The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  He had told himself during his ride to London and back to procure a special license that there was hope. It was true that he was his father’s son, unloved and unforgiven by the man who had given him life. And it was true that he lived in terror of being like his father indeed, incapable of loving or bringing any joy into the lives of those closest to him.

  But it was not so, he had told himself. He loved his mother. Despite the weakness of her character, her lethargy, her constant low spirits, he loved her. And he loved Alex with a deep concern for her happiness. He loved her children.

  He was capable of love. He loved Madeline. He had told himself that repeatedly on his journey to London. And it was true. His need for her on the day of his father’s funeral had been a monumental thing. And it had been a need not just for her body, though that was how it had shown itself. He had needed her. He had needed her arms about him, her voice soothing him, herself part of him.

  He knew he had not been gentle. It had been her first time, and he had done nothing to ease her pain or to soothe her shock. And he had felt her pain in the tension of her body—it had not been the tension of passion.

  He had taken her with the need and the desire to take her into himself, to make her forever a part of him. And of course he had known even as he took her that he must have her with him for the rest of his life. She was as necessary to him as the air he breathed. He could not possibly let her go.

  He loved her, he had told himself during the interminable days away from her. So far he had shown his love only in the fight he had made against the inevitable, and in the selfish grasping to satisfy his own needs.

  When he got back to her it would be different. He would smile at her and tell her that he loved her. His wedding day would be the beginning of a new and wonderful life for both of them. He would make her a gift of himself at the altar of the chapel at Amberley, not just of his name.

  Madeline and his love for her would free him. He would no longer be his father’s son, no longer a product of his background and upbringing. He would be Madeline’s husband and friend and lover. He would learn to laugh with her and joke with her and share the whole of himself with her.

  It had been a heady dream. It had sustained him through the tedium and fatigue of a lonely journey. He had not thought at all about the old nagging guilt, the old need to punish himself for his destruction of another’s happiness. He had given himself up to his dream.

  But a dream was all it had been. One cannot after all change one’s nature in a matter of days, he had discovered the day before on his return to Amberley. The will to change was not enough.

  And yet it was not his nature to be surly to the point of rudeness. It was only with Madeline he was so. He could not seem to treat her even with common courtesy. After sustaining himself for days with the need to be back with her, he had avoided being alone with her all the day before. And when she had contrived to be alone with him during the evening, he had been abrupt and domineering and downright cruel to her.

  “James,” she had said, “I do not know what I should wear tomorrow.”

  He had looked at her with cold eyes. “I thought women arranged such matters as a bride’s clothes,” he had said.

  “But I don’t know if I should be in mourning,” she had said. “I have black dresses. Should I wear one for our wedding? Will you expect it?”

  And instead of taking her hands in his and smiling at her and telling her that he wanted his bride to be like the sunshine, as she usually was, he had looked at her without any expression at all.

  “You will not wear mourning on account of my father,” he had said. “Try wearing a black dress, Madeline, tomorrow or any other day in the next year, and I shall tear it off you and rip it to shreds before your eyes.”

  Because he loved her and wanted her to brighten his life, not add to its gloom, he might have added. Because he did not want her tainted by the gloom that had always hung like a pall over his own family. He did not want to look at her and see mourning. He wanted to see the hope, the light of his life, in her.

  But he had said none of those things. He had stood, his hands clasped behind his back, watching her flush, waiting for her to turn away and seek out other company.

  He had hated himself and realized that his dream was as insubstantial as those that trailed through his sleep at night.

  And so he sat beside her on their wedding day, knowing with each passing mile that he had bullied his wife into a marriage that would bring her nothing but an enforced hell.

  • • •

  MADELINE WAS WALKING back and forth in the rather magnificent bedchamber of the inn where they had stopped for the night. She was wearing a white silk and lace nightgown. Her hair had been freshly brushed by her maid and lay in soft curls about her face and along her neck. She was waiting for her husband to come to her.

  Waiting in anger. She would not deny him, of course. They were at a public inn, and he could scarcely take himself off to another room. Besides, she had a feeling that he would insist on taking his conjugal rights and he would doubtless be able to force himself upon her. Not that that would daunt her if she really wished to deny him. She would be quite unabashed by the necessity to yell and scream and punch, kick, and claw. She would enjoy doing so even knowing that he would be able to subdue her with ease.

  If they were not at the inn, she might try it. Though she would certainly not enjoy being taken against her will. Better to give herself with at least a semblance of willingness.

  But she was angry. At herself. She had come out of her daze—with a crash. And what in the name of all that was wonderful had she done? She had married a man without humor or feelings, a tyrant who had married her for some mysterious reason of his own. Perhaps to degrade her. He seemed to quite hate her.

  And she had married him. No one had held a pistol to her back or her temple and forced her forward to the altar. No one had bullied her except him. Mama, Edmund, Dominic: all three of them would have supported her and defended her if she had said but one word. All three would have continued to love her even if it did turn out that she was increasing.

