The Devil's Web

by Mary Balogh

  “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.

  JAMES 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?”

  She smiled. “It does not seem fitting to be familiar with you now that you are Lord Beckworth,” she said.

  “After what we knew together, Dora?” he said.

  She blushed. “Oh, that,” she said. “I did not think you would remind me of that. It was very foolish.”

  Foolish? After the years of agony he had lived through? Well.

  “It was very real at the time,” he said.

  She laughed. A trilling little laugh that he had forgotten. “Just foolishness,” she said. “And very indiscreet. I might have got into a great deal of trouble.”

  Might have?

  “I do admire your wife, my lord,” she said. “She is very lovely. You must be proud of her.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I am.”

  “I have never been presented to her,” she said with that little laugh again. “I suppose I am not considered quite good enough since I married Mr. Drummond. But I am quite contented, you know.”

  “Are you, Dora?” he said. “Would you like to meet Madeline?”

  “I see she is wearing the Beckworth diamonds,” she said. “They look much better on her than they looked on your mother, my lord, if you will forgive me for saying so. And she looks as if she might be the duchess rather than her grace, poor girl. She is dreadfully thin and pale, don’t you think?”

  “She is only just recovering from a confinement,” James said.

  “But I was always blooming again just weeks after my confinements,” Dora said. “Ask Mr. Drummond. No, the duchess has always looked the same. Of course, it must be dreadful to know that one has been married only because one is of suitable family to bear the ducal heir. She cannot believe that he cares for her, can she?”

  And he had loved her? Made love to her? Raged and fought and driven himself to the brink of insanity when she was snatched from him, hidden away from him, and permanently removed from him by marriage to another man? This was Dora as she had become?

  James was aghast.

  “And yet,” he said, “she has borne the heir, a healthy boy from all accounts. And they both look happy this evening.”

  He took her somewhat reluctantly at the end of the waltz to meet Madeline, and the two women stood and conversed politely until they were claimed by their next partners.

  James felt that sense of unreality again. His wife and his former mistress, the mother of his son, had met and talked together. And Dora, that comfortable, placid, rather spiteful matron, was the girl he had agonized over for years. The girl he had taken out of boredom, because she was buxom and pretty and willing. The girl he had later, in his guilt, persuaded himself he had loved.

  He joined a group of gentlemen, most of them guests at the manor, and watched his wife dance with the duke and Dora with Adam Drummond.

  His curiosity was thoroughly piqued. Had their liaison meant so little to Dora? Had she not been sick with love for him, as he had always thought? Had she not suffered as much as he at the time, snatched away from him and her home as she had been and forced into an arranged marriage with a man of inferior birth? Or had she so schooled her feelings that she could pretend so well? Had the bearing of their child meant so little to her, left so few signs of permanent suffering? Could she look on the father of her eldest son so placidly and tell him that what they had shared had been foolish?

  He could not feel satisfied. He had no feelings left for Dora and surprisingly few for his son. He knew that the past was far better left alone than resurrected to the satisfaction of no one. And he knew that his only hope for future happiness lay with Madeline.

  But he could not feel satisfied. The urge to know was even stronger in him now that he had danced with Dora and found her so very much the same and yet so very different from the way she had been when he had loved her and lain with her.

  He claimed her hand again after supper for a set of country dances. But he had no intention of cavorting about the floor with her, separated for most of the dance by the figures of the set. He needed to talk to her.

  “Shall we find somewhere quiet to sit down for a while?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure, my lord,” she said.

  “I want to know what has been happening with you in the past ten years, Dora,” he said. “We were friends once.”

  Though perhaps they had never been friends, he thought. Only lovers.

  “Well, I am a little footsore,” she admitted. “Mr. Drummond bought me a new pair of slippers, and I am afraid to take them off for fear that I have blisters on my heels, and I would not be able to get them back on again.”

  Sweet and helpless, anxious and talkative Dora Beasley. The qualities had been endearing in a seventeen-year-old.

  He took her out of the ballroom and along the hallway past rooms that had all been lit and thrown open for the occasion. Most of them were occupied, either by card players or by gossiping matrons and chaperones. A few were empty. He took Dora into a small salon and left the door ajar.

