The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  “Perhaps,” he said. “You are determined to make yourself into a victim, I see, and into a proud woman scorned. The fault was not all mine, Madeline. Mostly mine, I will admit, but not all. Why did you make a friend of Beasley against my wishes?”

  “Don’t you mean against your commands?” she said. “You are good at giving commands, James. I am not good at obeying them. I saw no reason for not being his friend.”

  “But events have proved you wrong,” he said. “Sometimes commands are given for another person’s good and not for the mere love of exercising power. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think that perhaps I had good reason to tell you to stay away from him?”

  “Then why did you not give me the reason?” she said. “Have you ever talked to me since we have known each other? Have you ever shared anything of yourself with me? Have you ever given me reason to want to obey you?”

  “We are not all easy conversationalists, Madeline,” he said. “You could have respected my silence. And you could have kept your mouth shut about our business outside our home.”

  Her eyes widened. “What is that supposed to mean?”she asked.

  “Carl Beasley,” he said. “He seemed to know something of the sad state of our marriage, Madeline. I think we behaved with enough decorum in public that he would not have known unless you had told him.”

  “Well!” she said, nostrils flaring and bosom heaving. “So I am to blame for everything after all. And now enough has been said.”

  “And almost the first question Alex asked me when I came down here was if it was true that Dora was my mistress. Where did she get that idea from, Madeline?”

  “Doubtless from Dominic,” she said. “Did you expect me to come here, James, and pretend to my own family that I had come to enjoy the Season?”

  “I think we might have kept our own problems at home,” he said. “You might have told me that you wished to leave. We might have worked something out in privacy and with some dignity. This has all been performed on a very public stage, has it not?”

  She advanced on him. “Nothing had to be played out on any stage,” she said. “I left you because I wished never to see you again. I did not ask you to follow me. I did not ask you for anything at all.”

  “Well,” he said, “if you wish never to see me again, Madeline, you are about to have your wish. And I will not follow you anywhere else in this life, you may be assured of that. I think we are both fortunate to be free of this entanglement.”

  “I could not agree more,” she said.

  “I will be going back to Canada at the end of the summer,” he said. “I won’t be in England again, Madeline.”

  “To Canada,” she said, her expression falling blank.

  “You will be well rid of me,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And I of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I must be on my way,” he said. “I am wasting precious daylight hours.”

  “I would hate to be responsible for that,” she said.

  “Yes, I’m sure you would,” he said, turning back to the door. “Good-bye, Madeline.”

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  He did not hear the rest of what she mumbled. “What?”he said, looking back over his shoulder with a frown.

  “I am going to have a child,” she said. “I thought you should know.” Her head was tilted proudly back.

  There was a buzzing in his head. “My child?” he said.

  Her eyes blazed. She picked up a cushion from the sofa beside her and hurled it at him. It caught him on the shoulder. “I don’t know whose it is,” she yelled at him. “It could belong to any of a dozen men. We will just have to wait to see whom it resembles, won’t we? Perhaps it will have neither dark hair nor dark eyes.”

  “Madeline,” he said.

  “Perhaps you would like to divorce me,” she shrieked, “and I could go from one to another of the dozen seeing which one would be willing to marry me after all the scandal. I think that would be a good way of settling the matter, don’t you, James? Don’t you touch me. Don’t touch me!”

  But he had her arms in a vise and her body against his own and her face pressed among the folds of his neck-cloth.

  “Madeline,” he said as she pounded his chest with her fists and sobbed noisily against him.

  “It’s your baby,” she said. “It’s yours. But you may think what you like. I don’t care. I hate you anyway. I told you only because I thought you should know. And I have not told anyone else, even Dom. There are some things I can keep my mouth shut about, you see.”

  “Madeline,” he said, his arms holding her to him like iron bands. “Madeline.”

  She threw back her head suddenly to reveal red and swollen and flashing eyes. “I suppose you will want me back now,” she said. “Now that I can put a child in your nursery. You will want me back now because I can give you heirs. Because I am not infertile after all.”

  “Because I love you,” he said between his teeth. “Because I love you, and for no other reason in the world. Because I can’t live without you, Madeline. Because my soul will die in me if I walk out through that door without you. I want you back because I love you.”

  She did not even try to stop the angry tears that ran down her reddened cheeks and dripped from her chin to run down her neck. “You don’t,” she cried. “It is because of the baby. And I am not coming back just because I am a breeder and suddenly valuable property. I am not coming back. You don’t love me.”

  “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” he said, his hands on her arms holding her close to him still. “That’s what it has always been. Not just an obsession. Not just a passion. It’s love between us, Madeline. On both sides. We both have too much to give to have been satisfied with what we have had. And the fault has been mine. I have been too caught up for years in my guilt over what I thought I had done to Dora to be free to love you. But I have loved you from the beginning. I have longed to give myself to you. All of me. Everything that is me.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “And you love me too,” he said. “You said yourself a few minutes ago that you tried to make our marriage work. You gave and you gave, but I would not receive. I poisoned your love and have put you through all this. Forgive me, Madeline. For your own sake as well as mine, forgive me.”

