The Devil's Web (12 page)

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!

A
RE 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.

M
ADELINE 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 used 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.”

“Sometimes people need to be alone for a while,” Madeline said after a short pause. “Perhaps he finds the house crowded. He has been used to being alone. Very alone for four years.”

“Yes.” Alexandra frowned. “I thought when he first returned that he was changed. He seemed confident and happy. He had lost that brooding and haunted look that was his mask for several years. But it is coming back.”

Madeline swallowed. “Perhaps he is like Dom,” she said. “Dom hates saying good-bye. He always says that he wishes he could snap his fingers the day before he is due to go somewhere and be gone, all farewells unsaid. Perhaps he is thinking that he will have to say good-bye again in a few weeks' time to you and your mama and papa.”

“Perhaps,” Alexandra said with a sigh. “I had hoped … Oh, Madeline, I had hoped … But it doesn't matter. It is time I took the children back to Nanny Rey before Christopher falls in the water. Are you coming?”

“I think I'll stay here for a while,” Madeline said, “and be utterly lazy. There is no more delicious combination than grass and sunshine.”

She might even sleep, she thought a few minutes later, watching the bright glow of her eyelids and feeling the pleasant warmth of the sun on her face.

Lady Lampman's niece, Priscilla, was paying a visit with her new husband and the latter's older brother. And Miss Letitia Stanhope had sighed just the day before over the handsomeness of Captain Hands of the local regiment. She would meet both of the single gentlemen that evening. And perhaps more officers too. Perhaps none of them would be eligible in any way. And perhaps they would.

But however it was, that evening she was going to begin a new life. Within the next year at the longest she was going to find herself a husband. And if she chose with the head and not the heart, she ought not to find the task difficult at all. She was fortunate enough still to have her looks and still to be attractive to men. And many of the men of her acquaintance were perfectly sensible and kindly.

She had frightened herself in London with the realization that she really was a spinster relative, a hanger-on, tolerated because she was a sister, and even loved by both Edmund and Dominic and, she thought, by their wives. But nevertheless, she did not belong with either of them, or even with her mother, who had a life of her own and was enjoying her independence. There was nowhere where she really belonged.

But she would belong. Even a dreary marriage would be preferable to spinster status. And there was no reason why any marriage she chose to make should be dreary.

She was going to put behind her an infatuation, an obsession that had lived with her for four whole years, even when she had not realized it. Every good man with whom she might have allied herself in that time had been rejected because he did not have the thin dark face or the burning, penetrating eyes, or the wayward lock of dark hair or the brooding morose nature or the compelling sexuality of James Purnell.

No longer. The sensible part of her knew that even if the obstacles to their marrying could be removed—and they could be removed quite easily, since there was no insurmountable barrier between them—it would be the unwisest move of her life to marry him. She wanted him, she ached for him, with far more than mere lust. But she would never be happy with him. There was just something there that made it impossible for them ever to be happy with each other.

And so she must let him go when he left. She must watch him go and steel herself against all the agony that that would involve—for try as she would to be nonchalant, she knew that there would be agony. And then she must let him go into her past, into the past of nostalgia and mild regrets. Into the past so that he would have no influence whatsoever on either her present or her future.

Tonight her new life would begin—a new life as yet unknown, but neither a tragic nor a dreary life. It was not in her nature to turn inward upon herself and brood upon an unhappiness that could not be helped. So there was some goodness, some happiness, ahead. And perhaps that evening she would see a glimmering of what it might be.