The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  Madeline tried not to gape. She inclined her head in what she hoped was a dismissive gesture. “Thank you, Mrs. Cockings,” she said.

  The housekeeper crossed the bedchamber and held open the door into the dressing room. “I shall also take it upon myself, my lady,” she said, as Madeline passed her, relieved to see that her maid was already in the room and busy unpacking brushes and combs, “to see to it that your maid is clothed in the proper uniform of the house and given instructions on the correct grooming as expected by his lordship.”

  “Thank you,” Madeline said, turning in the doorway and looking quite dismissively at her housekeeper. “We will speak in the morning, Mrs. Cockings. But please make no move on the last matter. My maid is permitted to dress and to groom herself in any manner that I consider fitting.”

  “With all due respect, my lady,” the housekeeper said, “I believe his lordship will be adamant on the matter. Perhaps …”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Cockings,” Madeline said firmly, and walked into her dressing room.

  If her spirits had been sinking during the past few days, she thought, plunging her face into the cold water her maid had poured into a bowl, they had now arrived right down inside her slippers.

  One consolation, she thought with wry humor, was that they had no further to sink.

  JAMES FELT RATHER AS IF HE WERE LIVING WITH bated breath. He had been at Dunstable Hall for almost two weeks and there had been no major unpleasant incident either at the house, or in the neighborhood, or with his wife. Could he dare hope that life would settle into a comfortable peace?

  But it was an uneasy peace.

  The Cockingses were not pleased. Not that it was easy to divine their mood, it was true, since never in all the years of his acquaintance with them had he seen either one of them smile or frown or show any outward sign of emotion.

  Cockings had hovered at his elbow the day of his arrival, after the housekeeper had taken Madeline to her apartments. Among other things, he had informed his master that he had taken the liberty of arranging that prayers be conducted in the grand hall that evening instead of in the kitchen where they were always conducted when the master was from home.

  Half an hour of Bible reading and prayer during the evening and fifteen minutes during the morning had always been the strict and immutable rule at Dunstable Hall.

  He had said nothing but had let the servants assemble after dinner. And he had taken Madeline with him to face their silent rows and informed them that from that day on there would be no formal prayers.

  “There will, however,” he said, “be the half hour in the evening and fifteen minutes in the morning when you may all be free to occupy yourselves as you please. Those of you who wish to conduct devotions may do so privately or in groups organized among yourselves as you will.”

  There was murmuring, soon quelled by a look from Cockings and his wife.

  “I believe you have twenty minutes left this evening,” James continued. “You may go and use the time as you wish.”

  “With all due respect,” Cockings said after the bewildered servants had dispersed, “Lord Beckworth was very strict on the question of prayers.”

  James said nothing but merely turned his stare on the man.

  Cockings bowed stiffly. “It will be as you wish, my lord,” he said.

  “There is always more work to be done than there is time to do it,” Mrs. Cockings said. “I shall see to it, my lord, that everyone is decently occupied.”

  “Perhaps I did not express myself clearly,” James said. “What I meant to say was that every servant in this house, yourself included, Mrs. Cockings, will have a little free time both morning and evening.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said, inclining her head.

  But he knew that neither of them was pleased.

  Madeline burst into giggles when they had returned to the drawing room. “Oh, James,” she said, “it was priceless. Did you see their faces? And you pokered up so splendidly. I think the Duke of Wellington himself would have quailed before you.”

  He was standing facing the fireplace, a grin on his face. He was only just containing his own laughter. But there were memories too. Memories of aching limbs and of boredom. Memories of numerous punishments for both himself and Alex if they had moved a muscle during the half hour or yawned—hours spent on their knees in the schoolroom, reading the Bible, missing meals.

  He had rejected his father’s God years before. It was only during his stay in the vast empty wilderness beyond Canada that he had begun to wonder if perhaps there were not a God after all. But one quite different from his father’s. He would not want that God even if He existed. He would fight such a God to the death.

  By the time he turned away from the fireplace, it was too late to share his laughter with Madeline. He surprised both himself and her by what he said.

  “I shall spend the time, morning and evening, in private meditation,” he said. He meant it. He had a curiosity to read the Bible for himself. Was the God of the Bible entirely a God of wrath? Memory suggested to him that perhaps He was not, though that was the overwhelming impression he had grown up with. “You may use it as you wish, Madeline.”

  The laughter died from her face. She appeared uncertain how to respond to his words. And he was embarrassed by his pronouncement. He stood and looked sternly at her, his hands clasped behind his back until she flushed and crossed the room to the pianoforte, where she spent the following hour.

  He seemed to have no way of talking to her. And the more he told himself to relax and say whatever he wished to say to her, the more impossible it became to behave with her in any sort of natural manner.

  Even before the incident with the prayers he had had the opportunity to establish a more affectionate relationship with her. When they had gone in to dinner, he had placed her at one end of the long table and taken his seat at the other.

  “Is it necessary,” she asked with the hint of a smile, “to sit such a distance apart, James?”