  “I dare not,” she said. Her voice was flat. “For five years, James, nothing has worked between you and me. I cannot take any more punishment or misery.”

  “We were lovers,” he said. “For the first month or two, Madeline, we were lovers. We were beautiful together. And that last night we were lovers. It was not rape, was it? We loved on that night.”

  “Yes,” she said, “we loved.”

  “While our minds and our wills have warred,” he said, “our bodies have accepted the truth. And our love has created life, Madeline.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Give me a chance,” he said. “Come back to me. Give me a chance to learn how to give you myself now that I am free of my past. Give me a chance to tell you with all of myself, and not just with my body, that I love you. Come home with me.”

  “Home,” she said, resting her forehead against his chest.

  “It was becoming a place of happiness,” he said. “After you left the maids lost their smiles and their curls. You were making it a happy place, Madeline. Come home with me. It is not the loveliest place on earth, but we will make our own beauty.”

  “I love the moors,” she said.

  “You were out on them only once,” he said.

  She lifted her hands to rest on either side of his waist. “I love the moors.”

  “Will you come home, Madeline?” He found he was holding his breath.

  Madeline had her eyes closed very tightly. If this was a dream, she would not wake up yet. She would not. She would remain asleep by sheer willpower.

  “Because I love you,” she said. “Not just because of the baby. I could m
anage very well on my own with the baby. But because I love you and don’t think I could live without you. Because I have died a little every day since I left you. Only because I love you, James. Don’t lift my face. It is a dreadful mess.”

  “Have you ever known me to grant your requests?” he asked, lifting her chin with a firm hand. But although the words were light and teasing, his face held its usual seriousness. But his eyes! His eyes were intense on hers and she could see through them into the man himself. She could see for herself that the words he had spoken were true.

  “James,” she whispered. “Oh, James.”

  “I’m going to take you home,” he said while she gazed and drowned in his eyes. “The day after your mother’s wedding. We are going home to Dunstable and our child is going to be born there. Our children. I’m going to take you home, Madeline.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. I wish we could go tomorrow. The day after the wedding? We will not delay longer?”

  He shook his head. “In the meantime,” he said, “I hold all the home I really want in my arms. My wife and my child. My lover. And the woman I am going to make my closest friend.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling slowly at him, the glow back in her eyes despite their redness. “My husband and my lover. And at last the father of my child. And at long last my friend.”

  They savored the moment, smiling into each other’s eyes before the inevitable moment when their mouths would meet.

  But the door opened hesitantly before that moment came and Alexandra peered in. If the two occupants of the room had looked, they would have seen Edmund, Dominic, and Ellen in the hallway beyond.

  “James?” Alexandra asked. “Madeline? Is everything all right? There was so much yelling. Is everything all right now?”

  James did not take his eyes from his wife’s. “Alex,” he said, “this is your house and I do love you and all that, but would you be good enough to get out of here?”

  The door closed quietly as his mouth came down on his wife’s.

  WELL, MY LOVE.” THE EARL OF AMBERLEY had finally got his wife alone in a room swarming with relatives and friends, all merrily celebrating the wedding that had taken place a few hours before. “How does it feel to be the only Lady Amberley?”

  “It feels good,” she said with a smile, “because it was time for your mother to move on to another name, Edmund. Have you ever seen a couple look more happy?”

  “You on our wedding day,” he said. “I cannot speak for the couple—I did not look in a mirror a great deal that day. But I know that I felt as happy.”

  “Edmund,” she said, “what a very lovely day it is, even if it is raining and miserable outside. Your mama and Sir Cedric looking so very happy; Jennifer and Mr. Penworth announcing their betrothal just three days ago; Anna and Sir Gordon surely about to announce theirs soon if the looks they keep exchanging are any indication. And Madeline and James! There always was a glow about Madeline, but now she fairly sparkles. And James can smile. You see? I always told you he could. He looks now just as he looked in a portrait I once painted of him. I am so happy for him I could weep for a week.”

  He chuckled. “Perhaps it is as well, then, that they are going home to Yorkshire tomorrow,” he said.

  “And they are to have a child,” she said with a sigh. “How wonderful they must feel about that. In fact, I know just how they feel. I am not at all sorry about this third one even though we did not plan to have it quite so soon. Tell me you are not sorry either, Edmund. I worry about it sometimes.”

  He clucked his tongue. “I am only sorry to be putting you through all this discomfort again, Alex,” he said. “The pure male in me is thoroughly delighted to see my woman swelling with my child—again. And you know how much I love our children and will love this new one. Weddings are strange things, are they not? I am almost overcome by the strangest urge. I want to kiss you, in view of all these people. Have you ever heard of anything quite so shocking?”

  She smiled at him.

  “And you are of no earthly help at all,” he said, bending forward and kissing her very briefly on the lips. “You are supposed to frown and look repulsed when I say such things.”

