The Devil's Web (13 page)

It was an exciting thought. Madeline drifted off to sleep.

T
HE
M
ORTONS
were not able to offer their guests any dancing, much to the mortification of Mrs. Morton, who had never been able to persuade Mr. Morton that they needed a pianoforte when they already possessed a spinet on which the girls could practice their scales. A spinet was all very well for scales and finger exercises, she had always argued to deaf ears, which in more private moments she had sometimes called doltish among other lowering things. But it was no good at all for musical evenings with one's friends. And absolutely impossible for dancing.

Their son-in-law, dear Hetty's husband, Colin, was, of course, proficient on the violin, but it was humiliating to expect one's guests to dance to its scrapings when the Courtneys could always call upon the skill and experience of Miss Letitia Stanhope to play their pianoforte, which they had bought years before even though they had had but the one girl. And the Earl of Amberley, of course, always hired a whole orchestra to play for the summer ball.

Mrs. Morton made the best of a bad situation by organizing cards and charades, and sharpening her conversational skills, and having colored lanterns hung in the trees all about the terrace and lawns, and having her cook prepare such mounds of food and bowls of punch that the Courtneys would be clearly outdone. Not that one wanted to outdo one's neighbors, of course, she explained to a husband whose nose was deeply buried in a horse journal. But the Courtneys would have all the advantage of their dance.

It was gratifying to find, though, on the evening of the party, that all the guests arrived in the highest of spirits. The dowager Countess of Amberley and Sir Cedric Harvey were smiling and gracious, and Lady Beckworth amiable, though she asked to be seated as far as possible from the open French windows in the drawing room. Lord Beckworth had declined to come on account of his health, poor man.

Mr. Carrington loudly declared to Mr. Morton that they must suffer through another evening of what the ladies considered to be genteel entertainment, and Mr. Morton chuckled his appreciation, while Mr. Courtney's stays creaked from his laughter. Mrs. Carrington looked reproachfully at her husband and assured everyone within hearing that he was teasing.

All the other neighbors arrived in good time and good spirits. Sir Peregrine made Miss Letitia blush by admiring her new cap, although it was not new, that flustered and pleased lady confided to Mrs. Courtney. But dear Sir Perry was very kind. And such a mischief he had been as a child, too. Did Mrs. Courtney remember the time when …? And the two ladies were off into a comfortable coze.

Lady Lampman presented her niece to the company, though most of them remembered her from a visit she had made with her mama and papa and grandpapa a few years before. Now she had acquired a good-looking young man for a husband. They all greeted Mr. Henry Clark and his even better-looking older brother, Sir Gordon Clark. Such a head of auburn curls he had, and such a fine figure of a man for all the young ladies to fight over.

Not that he was the only one, of course. Captain Hands, with his dark hair and curled mustache, was a very distinguished gentleman indeed, and Lieutenant Cowley of pleasing countenance. And there was neither a Mrs. Hands nor a Mrs. Cowley.

Anna Carrington and Jean Cameron had their heads together and were doing a deal of whispering and giggling and looking conscious. And Lady Madeline was bright-eyed and glowing as she had always been for as far back as anyone could remember. And exciting the notice of the captain, if not that of all three new gentlemen to the neighborhood.

Lady Amberley had been gracious enough to put in an appearance with the earl. She never had put on airs since acquiring the title four years before. She sat by the windows with Lady Lampman beside her to keep her company, though the earl rarely took his eyes from her for more than five minutes at a time, any more than Sir Perry did from his lady.

Mr. Watson sat beside his new wife while she blushed and made conversation with Hetty. Mr. Watson, that quiet poet farmer, was clearly in love.

And Mr. Purnell was as quiet a gentleman as he had been several years before when he had first come to Amberley with his sister, before her marriage. And as handsome a gentleman, despite the dark bronzing of his complexion, which must have come of being out in the sun without a hat. He would lose all his hair that way before he was forty, if he were not careful. See if he wouldn't.

Altogether, Mrs. Morton thought, as her guests settled in for an evening's modest entertainment, she could feel thoroughly satisfied with all the work she had done and all the anxieties she had suffered and all the sleep she had lost worrying that something would go wrong.

Her party was going to be a success.

“T
HOSE CURLS
!” Anna was whispering to Jean. “Don't you just long to wind them around your fingers?”

They both smothered laughter.

“He is quite well-looking,” Jean said, taking another look at Sir Gordon Clark. “Are you being untrue to Mr. Chambers already, Anna?”