  “Do you remember our last meeting almost ten years ago?” he asked.

  She blushed. “I do wish you would not remind me,” she said. “It was foolish. But you were very ardent and very insistent
and so much in love with me.” That trilling laugh.

  “And you with me, Dora,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Very foolish. You were so handsome, my lord. As you still are, of course.”

  “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you marry Drummond, Dora? Did they force you?”

  “He was kind,” she said, “and said that he wished to marry me. Although he was given a large dowry, of course. My papa did not leave me destitute, and his grace added to what he had left me. Carl was very insistent. He said it was the best thing for me and would save me from ruin.”

  “Did you write to me?” he asked. “I have always wondered if you tried, and if they withheld your letters.”

  “Write?” she said. “To you? Oh, no, I never did.”

  He laughed a little bitterly. “I was a fool,” he said. “I thought you loved me. I thought you had been dragged kicking and screaming to the altar.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Not really, though I was a little disappointed, I must confess. Carl explained to me that I had been very foolish. Gullible was the word he used. I suppose I was, too. I was only seventeen, you know. He did say at first when he knew I had …” She stopped and blushed. “Well, you know. When I told him about you and me. He said that perhaps we might use that. But I would not hear of it. I might have been foolish, but I was not lost to all conduct. And I was fond of you, I will admit to that. Besides, Carl said after he had had time to think it over that it would not do. His grace would not have allowed it, he said, because he had an understanding with Miss Purnell.”

  James frowned. “He did not think it would have been right for you to marry me because of Peterleigh and Alex?” he said. “What did that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, you know,” she said pointedly, blushing again. “Because.”

  “Because what?” he asked.

  “Well, you know,” she said. “On account of its being his.”

  James went very still. Dora had seated herself on a love seat and was pleating the silk skirt of her gown between her fingers.

  “Explain to me,” he said. “There is something I don’t understand here.”

  “Didn’t you know?” she said. “I suppose you might not have, since we were sent away right after the wedding and Mr. Drummond has been working on one of his grace’s estates ever since—well, until last autumn anyway. But I thought everybody would have known, especially when we came back. Have you not wondered why Jonathan looks so different from my other children? It was embarrassing. I hoped he would take after me, but he didn’t. He took after his father instead.”

  “I had noticed.” James felt rather as if he were suffocating.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” Dora said. “It was all years ago, and he has been married for years and now has a son with her. Though I did half wish it would turn out to be a daughter. Carl and I, you know, were just as gently born as she, except that our papa had no title. But we were just his wards, you see, and Carl told me after it had happened that I could not expect him to marry me. I had thought he would. Was not that foolish? And I could not even say that I was forced exactly. He was a handsome man—a little like you, tall and dark, though he was already graying at the temples, and very persuasive. I think that was why I liked you. You reminded me of him. But I should not have let you—you know, because I had already been increasing for almost two months at that time. I might have been in real trouble with him if he had found out.”

  “And he did not find out?” James asked.

  “I don’t think he could have,” Dora said. “He would have come up from London and beaten me for sure, wouldn’t he? He had beaten me for less.”

  “My father had no hand in marrying you to Drummond?” James asked.

  “Oh, for sure,” she said. “Yes, Carl said he was furious. I think he thought it was yours at first, but Carl set him right on that. Even so, I suppose it was natural that he would want me married and have everything hushed up on account of Miss Purnell. It was his grace, though, who was good enough to suggest Mr. Drummond and to give us another home to live in for a few years. Mr. Drummond has been kind to me. A better husband than he would have been, I daresay.”

  “Jonathan is the Duke of Peterleigh’s son, then?” James said. He felt as if he were in the middle of some bizarre dream.

  “He looks like him, doesn’t he?” she said. “It is a little embarrassing, and I wonder sometimes if she looks at him and knows the truth. But I don’t suppose she minds, does she? When your husband is a duke or someone like that, you have to expect such things. And she has the title and the heir and all that. But I don’t think she is as pretty as I, is she? Or as amiable. I could have made him more comfortable, I’ll wager. Not that I am complaining. I have a good husband and I have been able to present him with three children of his own. And his grace looks after us, you know. He will send Jonathan to school when he is a little older and find him a suitable situation when he is grown up. I can’t complain, can I?”

