’s way. Especially when there’s another man become the apple of her eye.”

  James was very tempted to go with Douglas. To go back to Montreal, take up his old job again, and set off with the canoe brigades again the following spring for the inland wilderness where he had found a measure of peace once before. And what, after all, was there to stay for?

  It was an idea that grew on him for the rest of the morning as he rode aimlessly about London, neither seeing nor hearing what went on about him. If he went back to Dunstable Hall without delay and made all the necessary arrangements to settle his affairs, he could be on the boat with Douglas before the summer was out.

  If he did so, he would be released from the temptation to keep finding Madeline to assure himself that she was alive and well. The temptation to see her and perhaps after all try to force her to come back to him.

  Luncheon time found him not eating, but pacing his rooms while his man packed his belongings. The afternoon was not the time to begin a journey. He should wait and set out early the following morning. But he could not bear the thought of inaction. By nightfall he could be well on his way.

  But there was something he must do. He must say good-bye to Alex. He could not leave without a word to her.

  When he arrived at his brother-in-law’s house, he asked for a private word with the countess. She joined him in a small downstairs salon, but when she saw his traveling clothes and heard his errand, she insisted that he join the rest of her family in the drawing room.

  “Madeline is not here?” he asked. “And is not expected?”

  “No,” she said. “Dominic and Ellen are here, James, but you should say good-bye to them. I wish, oh, I do wish things had turned out differently. And I cannot for the life of me understand why they have not.” She hugged him and shed a few tears before taking him by the hand and leading him upstairs to the drawing room.

  There really was not a great deal to say, though they were all cordial. Edmund and Dominic shook his hand and Ellen surprised him by hugging him. Christopher came obediently to be hugged, and Dominic’s twins came to stand side by side in front of him, Olivia’s thumb in her mouth, until he stooped down and ruffled their hair and hugged them both together. Madeline’s nephew and niece.

  Alex knelt down on the floor, where her daughter was sitting. “Are you going to give Uncle James kisses, sweetheart?” she asked Caroline.

  His niece gazed up at him with her solemn dark eyes that reminded him so much of Alex as a child.

  And that was when the double doors of the drawing room were thrown back without warning and Madeline, pale and wild-eyed, stood there.

  “Alexandra,” she cried, “has he left already?”

  And then her eyes met his and nothing and nobody existed for many seconds or minutes or hours. At the end of it, when the world started to come back, she closed the doors behind her and leaned against them.

  “You were not expected back at your lodgings,” she said. “I thought you had gone.”

  “Come along, tiger,” Edmund was saying to Christopher.

  Alex had Caroline by the hand. Ellen and Dominic were holding a twin each.

  “Up on the shoulder it is, then,” Dominic said. “Hold on tight, Olivia. We have all discovered pressing business to be carried out in the far corners of the house, Mad. Stand away from the door, love.”

  She stood obediently to one side without taking her eyes from James’s, and four adults and four children disappeared from the room.

  HE WAS DRESSED for travel, not for an afternoon’s visiting. He was thinner. Surely he had lost weight. His face looked almost gaunt. He looked impossibly handsome.

  “I thought you had gone,” she said again.

  He clasped and unclasped his hands behind his back. She was still pale and looking dazed. And very beautiful.

  “I am on my way,” he said. “I called to say good-bye to Alex.”

  She looked about her. They were alone. And he had seen her burst into the room demanding information about him. How humiliating.

  “Are you?” she said, walking farther into the room. “Is it not a little late in the day to begin a journey, James?”

  He shrugged. “I might as well be a few miles on the road by nightfall,” he said. “There is nothing left for me to do here.”

  “No,” she said, smoothing her hands over the upholstery along the back of a sofa, “I suppose not.”

  “I will say good-bye, then, Madeline,” he said. “I am glad to have seen you again. Will you shake my hand? Can we part at least not the bitterest of enemies?”

  She held out her hand to him and smiled. “Why not?” she said. “We were never really meant for each other, James. I remember your telling me last summer at Richmond that it could not work between us. You were right. We just forgot that for a while after your father’s passing. Now we know it cannot work and we can go our separate ways without regrets.”

  “Yes,” he said, taking her hand, feeling its smooth slimness.

  His hand was warm and strong, the hand of a man who had worked for a living.

  “Good-bye, James.”

  “Good-bye, Madeline,” he said. “My solicitor will be calling on you.”

  “Yes,” she said, and dropped her hand to her side as he released it. She smiled.

  “Well, then,” he said after a pause, “I will be on my way.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned away and strode to the door. It seemed a million miles away. But she spoke as he set his hand on the knob.

  “What did you expect?” she cried, her voice shrill. “What did
you want of me? I have never been able to understand that. I tried. I did try, James. I tried to talk to you even when you did not encourage me. I tried to make your house more of a home by pitting my will against that dreadful Mrs. Cockings. I made friends of your neighbors. I always tried to look my best for you. I tried to please you in—in bed. I could never please you. What did you want of me? Why did you marry me?”

  He looked down at his hand on the door handle. “I took you for comfort on the night of my father’s funeral,” he said. “Remember? I had to make you respectable again after that.”

  There was a pause. “No,” she said. “That was not the reason. You took me because you had decided to marry me. That was the way it was, wasn’t it? But why? We were never friends. We were never comfortable together. There was only the passion. And if that is why you married me, then you were a fool. For that died too, didn’t it? For months before I left you took me as if I were just another of your daily chores. You should not have married me, James. It was not fair to me.”

  He turned to face her. “And what of you?” he said. “Why did you marry me? Are you an innocent victim in all this? You have a head on your shoulders too. You knew as well as I the chance we took of running into just the disaster we have met. You knew when I took you up into the hills that night what was going to happen. I did not notice your footsteps lagging or find you at all reluctant. I have had whores who gave themselves with less abandon.”

  “So,” she said, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin, “that is what I was to you, is it? The truth at last? I have been your whore. Better than a whore because more eager. And I came cheaply—at the expense of a special license and a wedding ring. But I will cost you now, James. There will never be a cast-off mistress more expensive than I. And I threw away your wedding ring. I threw it from the mail coach window.” She held up her hand, palm in.

  He made an impatient gesture. “Theatrics,” he said. “You should have been on the stage, did you know that, Madeline? You would make a magnificent Lady Macbeth.”

  “I would be even more magnificent in the green room,” she said.