“Pooh!” the girl said. “He did not even make me an offer before we came home. He merely said that he would do himself the honor of calling upon me next spring when we were in town. I would not give him the satisfaction of remaining single that long.”

“You are not nursing a broken heart?” Jean asked.

Anna giggled. “The only time I had a broken heart,” she said, “was when Dominic told me last summer that I must stop telling everyone that I was going to marry him. I had been doing so since I was ten years old, you know. It had come to be a habit. And almost indecently soon after that he betrothed himself to Ellen. And when I was all ready to see him as a noble figure of tragedy—because she was already increasing, you see, and he was doing the decent thing—it became very obvious to me that he was also head over ears in love with her. That was very lowering to the spirits, believe me.”

“You speak of Lord Eden?” Jean asked. “He is very handsome.”

“Don't remind me,” Anna said. “I have never met a man more so. But Sir Gordon Clark has definite possibilities. And the added attraction of a dimpled chin, Jean. My heart is quite aflutter, as my eyelashes will be if I do not school them to propriety. I do hope Madeline does not decide to set her cap at him, for she will surely win him if she does.”

Jean smiled and nodded across the room to where Madeline was in close and animated conversation with Captain Hands. “There is your answer, perhaps,” she said.

Anna put her head to one side and studied the captain from head to foot. “A little too broad in the shoulders and chest,” she said. “And I have never admired mustaches, have you, Jean? I imagine they would tickle.”

Again the smothered giggles.

“Not the gentleman himself,” Anna said, “but the lady kissing him. Have you ever been kissed, Jean? It is the most delightful experience, I do assure you. I let Mr. Chambers kiss me on two separate occasions, though I am sorry now that I did. And he did not do it near as well as Mr. Sindon did it last year. Have you allowed Mr. Purnell to kiss you yet?”

“James?” Jean said, startled out of the giggles.

“Gracious, no. Why should I let James kiss me? Or why would he want to?”

Anna looked at her with some interest. “I thought he was your beau,” she said. “Is that not what everyone thinks? Is that not why you are here?”

Jean flushed. “James my beau?” she said. “But of course not. He is old. I think he must be thirty or close to it. The same age as Duncan. He is like Duncan to me, only very much kinder. He is not my beau.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “I wish I had known sooner. For he is definitely the second most handsome man I have ever known and I liked him exceedingly when he was here last, for he was the only one of the adults who took any notice of me at all except for Dominic. And I remember how my heart fluttered when he returned this year and we met him and you at that concert in London. But I thought he was yours, and I decided to do the honorable thing and not steal him from you.”

This time the giggling was so noticeable that Mrs. Carrington looked meaningfully at Anna.

“We will have to find you a beau as well, then,” Anna said. “Not Sir Gordon, because I have first claim. And not Captain Hands, because he has eyes for no one but Madeline at this precise moment. And that mustache would definitely tickle. It will have to be Lieutenant Cowley, I'm afraid. The kindest thing that can be said about him is that he is pleasant looking. And he does have a rather sweet smile. There is, of course, Howard Courtney—” Anna glanced to her mother and decided not to giggle again, “if you fancy being a farmer's wife.”

“It must be a very pleasant life,” Jean said somewhat wistfully. “In this part of the world, anyway.”

Anna looked at her and forgot her resolve not to laugh. “Oh, famous!” she said. “We will marry you to Howard and keep you in the neighborhood for the rest of your life.”

“Sh!” Jean said, and flushed.

The two girls were soon separated by the necessity of playing charades with the other young people. Sir Peregrine chose Jean to be on his team, and James Purnell chose Anna to be on his.

“But Sir Perry is bound to win,” Anna protested loudly, “for he and Madeline are by far the best players at charades for miles around.” But she was pacified at the fact that she had been chosen first by Mr. Purnell and that Sir Gordon Clark was also on her team. She winked at Jean when Sir Peregrine named Howard Courtney.

Anna did not get her kiss that evening, much to her chagrin, even though both Sir Gordon and the lieutenant were sitting with her at one point in the evening, and though Sir Gordon walked out into the garden with her. Unfortunately, his brother and sister-in-law chose to accompany them. And the garden looked so very romantic that Anna could have cried.

Both Jean and Madeline were kissed.

Jean strolled out on the terrace after the charades were over with James and the earl and countess. And she looked up at James and saw that indeed he was handsome and not so very old after all. But she smiled at Anna's suggestion that he was her beau. When he smiled back at her, she almost shared the joke with him, but his sister and brother-in-law were close by and might think such a topic of conversation indelicate.

