The Devil's Web (35 page)

“You may go to hell and welcome to it,” she had written above her signature.

James closed his eyes and crumpled the letter in one hand.

He did not go after her for almost a month.

M
ADELINE SAT SILENT
and dry-eyed throughout the long journey by mail coach to London.

She would live with her mother. For a time, anyway.
And Dom and Ellen were in town for the Season. After a while she would set up her own establishment somewhere. She did not know on what. But Edmund would not see her destitute. And her needs would be modest for what remained of her life.

And if James came after her, she would fight him all the way back to Yorkshire and leave him again as soon as she was able. Time and time again if necessary until he gave up coming for her.

It was true, perhaps, that she did not despise him one half as much as she despised herself. But she hated him for what he had made of her.

A woman who had panted and begged and sobbed for his favors only hours after discovering that his heart—and probably his body too—belonged to someone else.

A woman who had allowed herself to be taken against her will without clawing and fighting every step of the way.

A woman who had enjoyed being ravished.

What kind of a woman was that? What kind of a woman had she become?

“I have done with you, James Purnell, Lord Beckworth,” she told him, her eyes on the scenery beyond the coach's window, her lips not moving. “Five years is long enough for any sick obsession. I have done with you now. I have my own life and my own pride to piece together again. And there is no room in either for you.”

She withdrew the glove from her left hand slowly without taking her eyes from the passing hedgerows, and coaxed her wedding ring off her finger. She earned a frown of annoyance from a clerical gentleman sitting in the opposite corner when she pulled down the window with the apparent purpose of drawing some deep breaths of fresh air.

Her right hand, resting on the window, dropped the ring to the roadway.

I
N A SALON IN THE EARL OF HARROWBY'S London house, Lord and Lady Eden had just sunk down onto a sofa, side by side. They were laughing.

“I have only just begun to really appreciate my mother,” Lord Eden said, draping his arm along the back of the sofa behind his wife's shoulders. “How is it that she is sane and serene after having brought up Madeline and me? I may well be in Bedlam long before Charles and Olivia reach their majority.”

Ellen laughed. “I have heard,” she said, “that once children reach their fourth or fifth birthday, they finally learn to walk, not run.”

He looked at her with mock gloom. “You mean we have only three or four years to wait?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, “in the meantime, we could abandon them to a nurse's care and merely tiptoe into the nursery when they are sleeping to gaze adoringly at them.
It is not obligatory to take one's children walking in Hyde Park every day, you know, Dominic.”

“I would be accused of cruelty to my own servants,” Lord Eden said with a grin. “Why is it, Ellen, that Charles must always not only run but also make off in quite the opposite direction from that favored by everyone
else? Does he take after your side of the family by any chance?”

She turned her head and met his lips briefly. “Let us be thankful that there were enough daisies in the park to keep Olivia busy,” she said. “At least she was relatively stationary while she was picking the heads off the flowers.
And besides, Dominic, you know that you almost burst with paternal pride every time some dowager pauses to admire the twins.”

“Hm,” he said, placing his free hand beneath her chin so that he might return the kiss at more satisfactory length. “Are you intent on staying here much longer, love, or shall we go home soon?”

“I miss it,” she said, smiling at him. “I always said that I would be happy if I could but live in the country, and I have not changed my mind now that my dream has come true. I just wish Jennifer was settled. She is not happy.”

“She is only twenty,” he said, “and has enough suitors to make one dizzy remembering all their names. But I know what you mean. Is she still pining for Penworth, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, undoubtedly,” she said. “But he was too proud to beg her grandfather for her last year, you see, and she was too proud to beg him to do so. So there was an impasse. Perhaps he will come back this year. But there is no point in our waiting around in the expectation of his arrival, is there? Perhaps we should go home.”

“We'll stay another week,” he said. “Kiss me again, Ellen. We seem to have so little time to ourselves these days.”

“Mm,” she said, laying her head back against his arm and offering him her mouth.

But there was a tap on the door before they could settle
too deeply into an embrace. Dominic cursed quietly under his breath before the butler opened the door.

