The Devil's Web (31 page)

They meant no more to each other.

Except that he happened to love her. A quite irrelevant fact, it seemed, when one settled down to the reality of a marriage that should never have been contracted.

M
ADELINE FOUND
the winter long and tedious although there were friends and plenty of social activities to attend and to host. But the snow, which she had been warned would be more plentiful in Yorkshire than it had been in the southern part of the country, kept her housebound for days at a time. And being housebound meant having only James for company.

In other words, it meant having no company at all.

Many was the time she almost regretted not accepting his suggestion that they go to Amberley before Christmas. But she would on the whole, she decided, prefer to keep her pride and be lonely than go to Amberley to be with Mama and Dom and Edmund and have them see her misery. And Dom would see it even if the others did not, no matter how good an act she put on. Besides, if she
went to Amberley, how would she ever be able to leave again?

Dunstable Hall was her home now, and she must never again see it in contrast to Amberley. And she must never again see her brothers' marriages at first hand and know the inadequacy of her own. She must live out her life in self-imposed exile.

Those brave and gloomy thoughts occurred before the disaster of the duke's spring ball and all that followed it.
Everything changed after that, but winter was well and truly over by then.

So was the duchess's confinement. She was delivered of an heir at the end of February. The ball was to be given in honor of the event in the middle of April.

In the meantime the letters kept coming from home.
Letters that filled Madeline with nostalgia and discontent.
Jean and Howard had married before Christmas, and already she was thought to be increasing, Alexandra wrote, if one were to read any significance into the fact that Mrs. Courtney was driving over to their house every morning to tend a daughter-in-law who could not stand on her feet before noon without vomiting.

Susan Courtney, later Susan Jennings, now Lady Agerton, was also in expectation of an interesting event, Alexandra wrote, adding that the terminology was Susan's own.

It seemed to Madeline that all the world was giving birth except her.

Ellen and Dominic were going to London for at least a part of the Season so that Ellen could be close to her stepdaughter and could visit her father.

The final blow came in a letter from Edmund in March, announcing that Alexandra was with child again.

All the world except her!

The letter came on a particularly bad day. She was from home when it arrived, riding out across a somewhat muddy pasture, unable to see her way because she was crying her eyes out over renewed evidence of her own infertility.

J
AMES HAD NEVER BEEN FOND OF THE DUKE OF Peterleigh. Seventeen years older than himself, the duke had always appeared as a remote, haughty, and humorless man. He was tall and thin, with a narrow, aristocratic face and piercing dark eyes. He spent most of his time in London on government business, coming into the country for only a few weeks of the year, usually in the early summer.

When he had used to come, he had always visited Dunstable Hall. He was one of the few men of the neighborhood with whom James's father had been on good terms. The two men had shared many ideas on life and morality. Or had seemed to do so. James had been disgusted to discover, when he finally spent some time in London himself, that the duke lived a double life. He kept a mistress with whom he had had several children. And he was rumored to have darker dealings with other ladybirds.

There had been an understanding between Peterleigh and the late Lord Beckworth that the duke would marry Alex when she was old enough. James had always hated the idea. For many years Alex was the only person in his life whom he truly loved. He knew her as a warm and
passionate, artistic and imaginative girl. Those aspects of her character would have been squashed by the duke as they were already severely repressed by their father.

But Alex had known so little of life. She had never had friends beyond himself. She had never been sent away to school. By the time she was taken to London at the age of one and twenty, with a view to being officially betrothed to Peterleigh, she was quite resigned to the match. She knew nothing else.

Looking back on that spring now, James could be very thankful to Dominic, Lord Eden, and to Madeline for a stupid incident that should have involved only the two of them but that had dragged Alex in when two of Lord Eden's friends, sent to kidnap Madeline, mistook Alex for her. And so she had been severely compromised when forced to spend a whole night captive in Amberley's town house, unknown either to him or to Eden.

They had both offered for her—Eden and Amberley.
James could almost chuckle now at events that had made him beside himself with fury at the time. She had refused them both. Alex was nothing if not courageous—and incredibly naive. Why should she accept either of those two men, she had reasoned, when she was already unofficially betrothed to the Duke of Peterleigh?