“I like all these people,” she said instead. “I am having such a very good time, James. Are you?”

He smiled down into her eyes just like a very dear brother and covered her hand with his. “Yes, I am, Jean,” he said. “What are you going to do for enjoyment next winter, I wonder, after having such a wonderful time here?”

“I shall relive it all,” she said, “and spend my time dreaming. And I will have you to reminisce with, for you will not start back into the interior until next spring, will you?”

But when they went back inside, she saw Howard Courtney sitting all alone, and though he did not look unhappy, she could not bear that anyone not share the warm glow that the evening was bringing her. She went to sit beside him.

“Do you spend many such sociable evenings?” she asked. “You must be very thankful to live in such a neighborhood if you do.”

“I could not imagine living anywhere else, Miss Cameron,” he said.

“You have never dreamed of traveling?” she asked.

Howard pondered a moment. “No,” he said.

Jean smiled warmly at him. “I can very well understand why,” she said. “When you live in surely the loveliest part of the world, there is little point in traveling elsewhere, is there?”

“I feel exactly that way,” he said. “Though I have not been anywhere else, of course, to compare. I have to go to London in the autumn for my sister's wedding. It will be my first visit there.”

“You will like it,” she said, “and then be so happy to come home again.”

“Would you care for a walk outside?” he asked. “Everyone else seems to be out there.”

“I have just come in,” she said. “But it is far cooler and lovelier out there.” She jumped to her feet.

And when they were outside and she took his arm and closed her eyes and breathed in deeply and exclaimed on the scent of roses, he took her to see them, though the rose garden was around at the side of the house and not lit by the lanterns and could not be seen clearly at all. But it could be smelled.

“I will never forget this scent,” she said. “We have roses in Montreal, but there is something special about the smell here. I will always think of it as the smell of England. I love England.”

And that was when Howard kissed her. A fumbling kiss, surely his first as it was hers. He kissed first her cheek in the darkness and then her lips. And though the embrace lasted only a brief few seconds and was conducted with closed lips and bodies not touching, they were both breathless when it was finished and both thankful for the darkness that hid their blushes.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“I am not,” she said hurriedly.

“I had better take you back to the lawn,” he said. “I wasn't thinking. I should not have brought you here.”

“But I'm glad you did, Mr. Courtney,” she said, taking his arm and tripping along at his side as he hurried around the path that led to the back of the house and the lawns and the lanterns.

And if he was not exactly handsome, she thought, blushing anew at the thought of her first kiss and smiling though there was no one to see her in the darkness, then it really did not matter. For he was courteous and kindly, and she felt comfortable with him despite the blushes. And he worked hard to earn an honest living just as her papa and Duncan did.

M
ADELINE DID NOT FLIRT. ALTHOUGH HER cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone and her lips were curved into a smile, and although her whole manner sparkled through much of the evening, her behavior was wholly spontaneous. She felt happy. She had made a decision, and she was going to live with it.

She liked Captain Hands as soon as she met him. He was not a great deal taller than she, but his broad and strongly muscled chest and shoulders gave the illusion of height. And being a soldier, he bore himself well. He had a handsome enough face and his dark brown hair was thick and shining.

But more important than his appearance, he was a serious young man, who looked her very directly in the eye and conversed earnestly on any topic she chose. He was very different from her usual choice of flirt. Indeed, he could not be called a flirt. Usually she liked to engage gentlemen in light bantering conversation and teasing flirtation. She had realized only the year before in Brussels that she did so in an unconscious effort to hold them at arm's length. Only a few men, like Jason Huxtable, had penetrated beyond the barrier that she had erected around herself.

But on this occasion she was building no barriers. She asked the captain in all seriousness about his family and home, about his life as an officer and his aspirations for the future. And although she conversed with other people and joined in wholeheartedly with the game of charades and laughed with Perry when their team won handily, her attention was entirely given over to cultivating this new acquaintance, this new hope for her future.

Not that she had any wish to be an officer's wife.
Although she had once almost eloped with a lieutenant and actually had been betrothed to one the year before, and though she had seriously considered marrying a colonel only a few weeks before, she did not really think the life would suit her. But she was not going to make excuses to remain uninvolved with any man. She was going to give every possible relationship a chance.

She and the captain walked outside before supper, as several of the other guests did, and they breathed in the fresh air and the scent of the roses together and admired the lanterns and strolled the perimeter of the lawns. The rhododendron bushes were in full bloom and must be appreciated to the full.