  Besides, she did not need to hide behind the strength of her family. She could have said no herself. There was no way on earth he could have forced her to marry him if she had just said no.

  But she had married him. Because she loved him, she had persuaded herself and told everyone else during the week he was away. Love? Could she call her feelings for him love? They were more a strange and frightening need to be dominated and degraded and hated. She had walked the length of the chapel that morning on Edmund’s arm, knowing quite well what she did and what sort of man he was she was marrying.

  She deserved her fate. She deserved it if he turned out to be far worse than the morose tyrant she already knew him to be. It would serve her right if he turned out to be a wife-beater.

  She almost wished he would. He would present her with the perfect excuse to deal him a few punches of her own.

  The door opened behind her and she turned to face her husband, her chin raised in defiance, her eyes steady on his.

  “Well,” he said, closing the door behind his back. He was wearing a blue dressing gown. He had come from his dressing room and through their private sitting room.

  “You do not look like the typical blushing, timid bride.”

  “I do not need to,” she said.

  “Ah, no.” He undid the silk sash of his dressing gown, removed the garment, and tossed it onto a chair. “You were ravished on a hillside a week ago.”

  “I was not ravished,” she said.

  “You will have a softer rest for your back tonight, anyway,” he said, and he reached out for her and brought her against him.

  She would not deny him. She would not impede him in any way. But she would not respond. He might take what he wanted; she would not give. She looked steadily into his eyes.

  He brought his mouth to hers, open, hard, and demanding as it had been at their last encounter.
She opened her own obediently. His hands explored her boldly. She did not cringe or pull away.

  He was smiling down at her then—except that it was not quite a smile. “Ah, I see how it is,” he said. “I was accused of giving you the silent treatment earlier. Now you retaliate with the cold treatment.”

  She smiled back with a smile that was not a smile. “Yes, James,” she said.

  “We will see.” He stooped down and picked her up and strode to the bed with her. He tossed rather than laid her down on it. And he stooped down, grasped her nightgown by the hem, and stripped it up her body and over her head. He dropped it to the floor beside the bed, peeled off his own nightshirt, and joined her there after snuffing the candles.

  It was no fair contest, of course. He was so very much more experienced than she. The rough lovemaking of the last occasion she could have withstood—she could have held herself aloof from it. But she had no chance whatsover against what he now began to do to her.

  His mouth took hers, teased it, opened it. His tongue reached inside and touched lightly and circled and stroked. And his hands roamed over her, feathered over her, pausing unerringly in places that had her gasping and squirming, rubbing lightly with his palm, arousing with his fingers, smoothing with his thumbs. In her nakedness and inexperience she stood not a chance. She lost the battle—if she had ever begun to fight it—the moment his mouth began to follow the path his hands had blazed.

  Her hands twined into his hair, explored the muscles of his shoulders and back. Her mouth searched for his when he was kissing her eyelids and her ears. And her body arched to his, was on fire for his.

  By the time he covered her on the bed and penetrated her, she was aware only of the fact that he did not hurt her and that he was moving in her with an intensity that fast created its own need.

  She moaned.

  And his hands gripped her by the shoulders hard enough to bruise, and he slowed until she could catch his rhythm. He moved with her, thrusting against her need.

  She was lost beyond even knowing. Or caring. She was being taken to a world she had dreamed of for years but had never expected to enter. The ache, the unbearable ache, was growing in her until she thought she could not bear it any longer. But she knew there was a world beyond. And she knew that it was James who was taking her there.

  She knew it was James. She was lost to all reason and thought. She was bodily need and sensation only. But she knew he was James. He could not be anyone else. There could be no one else. She moved against him and held him to her, giving and taking, giving and taking. Loving and being loved.

  Nothing else mattered now. She did not want to have to think ever again. Better far to feel. To love him with her instincts, with her instincts to know herself loved. To abandon herself. She wrapped her arms about his waist and stopped her own movements. She pushed down against him in final surrender. And allowed herself to be taken, to be fully taken wherever it was he would take her. Where only he could take her. Where she wanted to go only with him.

  His hand moved from her arm and clamped over her mouth at the final moment so that her cry was muffled.

  “Hush,” he said. “Hush.”But the hand relaxed as he pushed into her once more and sighed his own release against her hair.

  She let herself slip into sleep. He moved away from her, and the lightness and the coolness and the relaxed feeling of well-being were delicious. She did not want to open her eyes, or speak, or think. She slept.

  But only for a short while. He was pulling a sheet up over her, his movements slow and designed, it seemed, not to disturb her. But she woke, and opened her eyes to find him still leaning over her, his dark eyes looking down into hers.

  The room was lit only by the lights of the innyard below. But in the moment of waking there was an illusion of depth to his eyes, and her hand lifted of its own volition, it seemed, to push back the lock of dark hair that was, as usual, down over his brow.

  But it was a trick of the half-light. By the time he lay back down beside her, his eyes were mocking again.