  “I suppose not,” James said, seating himself on the edge of the love seat next to her.

  Well.

  Well.

  But before he could get his thoughts in order, the door crashed inward on its hinges and he looked up, startled, to see Benjamin and Adam Drummond filling the doorway.

  “Out, Beckworth!” the former said. “Immediately, or it will be out of the house on your ear for all to see.”

  James stood up and brushed at his sleeves. Dora jumped up beside him.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, “we were just talking, dear brother. I have blisters and Lord Beckworth was kind enough to bring me somewhere where I could sit down.”

  “Out!” Adam Drummond said. “And don’t come near her again, Beckworth, if you value your life.”

  “I will acknowledge and be civil to a neighbor whenever I happen to meet her,” James said, checking the folds of his neckcloth unhurriedly.

  “We know what sort of a neighbor you are, Beckworth,” Ben Drummond said. “Sitting close beside her with not a pin space between the two of you. If you plan to cuckold her husband, it will be over my dead body. You can turn your lecherous eyes on all the other women in Yorkshire for all I care. But you will keep them from my sister-in-law.”

  “Indeed,” James said. “Ah, is that a single threat, Drummond, or does it include your brother? It seems to me that the last time I encountered you, it was together. Have you learned since then to fight one at a time?”

  “Oh, dear me,” Dora said from behind him. “You are not going to fight over me, are you? My lord? Brother?”

  “No, we are not going to fight, Dora,” James said, turning to look back at her. “None of us is so ill-mannered as to wish to cause a scene at a celebration ball. May I take you back to your husband?”

  “You will leave now, Beckworth, and alone!” Ben Drummond said from between his teeth. “My brother and I will convey our sister-in-law back to the ballroom.”

  James raised his eyebrows. “Ah,” he said, “but I brought her here and I will return her, Drummond. Dora?” He bowed and extended his arm for hers. She looked nervously from him to the other two men, and then took his arm. “Gentlemen?” James waited for them to stand aside.

  “You are right,” Ben Drummond said. “This is not the occasion. But watch yourself, Beckworth. If your wife is not enough for you, there are brothels enough in Harrogate or closer than that, I daresay.”

  James raised his eyebrows again and led Dora from the room.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Perhaps we should have sat in one of the other rooms, my lord. How foolish of me. I’m afraid I do not always think of what is proper until it is too late.”

  MADELINE HAD SEEN THEM GO. She had danced the country dance with Sir Hedley Grimes from London, and had smiled at him and conversed with him whenever the pattern of the dance brought them together. And the knife had twisted and twisted in her.

  Where had he taken her? Where had they gone? And for what purpose?r />
  He visited her regularly, Mr. Beasley had let slip by accident on that one occasion when she had met him. There was nothing in the visits, he had added, trying to reassure her. Nothing to be concerned about at all.

  But James had never mentioned the visits to her. And he had never mentioned Mrs. Dora Drummond to her, or their child.

  She was a pretty lady. A little plump, it was true, but plumpness was not always unattractive. Dora Drummond was pretty. And she had a nine-year-old son who was James’s.

  For how long had they been lovers? How deeply had they loved? Why had they not married? Did James regret now not having married her? And did she regret it too? How often did they meet? And were they alone when they did so?

  Were they lovers again?

  Madeline had been tormented with the questions for weeks. Even months. And now, almost in public, he had led her from the ballroom, and they were still away when the music ended.

  She must train herself not to care. She must smile and converse until the dancing began again. The next dance was to be a waltz—the one she had been told to reserve for her husband. She must wait for him as if she did not have a care in the world. Surely he would not just leave her standing while he remained with his mistress.

  The word had come unbidden. Was she his mistress?

  But Madeline could not wait. Under pretense of going in search of the ladies’ withdrawing room, she slipped from the ballroom and looked about her. There was a buzz of conversation coming from the ballroom itself and from other rooms along the hallway. And two of the Drummond brothers were at the door of one room and crashing it back against the inner wall.

  Madeline felt sick and drew closer quite against her will.

  She could not see inside. But she did not need to do so. Obviously they were in there, and had been alone. And had been discovered sitting very close together. She stood and listened until the two large figures of the brothers stood aside to let the occupants of the room pass.