  “Oh,” she said, flushing but continuing to smile, “I do love you, Edmund.”

  He grinned back a moment before they were joined by four of their guests. “I am a mite fond of you too, love,” he said.

  LORD EDEN CAME UP behind his wife as she was helping herself to a cream cake from a side table. Both of them were free of other company for the moment. He set his hands on either side of her waist.

  “I would hate to put my hands here one day,” he said, “and find your waist gone altogether.”

  “Dominic!” she said. “How horrid. You know I am not forever eating cream cakes. It is just such a special occasion.”

  He reached past her, picked up a cake, and bit into it. “It is, isn’t it?” he said. “I can’t for the life of me think why they did not do it years ago. Something about being loyal to their first spouses, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that would be it. Sir Cedric loved his Anne very dearly. He showed me her miniature just a few weeks ago. And your mama loved your father, of course. They have doubtless felt guilty over loving each other even though so many years have passed.”

  Lord Eden looked closely at his wife and circled her waist with one arm. “Do you have any regrets, Ellen?” he asked quietly.

  She looked up at him, startled. “Regrets?” she said.

  “You were rather forced into marrying me, weren’t you?” he said. “With the children on the way, I mean. And Charlie so recently gone.”

  “Oh, Dominic.” She put her head to one side and gazed earnestly up at him. “You don’t ever doubt that I love you, do you? Or that I married you only because I wanted to do so more than I wanted anything else in this life? How foolish you are. Oh, how very foolish. And I can see by the twinkle in your eye that I have played into your hands, you rogue. You merely wanted to hear me protesting my love. Well, now you must hear the whole of it. I think I am probably the most fortunate and the happiest woman in the world. So there.”

  “Ah, an extravagant claim,” he said. “I think you have some competition in this room, love.”

  “Your mother?” she said. “You are right. Perhaps I will relinquish my claim for this one day only. For there is nothing quite like the happiness of one’s wedding day, is there?”

  “Yes,” he said, “there is the happiness of the day when one’s twins are born.”

  “And when they first smile and first walk,” she said.

  “And when they first sleep through the night and leave their mother to their father’s care,” he said into her ear.

  “And when one’s husband comes up behind one in the midst of a large gathering,” she said, “and stands indecorously close and blows into one’s ear.”

  “Shall we go and talk to Madeline and James?” he said. “They will be leaving tomorrow.”

  “And there,” she said, “I will have to relinquish my claim yet again, won’t I, or at least share it? Just look at Madeline, Dominic. She is positively beautiful. And I swear I did not realize just how handsome James is. That smile transforms him.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking her by the hand.

  “And Jennifer and Allan, Dominic. They are going to be happy too, aren’t they?” she said.

  He grinned down at her. “Sometimes,” he said, “when one is happy, it seems that the whole world is happy too. And on this occasion I don’t think that is an illusion. Did you see the kiss Edmund just stole from Alexandra? Edmund! That pillar of propriety. Whatever is the world coming to?”

  JAMES DID NOT have to find a moment to be with his wife. He had had his fingers laced with hers almost the whole time since they had left her mother’s house that morning. And at the church and while they conversed with other guests at the reception, his thumb and one finger played with her new wedding ring, turning it on her finger.<
br />
  He had bought it for her on the very day of their reconciliation, taking her from Edmund and Alex’s house straight to a jeweler’s.

  “And you are not to feel bad about throwing the other one away,” he had told her later that night when they were alone together in her room and he was sliding it onto her finger. “I am glad you did. We are starting a wholly new marriage, Madeline, and it is fitting that I give you this new ring. It is to stay on your finger for the rest of our lives. And that is a command. It will stay there because I wish it and because you will wish it. I swear you will.”

  “Yes,” she had said, her eyes dreamy, “that is a command I will obey without question, James, because I want to do so. Make love to me. Oh, I have missed you so much. Make love to me.”

  They had not slept all that night. They had talked and made love alternately all night long. And he had stroked his hand over her flat abdomen and they had both expressed impatience for the time when it would be large with their child.

  “I am so happy for Mama,” she said to him now, her eyes with that old glow in them and far more besides, but now focused entirely on him, “and for Sir Cedric too. He lost his first wife when he was quite young, you know, and carried her miniature around with him for years. But he and Mama belong together now, don’t they?”

  He smiled. “They are certainly doing nothing to hide their joy,” he said.

  “And now I know just how they feel,” she said, “just how happy they are. They are close friends, James, and now can mean even more to each other. We did things the other way around, didn’t we, but we have arrived in the same place. At last.” She squeezed his hand. “My friend. I never thought I would be able to say that to you, but I can, can’t I?”

  “Yes,” he said, and there was a twinkle in his very dark eyes, “my prattler.”

  “Oh,” she said, “unfair. I have not done all the talking in the past two weeks, James. Not by any means.”

  He smiled. “Are you looking forward to going home?”

  She nodded. “Mm,” she said. “You know I am.”