The Devil's Web (28 page)

She had tossed her hat aside and could feel the warmth of the sun on the top of her head and the back of her neck.
She could hear insects and smell heather and grass. She could feel the grass beneath her. And although the hollow had seemed so slight from horseback that it was scarcely noticeable, they were surrounded by it now, grass meeting sky, all the world contained in one small circle of vastness.

She rested her chin on her knees.

She was feeling cautiously happy. Yes. She sat very still and tested her feelings. She was feeling happy. Perhaps after all her hasty and inexplicable decision to marry James was turning out to be not such a disastrous one. Perhaps they could learn to adjust to each other's ways enough that they could live together in relative peace.

They were already doing so. They had learned not to spend too much time together and not to converse too much when they were together. Those facts did not sound promising when stated in just those words, but they were promising nevertheless. They had had no real quarrel in the past week, only a few bickering words. And more
important, there had not been those spells of silent anger and hostility.

She had learned to accept his silences, not to be offended by them, but to recognize them as part of his nature. And James on his part had seemed to accept her need to talk sometimes with light banter. He was even capable on occasion of joining in as he had done just this afternoon during their ride.

It was a cautious beginning to a marriage that must last for many years if their lives took their natural course.
Who knew whether their natural antipathy for each other or their mutual desire for peace in their relationship would finally prevail? Or perhaps they must always tread the fine line between the two. Perhaps they would never know total peace.

But then perhaps married couples never did.

“This reminds me somewhat of the Athabasca country,” James said from behind her.

She said nothing but gave him the whole of her attention. It was so rare for James to initiate any conversation.

“Perhaps that was why I was able to settle to the life there,” he said. “Some men were restless and bored almost from the moment of their arrival.”

Madeline hugged her knees more tightly.

“Do you ever get the feeling,” he asked, “that everything that happens in life happens for a purpose? When I sailed for Canada, I was going away, leaving something, running away. I had no notion of going
to
anything. But those four years in the wilderness were the most important years of my life.”

“Do you wish you were back there?” she asked rather bleakly.

He was quiet for a moment. “No,” he said. “Those
years served their purpose, but I don't believe I could settle there for the rest of my working lifetime as many men do.”

She laid one cheek against her knee. She thought he had finished and was sorry. She liked to hear him talk. It happened so very rarely.

“I suppose I did not spend enough time out here when I lived here,” he said. “I had to go halfway around the world to find myself. I think I found God there, Madeline.”He was silent for a while. “That is a nonsensical thing to say when I do not know God or even for sure that there is a God. I was brought up to think of Him as very much involved in human affairs, very stern and judgmental, unyielding, humorless. Far more inclined to condemn than to praise. But when you are in a place like this—just earth and sky and yourself—you wonder about God.”

He lapsed into silence.

“God has been mainly a Sunday occurrence for me,” she said. “Though I always thought God was love, and I have always seen love all about me.”

“I think perhaps,” he said, “that when you are alone in such surroundings, you come face-to-face with yourself or else go mad. You learn that being is more important than doing, that perhaps God is not to be found in the noisy affairs of men but in the silence of the heart. Perhaps I am talking nonsense.”

“Tell me about your life there,” she said when he fell silent again. She felt a little like crying. She felt closer to him than she had ever felt before, and she did not want to lose the moment, though she realized that he had been talking to himself more than to her.

“You like to hear about it?” he asked. “It was a dull
life, Madeline. Days and days, weeks and weeks, of tedium.”

“Tell me about the canoe travel,” she said. And when he propped himself up on one elbow and she knew that he would do so, she stretched out on the grass beside him, her face turned to the warmth of the sun.

Perhaps there was a reason for her fascination with hearing about those years of his life, she thought. And perhaps she had just glimpsed that reason. Perhaps the key to knowing and understanding her husband lay in his experiences during that time, experiences that he seemed to be only just beginning to assess himself.

“Months of hard toil and hell,” he said, “though it can get into one's blood. And I was one of the fortunate ones, being a clerk of the company. The Frenchmen who man the canoes, the
voyageurs,
live lives of unbelievable hardship. They paddle their canoes or portage them past rapids for eighteen hours of every day. And yet a more cheerful breed of men or a louder and more quarrelsome one it would be hard to find.”

He launched into a lengthy account of his travels, as she had hoped he would. She listened in fascination for a long time until drowsiness overtook her. She realized a few times, with a little start of guilt, that she had drifted and not heard him at all. And finally she lost the battle and drifted right off.

“A
ND WHEN WE GOT BACK
to the water finally,” James said, “there were six mermaids sitting there in a row, all singing off-key.” He grinned when Madeline made no objection to the absurd ending to his story.

He reclined on his elbow for a long time, staring at her,
her curls tousled about her face, her lips slightly parted in sleep. His eyes traveled down her slim body and came to rest at her waist. Would he be able to cause a swelling there soon? He hoped so. He passionately wanted a child.
With Madeline. And he believed that she had been disappointed when it had not happened the month before.

He wanted a child that could be truly called his own. A child of his wife's.

Her riding habit had pulled up well above her right ankle. A slim and shapely ankle. He smiled.

And he leaned across her and kissed her softly on the lips.

“Mm,” she said, and stirred slightly.

He kissed her very lightly again, his opened mouth over hers, his tongue tracing the outline of her parted lips and probing gently between.

“Mm,” she said, and stirred again. And there was response there. She opened her mouth wider.

He had meant it just as a mark of affection. He had not fully intended to waken her. But he took almost instant fire. Inside, her mouth was moist and very warm. He smoothed the curls back from her face.

“Mm,” she said once more, and her eyes opened suddenly and looked first into his and then beyond him to the blue sky.