Poor Alex. She had learned fast when Peterleigh had cut her in the middle of Lady Sharp's drawing room after every other guest present had already done so, except Madeline. Even then she would have refused Amberley's second offer if he had not almost forced her into accepting him publicly after his arrival at Lady Sharp's.

How fortunately events could sometimes turn out. He had to admit to himself now that Amberley was quite perfect for Alex. He had scarcely been able to believe the outward changes in her when he arrived back from Canada—and all changes for the better.

Most important, she had escaped from the Duke of Peterleigh's clutches, a more fortunate escape than perhaps he had realized at the time. He had heard during the previous spring in London that the Duchess of Peterleigh occasionally dropped out of sight for a few weeks at a time with some undisclosed indisposition. But once or twice rumor had leaked out by way of servants' gossip that on those occasions she was hiding facial bruises.

The duke was not a pleasant character, James concluded. He was quite happy that the man was usually an absentee neighbor. However, when he was in residence, one felt the necessity of being neighborly. He called once, alone, to pay his respects after the duke and duchess's arrival, and once with Madeline after the duchess's confinement. And of course he accepted their invitation to the ball that was being given in celebration of the birth of an heir.

Perhaps the duchess, poor girl, would be treated more kindly now that she had finally performed her main duty, James thought.

Madeline was looking forward to the ball. Not that she said much about it to him. They rarely now exchanged any but the commonest civilities when they were in company together. But she talked with enthusiasm about the event when Mr. and Mrs. Hooper and their daughter called for tea one afternoon. He was talking to Mr.
Hooper about crops at the time, but at least half of his attention was on his wife. He could experience that sparkle in her only secondhand these days. She never looked like that for him.

“His grace has hired an orchestra at great expense,” Mrs. Hooper was telling Madeline. “They are coming all
the way from York, if you would believe it. And candles by the crateful. And extra cooks to help with supper; it will be a very grand occasion, my dear Lady Beckworth. The last time there was a ball at the manor was after the duke's nuptials. And goodness knows when the next will be.”

“And there are guests at the manor?” Madeline said with a smile. “Goodness, it will be wonderful to dance again. I shall have to dust off my best ball gown.” She laughed gaily.

“Mama is having Miss Fenton make me a gown,” Christine Hooper said, “but I'm terrified that it will be dreadfully unfashionable, Lady Beckworth, and that all the guests from London will look at me with contempt or pity.”

“But, my dear,” her mother said, “you know that Miss Fenton is copying an illustration from a recent copy of the
Belle Assemblée.
How can it not be all the crack?”

“Perhaps Lady Beckworth will give her opinion,” Christine said.

“I will be glad to,” Madeline assured her. “Shall I ride over tomorrow? Though I am sure that the
Belle Assemblée
is more up-to-date than I am. It is almost a year since I was in London.”

Did she sound wistful? James wondered. Did she wish that she were setting out now for this year's Season and all the admiration and flirtations it had always brought her?
How could she wish otherwise? She was quite unhappy married to him. He shook off the thought and returned his attention to Mr. Hooper.

M
ADELINE HAD
more than a few rueful smiles at herself in the weeks preceding the ball. She was as excited about it,
her mind was as focused on it, as if it were her very first ball in her very first Season. And yet for years during the spring she had attended so many balls and other entertainments that she had come to sigh at yet one more and to feel occasionally oppressed by the tedium of it all. How her life had changed when she could so grasp at a single event.

She had her maid lay out her blue ball gown and the yellow and green. After two days of dithering and constantly changing her mind, she discarded all three and brought out the white and the pink. She even considered once—and laughed at her own madness—dragging James in and asking his opinion. She so very much wanted to wear something he would admire. And she despised herself for the wish.

She decided finally on the pink. She had never considered it her color, but she had fallen in love with this particular shade the previous spring. It was a rich pink that made her feel young and vivid and attractive.

James came into her dressing room on the night of the ball as her maid was putting the finishing touch to her appearance. She was clasping her pearls at her neck.
Madeline looked up in breathless surprise when the door that adjoined their dressing rooms opened. She met her husband's eyes in the mirror. He stood just inside the door, his face quite expressionless. But he was looking handsome enough in his black evening clothes to take her breath away.

“Well?” she said, twirling around to face him and feeling herself flush. Just like a girl!