“From Mama,” he said with a frown, getting to his feet and glancing at the letter he was handed. “Perhaps she wants us to take her up in our carriage tonight after all.”

“What is it?” Ellen asked a couple of minutes later, watching his face as he read the letter.

“Madeline has arrived,” he said.

Ellen clasped her hands to her bosom and beamed at him. “Oh, they have come,” she said. “I am so glad for you, Dominic. You have been missing her, I know. Oh, how wonderful. When will we see them?”

“Not
them,
” he said, still staring down at the letter. “Madeline. Alone. She came on the mail coach today. And apparently collapsed into bed immediately afterward and has been sleeping ever since.”

“On the mail coach?” she said. “And without James?”

Dominic swallowed and looked up at her. “She has left him,” he said.

“Oh, Dominic.” She took a step forward and lifted his free hand to her cheek.

“I
REALLY CAN'T
get up, Mama.” Madeline rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. “I am so tired. I just want to sleep.”

“Come down for dinner at least,” her mother coaxed.
“And then come back to bed early.”

“I'm not hungry,” Madeline said. “I just want to lie here. I want to die.”

Her mother sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. She set a comforting hand on her daughter's head. “I know,” she said. “I don't know quite what you are going through,
Madeline. I have never lost a man in that particular way.
But I can remember how I felt when Papa died. It was the most wretched feeling imaginable. The bad part is that life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.”

“This never will,” Madeline said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“Come downstairs and talk to me,” Lady Amberley said. “I have sent word to Cedric not to come tonight. We will be alone. Come and tell me what happened exactly. It sometimes helps to talk.”

“I hate him and I have left him forever,” Madeline said.

“Yes, dear.” Her mother ruffled her hair gently. “You told me as much when you arrived. But there must be a great deal more. I am not going to force information from you. You may sleep all night, if you wish, and all day tomorrow. But I will be dining alone if you want to talk with me. In less than an hour's time.” She got to her feet and left the room.

And paradoxically Madeline felt abandoned. She rolled over onto her back and stared upward. She felt so very, very alone. She was in London and Mama was downstairs and Dom was in town. And there must be any number of her friends within visiting distance.

She could talk again. There were people around her to whom she could talk nonstop if she wanted. People who loved her and would listen to her and participate in her conversations. Her loneliness was over. No more of James's silences and morose moods.

But she was so lonely that her stomach ached and her throat ached, and she felt such a massive inertia that she could scarcely move on the bed. She had not realized until after she had thrown away her wedding ring how she
had been in the habit of playing with it on her finger. Her finger was so terribly bare.

And though they had never touched in bed during the nights after he had finished his business with her, the bed she was now lying on felt huge and cold and empty without him. She turned onto her side and spread an arm across the undented pillow beside her.

He was not there. He never had been there and never would be. She was back in the home she had shared with her mother for several years. She was back home. Where she was loved and wanted. And Dom would probably come the next day or she would go to see him. And Ellen and the babies. No longer babies—they were more than a year old.

She was back home. She could forget the nightmare of the past eight months. She could relax and let the healing begin.

But the bed was so very empty. She would do anything, she thought, closing her eyes tightly and clenching her hand into a fist on the empty pillow—anything!—if she could just open her eyes and see him there, morose expression and unfathomable eyes and all. And the lock of dark hair that would inevitably be down over his forehead for her to brush back.

God. Oh, God, she really did want to die. There could be nothing left to live for. It was her left hand that was on the pillow. Her ringless left hand.

James.

“James. James.” She whispered his name over and over again.

James and Dora Drummond. And their son Jonathan.

She sat up with a jerk at the side of the bed, throwing back the bedcovers. What in the name of heaven was she
doing? Pining away for a faithless husband? Wallowing in self-pity because she had been fool enough to marry him in the first place?

Never! She was Lady Madeline Raine and not some weeping, vaporish female who would crumble under the least adversity.

No. She paused in the action of throwing off her nightgown. She was not Lady Madeline Raine. She was Lady Madeline Purnell, Lady Beckworth. But names notwithstanding, she was not one to give in to her fate. If James was ever interested enough to inquire after her, he would not find a poor cringing creature, destroyed by his infidelity.