“They are overpowered by the roses,” Madeline said, “but they smell just as sweet.” And she stepped up to one bloom and breathed in its fragrance. “How lovely the summertime is.”

Captain Hands must have agreed with her. He must have thought she matched the loveliness of her surroundings. He stood beside her with hands clasped behind his back and leaned forward and kissed her.

She resisted the urge to react in any of the glib ways she normally would have done. And normally she would have been annoyed. She had been taken by surprise. A
kiss for Madeline was usually something granted rather than taken. She smiled at the captain when he lifted his head.

He regarded her gravely. “Do I owe you an apology?” he asked.

She continued to smile. “Only if you are sorry,” she said. “But I would be sorry if you are.”

He said no more and Madeline turned to stroll onward.
They resumed their conversation as if it had not been interrupted at all.

It was a thoroughly promising beginning, she thought as they returned inside and were called to supper and her attention was taken by her Aunt Viola. A comfortable friendship had begun, with a hint that it might turn into more than friendship. She liked the captain. There was nothing whatsoever about him that might be considered threatening.

There was something decidedly threatening about James Purnell. He came to sit beside her as she took supper at a table with Aunt Viola, Mr. Cartwright, and the Watsons. His arrival there was totally inexplicable and disturbing since he might have sat anywhere he pleased.
There was an empty chair beside Miss Cameron.

But he came to sit beside her instead. And spoke not a word to her. He answered a string of the inevitable questions about Canada from Aunt Viola and Mr. Cartwright and then proceeded to draw the very shy Mrs. Watson into conversation. And he did so with a skill and gentleness that soon had her talking freely about the family and home she had left twenty miles away. Mr. Watson smiled with obvious gratification that someone had been able to draw his wife out of her shell.

Madeline felt only indignation. Why was it that he was
capable of so much humanity with other people? Young and shy girls could always provoke compassion in him, it seemed. They reminded him perhaps of Alexandra as she had used to be.

And that fact would explain why he had never shown either gentleness or compassion to her. She had never been shy.

“Would you care to walk outside?”

There was a subtle change in his voice, an almost imperceptible hardening, which made Madeline realize immediately that he was addressing her. When she turned from a contemplation of Anna and Jean, Howard and Lieutenant Cowley at the other side of the room, it was to find his dark eyes on her, as unfathomable as ever in their expression.

No good whatsoever could come of it. It was strange beyond belief that he would even suggest such a thing.
They would be merely punishing themselves and each other by being deliberately alone together. Besides, she had made a satisfactory start to a new life and a new attitude just that evening. She was pleased with herself. She was almost happy.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him, “that would be pleasant.”

And when he rose to his feet and pulled back her chair for her, she smiled around at the other occupants of the table and turned to the doorway.

J
AMES HAD BEEN WATCHING
Jean all evening. And trying, as he had been doing all afternoon up on the cliffs, to make decisions. But he was no nearer settling the course of his life. He had succeeded only in making his brain race
along out of all control so that he could not think clearly at all.

He played cards with the elder Miss Stanhope, Sir Cedric, and Mrs. Courtney. He led one of the teams of charades, a team that lost ignominiously and amid much laughter to the other. He conversed with anyone who happened to be at his side during the evening. And he watched Jean.

She was very young. She liked to whisper and giggle with Anna Carrington. She was also very sweet and even-tempered and sociable. She even had quiet, plodding, good-natured Howard Courtney taken with her.

She would be a perfect wife. Pretty and dainty, cheerful, easy to entertain. He could live in Montreal with her and forget his past and this disastrous attempt to come to terms with it. He thought he would possibly be able to arrange it that he stayed in Montreal. And if he could not, then he could leave the company. There were plenty of other ways to earn a living in Montreal or other parts of Upper or Lower Canada.

It was what he should do. And he should settle the matter now, as soon as possible, so that his mind could be at peace, his future assured. He should make his offer for Jean now, while they were at Amberley, though he would not be able to speak with her father until they returned to London. But they could make an unofficial announcement. And then he would be safe.

But of course nothing was ever as simple as that. His mother's words haunted him. He had not been able to shake his mind free of them all day. Years ago he had decided that he must take himself right away from his parents. It was impossible to please them, impossible to penetrate the armor of religion and morality they had put
on. And he had gone—all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and thousands of miles beyond that.