His eyes took their time about inspecting her from head to toe. If only his face were not quite so impassive,
his eyes so inscrutable. And if only she did not care quite as much what his opinion would be.

“Wait here” was all he said finally, and he turned and left her dressing room again.

“You may leave,” Madeline said to her maid, trying to keep the desperate disappointment from her voice. She sat down on the stool before her dressing table and made a conscious effort not to let her shoulders sag. She was on her way to her first ball in many months and perhaps her last for many more. She was going to enjoy herself.
Despite James. Despite her basic unhappiness. Despite everything.

James came back with a large velvet box in his hand. He set it down on the dressing table. She watched him in the mirror as he bent his attention to the back of her neck. He tossed her pearls onto the glass tray in front of her. And then he opened the box.

Madeline swallowed. And gasped from the coldness and weight of the diamond-studded circlet he clasped about her neck.

“Are they not your mother's?” she asked as she lifted her right arm obediently for him to clasp the matching bracelet around her wrist.

“No,” he said. “Not these. These belong to the baroness—to the title, not to the person. They are yours for as long as I live.”

She did not know what to say. “Thank you” seemed inadequate—and unnecessary since it was not a personal gift. She said nothing, but stared at the jewels in the mirror and at his hands, dark-skinned against the white of her shoulders. And she felt them there, warm and strong.

“They suit you,” he said at last. “You are tall and slender and bear yourself proudly.”

It was as much of a compliment as she could expect, Madeline supposed. She looked up into his eyes, which were inspecting her in the mirror. Oh, surely there was more in them than usual. Surely it was not just wishful thinking on her part. There was a trace of admiration, surely.

“You look beautiful,” he said abruptly. His words sounded almost grudging.

Madeline stood up and turned to face him. She smiled. “And you look very splendid, James,” she said. She touched the diamonds at her neck and said something that surprised herself. “I will try to wear them proudly.”

She did not know for a moment whether his eyes were on her diamonds or her lips. She thought for the merest fraction of a second that he was moving toward her. She felt her heart begin to pound and the color rise to her cheeks. And then she saw him swallow. And she knew that it was the necklace he looked at.

“The carriage is waiting,” he said. “Is this your wrap?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling brightly and turning so that he could place it about her shoulders.

She was going to enjoy herself, she told herself later as they sat side by side in the carriage, not touching and not talking. Nothing was going to stop her from enjoying herself.

“Are you going to dance with me?” she asked as they were being driven up the dark driveway to the manor.
“Am I to reserve any sets for you?”

“It would be very strange if I did not dance with my own wife, would it not?” he said. “You will dance the opening set with me, Madeline, and the first waltz after supper.”

So. He would dance with her because it would look
strange if he did not. And she was being told which dances to reserve for him, not asked. She should not have introduced the subject. She should have kept her mouth shut and forced him to ask if she wished to dance with him.

But it did not matter. Not at all. The main doors to the manor were folded back, and light spilled out onto the cobbled terrace. Footmen in splendid livery were standing in the doorway and beyond. And once the horses stopped and the carriage drew to a halt, they would probably be able to hear voices and music.

She was going to enjoy herself.

J
AMES DANCED
the opening quadrille with Madeline and the following set with the duchess. He danced with Miss Palmer and Mrs. Trenton and stood and talked with a group of men for a few sets. He doubtless would not have asked Dora to dance if her brothers-in-law had not stood so protectively about her between every set and glowered so menacingly in his direction as if it had all happened only weeks before instead of almost ten years.

Under the circumstances he could not resist sauntering across the room to the little group between two sets, bowing amiably to Carl Beasley and John Drummond, exchanging a few civilities—the first since his return—with the other two Drummond brothers, and smiling at Dora.

“Will you dance the next one with me, Dora?” he asked, deliberately rejecting any more formal way of addressing her.

She smiled at him and curtsied. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.

John Drummond began to ask him about his lambs.

It was a waltz. He had not realized that until the music began. It felt strange to hold her again, to be so close to her. The same large gray trusting eyes and amiable expression. The same fair ringlets, though surely not quite as bright as they had been. The same soft feminine body, though plumper, more matronly, than it had been.

They danced in silence for a while.

“When you were good enough to bring Patrick home that day,” she said, “I forgot to express my sympathies at your loss of your father, my lord.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Why do you use my title rather than my name, Dora?”