  He had not thought to question the arrangement. They were merely occupying the places his mother and father had always occupied.

  “Cockings,” he said, “move her ladyship’s placing to my right-hand side, if you please. And that will be a permanent arrangement.”

  When she sat there, smiling at him with dancing eyes, he looked back. “Are you more comfortable now?” he asked.

  He was not quite sure why her smile faded instantly and her eyes turned hostile.

  “Perfectly, I thank you,” she said in tones that he realized matched his own. But he had not intended to speak coldly or to look at her with hostility. He was pleased to have her beside him.

  “James,” she said, her tone still chilly, her back quite straight and not touching her chair, “I have been informed that you will require my maid to wear the ghastly uniform of the house and to wear her hair scraped back into a bun as all the other servants do. I will not have it, I would have you know. I will not stand for such petty tyranny.”

  “Good Lord, Madeline,” he said, annoyed that she should think the order had come from him, “do you think I care what your maid wears? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  They began their soup in silence.

  “I consider that the house servants, with the exception of the butler and my valet, are your domain,” he said, realizing how revolutionary his words were for this house.

  His mother had never had charge of anything. “You may make any changes you wish, Madeline.”

  And he listened in some dismay to his tone, imperious, offhand, as if he did not care about anything that had to do with her world.

  “Good,” she said. “There will be changes, I assure you.”

  They ate the main course in silence.

  “I like my bedchamber,” she said brightly at last. “It is light and airy.”

  “I hope you will like mine as well, then,” he said, “since that is where you will be sleeping.”

  “Will I?” she said. There was color i
n her cheeks and a light in her eyes that caused him a surge of desire.

  But he was aware of what he had said aloud in front of the butler and two footmen, standing like wooden statues at the sideboard, and of what was in her face. And instead of merely smiling at her or else dropping the subject entirely, he had to make matters worse.

  He looked very directly into her eyes. “Try sleeping anywhere else,” he said, “and I shall come to fetch you.”

  She recoiled rather as if he had slapped her. And he knew that the words had been neither provocative nor teasing. They had sounded like a threat.

  In the week and a half following their arrival at Dunstable Hall he learned to stay away from her as much as possible during the day and to confine his conversation to purely mundane household matters. And there was a sort of peace between them. Madeline was busy learning the workings of the house and imposing her will on Mrs. Cockings. The maid who brought their breakfast on the fourth morning had curls peeping from beneath her cap—and smiled and blushed at Madeline’s compliment.

  Madeline seemed not actively unhappy.

  And if he was quite incapable of showing her his love in words or by facial expressions, then he tried to make up for the lack at night. She was like a drug to him. He had been totally addicted to his need for her long before they arrived at Dunstable Hall.

  But it was a need not only for personal gratification. The need was just as strong in him to love her, to make of their beddings a beautiful and fulfilling experience for her too. And his main comfort, his main hope, during the early days of their marriage was that he was having considerable success. She enjoyed their lovemaking quite as much as he did and she was learning how to increase both her own pleasure and his.

  If only he could murmur something to her in words!But he could not, so he would not brood on the matter. On the whole his marriage was developing a great deal better than he had feared on their wedding day.

  Though there was no cause for great rejoicing, of course. After they had been home a week, she informed him with a look almost of defiance on her face that she was not after all with child.

  “Well,” he said, hiding his disappointment, “then it seems you need not have married me after all, Madeline. You might have slipped through that web to freedom.”

  “That is not why I married you,” she said.

  “Why did you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said after a pause. “Perhaps an unconscious desire to be punished.”

  No, there was no great harmony in their marriage. Only a cautious peace.

  He was devoting much of his days to traveling his estate with his bailiff, learning about the workings of his holdings. Even though he had lived at home until he was six and twenty, his father had never allowed him any hand in the running of the estate. His ignorance was almost total.

  The living conditions of his laborers and their wages were deplorable, he began to discover. His tenants had grievances that had long been ignored. There was a great deal of work to be done. But he spent those first weeks looking and listening, making no hasty judgments, making no inexperienced decisions that time might prove disastrous.

  He almost forgot that there was a world beyond the boundaries of his land. In his father’s time there almost had been no other world. There had been almost no socializing with neighbors, since almost all of them had been judged at one time or another ungodly. There had been no playmates for him and Alex, except each other. Any child with whom they might have played would only lead them astray.

  And so it was something of a surprise to be invited to a dinner and evening party at the home of Mr. Hooper, a prosperous landowner whose land adjoined his own on the west side. The Hoopers had been cut from the late Lord Beckworth’s list of acquaintances after a boundary dispute twenty years or more before.

  “We have had an invitation to dinner at the home of our neighbors next week,” he told Madeline, going to her immediately in the morning room, where she was writing letters.

  “Have we?” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if we had any neighbors, though there seemed to be plenty of people at church last Sunday.”

  “My father did not associate with many people,” he said. “Perhaps they think I will be like him. And perhaps I am.”