Not by any means. She pulled a wrap about her and rang the bell for her maid.

Her mother was forced to sit through dinner with a brightly chattering daughter, who talked almost without ceasing on a wide variety of topics, not one of which was of a remotely personal nature.

The dowager countess was quite relieved to have the flow of monologue stemmed for a while in the evening by the arrival of Lord and Lady Eden.

“Ellen!” Madeline rushed across the room to hug her sister-in-law. “How lovely it is to see you again. You are looking so very well. Have Charles and Olivia grown a great deal since I saw them? And are they walking? But they must be. They are more than a year old.”

She turned to her brother without waiting for any response to her questions. “Dom,” she said. “Dom.” And she was being held against the tall, strong, and comforting body of her twin and feeling all her resolves sag.

“We weren't sure you would be up,” he said, kissing the
top of her head. “Did you ride all the way on the mail, Madeline, without once stopping off to sleep?”

She looked up at him a little dazed. “I think I must have done,” she said. “I don't remember any inns. I think I came all the way without stopping.”

“You don't even know for sure?” he asked.

She pulled away from him and smiled brightly at the other occupants of the room. “There is so much to see on such a long journey,” she said. “And one sees so many strange characters. Really one misses a great deal when one travels by private conveyance.” She launched into a description of her journey, surprising herself with the amount she remembered. The only detail she had consciously recalled before she started to talk was dropping her wedding ring from the window and fighting the panicked urge to stop the coach and jump out of it for more than an hour after.

“Mama,” Ellen said, getting to her feet after an hour had passed and numerous cups of tea been drunk, “you wished to show me your new ball gown. There was no time yesterday, if you will recall.”

“Quite right,” the dowager said, smiling at her daughter-in-law and rising from her own chair. “How good of you to remind me, dear. I would have been annoyed if I had remembered after you left.”

The two ladies went upstairs to examine the fictitious gown.

“I will need some new ball gowns too,” Madeline said to her brother. “The ones I have must be dreadfully
passé
this Season. I must go shopping tomorrow. I wonder if Mama will be free to accompany me. Or perhaps Ellen would care to come. If she is not busy, that is. If the two of
you do not have other plans. You must have all sorts of engagements. Do you?”

“Hey,” he said quietly, forcing her to look directly at him for the first time that evening. “This is your twin, Mad.”

“Don't,” she said with a little laugh, putting out her hands defensively. “I'm not ready for this, Dom.”

“Was it just a quarrel?” he asked. “Did you just act impulsively, as you so often do?”

She stared at him wide-eyed. She shook her head.

“Something more basic?” he asked.

“I never loved him,” she said almost in a whisper. “I always hated him. It was just an obsession. It is over now.”

He sat back in his chair and looked at her searchingly.
“You loved him,” he said. “And you love him.”

“Don't be too clever, Dom.” She got to her feet in some agitation and crossed the room to the window. “I have been married since last August. You have not seen either me or James since then. You don't know. I loathe him, and if I never see him again, it will be far too soon.”

She had not heard him come up behind her. She jumped when his hands came down on her shoulders.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

She shrugged and looked sightlessly out into the darkness. “I don't know him at all,” she said. “That sounds foolish, does it not, after eight months of marriage and living together. He does not talk to me or smile at me. I can never see beyond his eyes. He is possessive and dictatorial. The only times we talk are when we are quarreling.”

“He is possessive?” he said. “He must have some feelings for you, then.”

“No, none,” she said. “I am a mere possession.”

“A buildup of all these things would not lead to a head-
long flight on the mail coach,” he said. “What happened, Mad?”

She put her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “The world came to an end, that's all,” she said.

“Melodrama?” he said. Then he squeezed her shoulders. “No, sorry. You don't have the energy to rip up at me, do you? You mean it. What happened to end the world?”

“Ellen took Mama away deliberately, didn't she?” she asked.

He laughed softly. “You must be off form if you have to ask that,” he said. “It was not very subtly done.”