But he had come back. And the decision was there to make all over again. For despite everything, despite the fact that they were impossible to please, they were his parents and he loved them. And he could not shut from his mind the possibility that somewhere deep inside they had feelings for him too. Indeed, his mother had shown them just that morning.

He had shamed them by going into business. That accusation he could shake off quite easily. He would shame them further by marrying Jean, who was not socially acceptable according to their standards. That too he could shake off. He had broken their hearts by leaving home and going so far away. But there was no living with them. They must have known more peace of mind since he had left, just as he had. He had never publicly begged their pardon or God's for the way he had behaved over the whole ugly affair of Dora. But then he had not wronged them nearly as much as they had wronged him. And his relationship with God was a private matter between the two of them, and not his parents' concern at all. Besides, he did not know their God and was not sure that he had one of his own.

And if his father died—
when
his father died—he would have the burden on his conscience of knowing that he had been responsible for precipitating his death.

He did not believe it. He would not believe it. But the thought had weighed on him and bowed him down all through a nightmare of a day.

So he watched Jean. And contemplated defiance.
Though defiance was for schoolboys, not for thirty-year-old men who had set the course of their lives years before.
Returning to Canada was not defiance. Marrying Jean would not be defiance. If such actions killed his father, the responsibility, the guilt, would not be his.

He watched Jean and saw Madeline. She was in his every waking moment and in every cycle of his dreams. She was in his blood. And his mother wanted him to marry her. He would be showing filial duty and love by marrying Madeline and remaining in England.

His mind grappled with decisions; his conscience throbbed with denied guilt; his blood pulsed with Madeline. And during a short stroll outside with the Lampmans he looked off into the darkness beyond the lawns and the lanterns and saw her share a brief kiss with Captain Hands of the regiment stationed nearby.

When he entered the supper room, one of the last guests to do so because Miss Stanhope had engaged him and the Lampmans in the telling of a particularly lengthy anecdote about her brother Bertie, there were several empty seats. There was one across the table from Alexandra. There was one next to Jean. And one next to Madeline. He would sit beside Jean, he decided, and ask her to take a walk with him afterward. Perhaps the time would seem right for his offer. He would wait and see.

But his steps took him to Madeline's side, and he sat by her through supper without once looking at her or talking to her. And every pulse in his body was beating with awareness of her by the time they had finished eating. Conversation throughout the room was animated. No one showed any inclination to rise and return to the drawing room.

“Would you care to walk outside?” he asked Madeline, without any conscious decision to do so.

And she smiled at him, accepted, and rose from her chair.

“It is a beautiful evening,” she said, taking his arm as they stepped beyond the French windows. “And there is something particularly enchanting about lanterns in the trees, is there not?”

“Yes,” he said, strolling with her across the grass.

“Mrs. Morton has outdone herself,” she said. “She always likes to feel that she has put on the most memorable entertainment of the summer.”

“Yes,” he said. And when he turned his head a few silent moments later to look down at her, it was to find her glaring ahead with fixed eyes, her jaw set in a hard and stubborn line.

He kept on walking when they came to the edge of the lawn, following a path through the bushes, not knowing where it led. There was an orchard beyond, lit only by the light of the moon and stars.

“Hands is to be the lucky recipient of your favors for the summer?” he asked, hating himself even as he heard the words he had spoken.

Her head turned sharply in his direction. “Oh, definitely,” she said. “You cannot expect me to resist the lure of a young and unattached gentleman, can you? It would be as impossible for me to avoid flirting with him as it would to stop breathing.”

He wanted to apologize to her. But all the frustrations of the day converted into irritability against her. “Yes,” he said, “I know that quite well.”

“Then your question was redundant,” she said. “I made a careful assessment of Sir Gordon Clark, Lieutenant Cowley, and the captain, and decided that the last gentleman was the handsomest of the three. So I began my flirtation without further delay. Over the next few days, of course, I will have to make careful and discreet inquiries as to the relative wealth and prospects of the three. My victim may change identity as a result. But only under extreme circumstances. On the whole, it is a handsome face and physique that hold most sway with me.”

“Understandable,” he said. “I wonder you even give thought to wealth and prospects since matrimony is always the last thing on your mind anyway. Flirtation is the breath of life to you. I wonder if you write down the names of all your conquests. You must have a bookful already.”

She looked up at him all amazement, eyebrows raised. “Oh, sir,” she said, “if you had ever been inside my bedchamber, you would have seen that one wall beside my bed is pockmarked with small gouges in the wallpaper. So much more permanent and impressive a record than a mere list of names in a book, don't you agree?”