  “Well, Madeline,” he said, “it seems that as always we have something to hold us together. And whether we do or not, we have a marriage to get on with. A church ceremony this morning, the consummation tonight. We are husband and wife. A marriage made in heaven, would you say?”

  She did not want to let reality in. She did not want to see his eyes mock her or hear his voice do likewise. She closed her eyes and said nothing.

  “Well,” he said after a brief silence, his voice no longer mocking, but flat and expressionless, “you will not try coldness with me again, Madeline. Anything else but that. I did not marry you for coldness.”

  “Why did you marry me?” she asked, neither moving nor opening her eyes.

  He shifted position. She thought he would not answer. She turned her head away from him.

  “For light,” he murmured finally. But he said no more and she was not sure she had heard him correctly. And even if she had, she did not know what he meant.

  But he did not need to give such a command. She would try other things, as many things as she could think of to show him that she was no poor-spirited creature to be worn into submission by a moody and tyrannical husband. She would fight a good fight. But coldness would not be one of her weapons. What was the point in using a weapon one knew to be totally useless?

  She could be anything with him but cold.

  He proved it to her twice more during their wedding night, and many more times during the remaining nights of their journey into Yorkshire.

  MADELINE’S SPIRITS DIPPED with almost every mile they traveled north. The landscape became bleaker and the weather gray and chilly. Despite the length and tedium of the journey, Dunstable Hall came upon them altogether too soon. Surely they would pass into more picturesque surroundings eventually, she had thought for all of two days.

  But her new home was not in a beautiful part of England. And the grounds of the house, seen when their carriage had finally turned past heavy stone gateposts and iron gates, were not designed for maximum beauty. A thick covering of trees on the slopes to either side of them, creating artificial darkness for a quarter of a mile, and bare lawns closer to the house. No formal gardens. Apparently no flower gardens at all.

  The house was magnificent from the outside, far larger and more imposing than she had expected. But it was austere, fitting its surroundings well—a rectangular house with six rectangular towers, flat-roofed, the only feature to lighten its look the many long windows.

  Her husband stared from the carriage window with her, his expression quite inscrutable.

  “I had thought never to come back here,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I must have imagined my father was immortal.”

  “So this is where you grew up,” she said. “And Alexandra.” It explained a great deal, she thought, and did not know quite what she meant by the thought. And here was where she would live with this man. And where her own children would grow up.

  “I might have expected as much,” James muttered from beside her.

  His jaw had tightened, she saw at a glance, though she was soon looking back through the window at two long, straight lines of erect and motionless servants, standing facing each other across the cobbled courtyard where their carriage would stop.

  Word had preceded them, and the staff of Dunstable Hall had turned out to greet their new master and his bride.

  James presented Mrs. Cockings, the housekeeper, and Mr. Cockings, the butler, to Madeline, and then walked beside her the length of one row of servants, across the cobbles, and back down the length of the row opposite.

  Madeline was reminded of something. Some familiarity lingered at the back of her mind, just beyond conscious thought. And then she remembered with a shock and a quite inappropriate urge to giggle. When she had been in Brussels the year before, she had watched many military reviews. The troops had stood no more perfectly at attention, their eyes had been directed no more unrelentingly and unmov
ingly forward, nor had their expressions been more woodenly unsmiling when being reviewed by the Duke of Wellington himself than the servants of Dunstable were for James’s inspection and her own.

  The Cockingses had not smiled either, she thought in some fascination as Mrs. Cockings made polite inquiries about her journey and led her into the house and up a wide oak stairway to her rooms.

  And if the woman’s gray hair were scraped back from her face with any more severity, it surely would be dragged altogether from its roots.

  That was another thing, Madeline thought with a frown, noting with unexpected relief that the two long windows in her bedchamber made it a light and seemingly airy apartment. All the maidservants had looked just the same, all with hair severely drawn back from their faces and confined in a neat knot at their necks. Apart from the inevitable differences in hair coloring and in height and build, they had all looked identical.

  Mrs. Cockings stood in the middle of the bedchamber, her back ramrod straight, her hands clasped at her waist. “Your maid will be in the dressing room, my lady,” she said. “You will wish to freshen yourself. Tea will be served in the drawing room immediately. After that, you will perhaps care for a bath?”

  Madeline smiled. “I can think of nothing I would like more,” she said. She crossed the room to one of the windows and looked down on green lawns and trees. “How lovely it will be not to have to get up tomorrow to yet another day of carriage travel.”

  “I shall await your instructions in the morning, my lady,” the housekeeper said, making no response to the invitation of the smile. “In the meanwhile I have taken the liberty of arranging the dinner menu with the cook.”

  “I am sure whatever you have ordered will be quite acceptable,” Madeline said with another smile.

  “And I have given instructions to the servants that evening and morning prayers will be held in the main hall instead of in the kitchen, beginning this evening,” Mrs. Cockings said. “Tired as you both must be, I am sure Lord Beckworth will not wish to miss that routine.”