He watched her swallow as he began to open first the buttons of her jacket and then those of the blouse beneath. Then he kissed her again while his hand completed the task and found its way beneath her shift to her warm breasts. Her nipples tautened beneath his touch.

It took him just a minute longer to remove both jacket and blouse and pull down her shift so that his mouth could continue the task of arousal that his hands had
begun. An unnecessary task, though she moaned and pushed herself against him. She was ready for him. He lifted himself over her, kissed her throat, her chin, her mouth, again.

Was he mad? Had he completely taken leave of his senses? But no one ever came this way. He had been out on the moors a thousand times and never once met anyone by chance. If he was mad, it was a glorious insanity.

He moved half off her and drew her velvet skirt up to her waist. He pulled at the undergarments beneath; adjusted his own clothing; and remembered the hillside at Amberley, where he had taken her for the first time, crushing her beneath him into the hard ground, doubtless hurting her dreadfully, though she had uttered not one sound of complaint. The ground was a hard and unyielding bed for a woman in the act of love.

He had never taken her any other way.

He slipped an arm beneath her waist and rolled over onto his back. He swung her over on top of him, holding up her skirt. She looked down at him with wide eyes, her breath coming in short gasps.

“Hug my sides with your knees,” he told her, helping her to position herself and then moving his hands to her hips and bringing her down onto himself.

They both gasped.

When he moved in her, she did not, as she usually did, move with him. She held tightly to him with her knees and tightened her inner muscles, and closed her eyes. He spread one hand against the back of her head and brought it down to within a few inches of his own. And she opened her eyes and looked into his.

And they continued to look into each other's eyes as
she gradually relaxed and trembled against him. And he watched her teeth bite into her lower lip.

Her skirt was in heavy folds over the both of them. And she was warm and wet and trembling beneath it all. He could not have imagined a more erotic lovemaking. He touched one naked breast with his free hand and brought her mouth down to his own.

And he slowed and deepened his movements as he felt her coming to him and came to her at the exact moment.
He had never, he thought with what rationality was left to him, been more aware of Madeline as his love partner.

Her head dropped to his shoulder when the tension of climax had shuddered out of her. He nudged at her legs, helping her straighten them out to either side of his. And he wrapped his arms about her so that he might hold her in the aftermath of passion.

Even several minutes later he knew that she was not sleeping. She was perfectly relaxed but awake. As was he.

So close. They were so close to each other. They could not be closer physically. They were still joined in body.
The seeds of his lovemaking were in her. And so close in other ways too. Relaxed and contented in each other's arms. Husband and wife.

It should have been so easy. So easy to say something.
Anything. Her name at the very least.

Madeline.

Or even to say those most difficult words of all to say out loud—I love you.

But if he spoke, he might spoil everything. He might at best jolt her back to reality and put an end to these minutes when he held her as closely as a man can hold his woman. At worst, he might see her look at him in shock, incomprehension, derision. She had surrendered her
body to him from the start. She had never made any sign that he also had a claim on her heart.

He was afraid of spoiling what little closeness with her he had. His fingers played gently and absently with her curls.

And Madeline for her part lay warm and comfortable against his lean strength, her head pillowed on his shoulder, and willed the moment to last forever. She could hear his heart beating steadily beneath her ear. She wondered if he knew that his fingers were playing with her hair and massaging her scalp.

And if the moment could not last forever, as moments never could, then she willed him to speak. To say it.
To say what she sensed. It could not be just physical.
There had to be more: some affection, some tenderness, some love perhaps. It had been in his kiss. She had felt it in his touch.

And she had seen it—oh, she had gazed into it—in his eyes. She had looked into his eyes for seemingly endless minutes when he had been thrusting into her. And there had been something there, some nakedness. Something almost frightening in its intensity. Frightening because she was terrified that she was mistaken.

He loved her. His eyes had told her that he loved her.
She willed him to say it. Or just to say her name. Or even just to kiss her again and smile at her and let her know beyond the level of words.

She had been mistaken. She must have been mistaken.
In the intensity of her own passion she had seen in his eyes what she had wanted to see there. Instead of which she had been watching rising physical desire.

She had been mistaken. He was not going to say anything.

“I told you the moors were dangerous,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “so you did.”

“You should not allow such goings-on outside of our bedchamber, Madeline,” he said. “There is always the chance that someone else will come along.”

Was he teasing? Or was he serious. One could never tell with James. He sounded serious. But he must be teasing her.

“Do you speak from experience?” she asked.

His hand stilled in her hair. She felt his muscles tense.
“What do you mean?” he asked.

She kept her eyes closed and her head against his shoulder. But she knew the moment was lost irrevocably. She knew she had somehow said something wrong.

“Only that you must have brought dozens of girls out here in your time,” she said lightly, wading further into the quicksand she had taken as her chosen path.

“To whom have you been talking?” he asked. “Who has put such nonsense in your head?”

“It was just that,” she said. “Nonsense. I talk a lot of it.
Hush, James. Don't be cross.”

“It was Beasley, wasn't it?” he said. “What did he tell you about me?”

“Oh, hush,” she said, putting one arm about his neck and burrowing her head closer to him. “I was teasing, James. I meant nothing.”

He took her by the hips in a very firm grasp and lifted her off him. He turned and laid her down on the grass beside him. His face, she saw with a sinking of the heart, was furiously angry. She fumbled with her shift and pulled it up to cover her breasts.

“I told you to stay away from him,” he said. “Now he has poisoned your mind. Well, Madeline, if you believe
that you are one of a long string of females to be brought out here to be tumbled, then may you have joy of the thought. If you are interested, you compare quite favorably with all the others. You are well worth the bedding.
Indeed, I think I did very well in choosing you as a lifelong bedfellow.”