  “No, you are not,” she said. She smiled impishly at him in an expression he had not seen very often directed his way. “Tessa, the upstairs maid who limps a little, was caught outside the stables last night kissing one of the grooms. Mrs. Cockings informed me that both servants were instantly dismissed.”

  “Hm,” he said, embarrassed. “Doubtless I will regret having intervened.”

  “You told Mr. Cockings this morning that they were to stay, and be allowed to marry too. I understood from the way Mrs. Cockings told the story that such scandalous goings-on would not have been tolerated in your father’s time, James.”

  “Well,” he said gruffly, “the man is a good groom.”

  “Ah,” she said, “that explains your generosity. I have had letters from Anna and Allan Penworth this morning.”

  “Penworth?” he said with a frown. “He is writing to you? Does he not know you are married?”

  “Of course he knows,” she said, “or why would he be sending the letter here? We have corresponded frequently during the last year. He has been using his artificial leg until he is all over black bruises, he says.” She laughed. “Just imagine. I betrothed myself to him thinking that he would need me for the rest of his life. He is a wonder. He says he may go back to London for the Season next year.”

  “Well,” he said, “you will not be going.”

  “I did not expect to,” she said. She frowned. “Why that look?”

  “If you think I will tolerate your writing to old beaux and planning to meet them,” he said, “you do not know me, Madeline. You may regret your choice of husband, but you made the choice.”

  She flung down her quill pen, splashing ink over the half-written sheet on the escritoire before her, and jumped to her feet. “What are you suggesting?” she said. “That Allan and I are exchanging love letters? That I am exchanging them with half a dozen other men too? Or a dozen? That I am planning clandestine meetings with them all? How dare you speak to me so.”

  “You always were an incurable flirt,” he said. “I don’t know why I should expect you to change now.”

  “And you always were a humorless tyrant,” she said. “I don’t know why one incident with your servants deceived me into thinking that perhaps you had changed. In future, James, I will not even try to share my correspondence or any other part of my life with you. I shall keep it all to myself and you may think or imagine what you will.”

  “I am devastated,” he said. “We have had such a close relationship until now.”

  “Perhaps in time I will take a lover,” she said. “I imagine that the day may come when I will want a little brightness and excitement in my life. And I certainly will get neither from you.”

  He was across the room in a few strides and gripped her arms in a grasp that had her visibly wincing. “If I cannot put excitement into your life,” he said, “perhaps it is because your palette is jaded from too much empty frivolity. And you will try taking a lover at your peril, Madeline.” His eyes narrowed on her; his breath quickened.

  She looked up at him and laughed. “Go on,” she said. “I believe your next move is to turn me beneath your arm and beat me until I have to lie facedown on my bed for the rest of the day. Or else to kiss me so fiercely that my lips will be swollen and bruised for a week. Don’t disappoint me, James. Play the part of the heavy-handed lord and master. You do it so well.”

  He dropped his hands and stood staring at her, his shoulders drooped. And the fight went out of her eyes. She dropped them to his chin.

  “I think perhaps your father talked to your mother and to you in that way,” she said. “But you will not talk to me like that and get away with it. And if you ever strike me, I shall hit back. If you ever use
me in anger or out of a wish to punish, I shall leave you.” She looked back up into his eyes.

  “I will never strike you,” he said, “no matter how much you provoke me. As for the rest, if you ever leave me, I shall come and bring you back again. Even if you take yourself to the far corner of the world. You are my wife, and you will remain so for as long as we both live.”

  Because I need you. Because I love you. Because I want and want and want to make you happy. Because the thought of your turning to another man drives me insane. He looked deeply into her eyes, his expression a mask, and turned and left the room without another word.

  He sent an acceptance of the Hoopers’ invitation.

  IT WAS A GREAT RELIEF to Madeline to discover that they were after all to attend at least one entertainment. For the first week after their arrival at Dunstable Hall, she had not really noticed the lack of visitors. She had been too engrossed in adjusting her life to a totally new environment—a large and gloomy house, which had no need to be gloomy at all, a severe and humorless housekeeper, who for years had run the household as if it were an army post, and a moody, surly husband.

  It was not an easy adjustment to make. There was a great dragging at her spirits, and the temptation to just give up the struggle was enormous. The house had always been run very well, it seemed. Why not allow it to continue to do so rather than have a daily battle of wills with Mrs. Cockings? And there was no pleasing her husband. She had tried. Several times she had tried to pretend that he was just like any other man of her acquaintance. She had tried to smile and talk to him as if she expected answering smiles and words.

  But he had that way of looking through her with those dark eyes, which were themselves inscrutable. And a way of speaking that was abrupt and to the point. And no way at all of smiling.

  The temptation was to ignore him, to withdraw into her own world. But it was not in her nature to be aloof, and she had to live with this man for the rest of her life. Besides, she wanted to share her life with him. For a reason that totally escaped her comprehension, she loved him.