by Mary Balogh
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.”
“You made a wonderful choice of wife, Dom,” she said. “I am so glad for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad for me too. Why did the world come to an end?”
“He has a mistress,” she said. “And he has a nine-year-old son by her. The boy even looks like him. And yet I am to be raged at when I make a friend of another man.”
“A particular man?” he asked.
“The Duke of Peterleigh’s steward,” she said. “An amiable man who has been kind to me. It is his sister who is James’s mistress. It hurt him to tell me.”
“It hurt whom?” he asked. “James or the steward?”
“Carl,” she said. “Carl Beasley.”
“He told you?”
“Only when I had seen enough to thoroughly arouse my suspicions,” she said.
“And this man is your friend?” Dominic asked. “And your husband objects to the friendship?”
“Yes,” she said dully. “I think he thought we were embracing, but Carl was merely holding my hands after he had been forced to tell me.”
Dominic muttered an oath that Madeline was too weary to object to. “You are quite sure that what he told you is true?” he asked.
“Yes, quite sure.” Her voice was toneless. “They were alone together in a room just before Carl took me outside.”
“And yet,” he said, “what your husband thought he witnessed was not quite the way it seemed, was it?”
“You are saying that James’s being alone with Mrs. Drummond was innocent?” she said, lifting her head away from him and turning to look at him with weary eyes. “I think not, Dom. And there is the child.”
“Mrs. Drummond?” he said. “And what is Mr. Drummond’s role in all this, pray?”
“I think he probably does not know,” she said. “Though he must know that the boy is
James’s. He looks so different from the other Drummond children. But his brothers found James and her together and were furious. They even threatened him.”
Dominic sighed and put a hand to his brow. “Did you confront him with all this, Mad?” he asked. “Or did you just take fright and flight, in that order?”
“He was too busy raging at me over Carl,” she said. “I left the next morning.”
“And what happened during the night between?” he asked and watched her flush deeply and bite her lip. He raised his eyebrows. “One of those fights, was it? I don’t know, Mad. I should go up there perhaps, should I? Find out the truth and kill him or draw his cork if what you say is true?”
She looked at him indignantly. “You will do no such thing,” she said. “I have left him, Dom. Forever. I told him in the note I left behind that he may go to hell for all I care, and I meant it. I have no more interest in James Purnell, Lord Beckworth. He was an unfortunate, unpleasant episode in my life. Now I have the rest of my life to get on with. You see?” She held up her left hand, palm in. “I have thrown away his wedding ring.”
“Mad!” he said gently, taking her by the shoulders and drawing her against him as her face crumpled before his eyes and she began to wail. “Oh, Mad.”
“How humiliating!” she said, sniffing and snorting and hiccuping. “How dreadfully mortifying. And it’s all your fault. I was not going to tell anyone anything. It’s nobody’s business but mine. It’s certainly not yours, Dominic. You have your own family and are managing it beautifully. Do you think it is not humiliating to come crawling back home like this from a broken marriage and a husband who prefers another woman to me? And always did. The child is nine years old.” She pounded the sides of her fists against his chest.
“Hush,” he said soothingly against her ear. “Hush now.”
And she sagged against him and stopped the tirade abruptly. She could hear someone else’s voice, also against her ear, telling her to hush. And she could feel someone else’s arms about her as he said it. And she had quietened for him because he had loved her and satisfied her and not turned away from her immediately after.
She pushed away from her brother. “Do you remember in Brussels?” she said. “After you and Ellen had broken up? And you started to fight back to life, determined that you were going to get better and not let yourself be destroyed by anyone, even if you loved her? Do you remember, Dom?”
He nodded. “It’s one of the hardest things in this world to do,” he said.
“But you succeeded,” she said. “And you would have made a meaningful life for yourself, wouldn’t you, even if you had not married her after all?”
“Yes,” he said, “if there had been no help for it, I think I would have gone on living. Not just surviving, but living.”
“Well,” she said, “I am not your twin for nothing, Dom. I am more than a survivor too. I love James. I can’t hide that from you, can I? And at this very moment I am terrified and quite convinced that life can hold nothing for me if I don’t have him. But I don’t have him and never will, for I have far too much pride ever to share him with another woman. And so I must learn to live without him. And I will learn. Don’t expect me to weep all over you ever again.”
“And glad I am to hear it,” he said, setting a comradely arm about her shoulders and leading her to a sofa. “My valet sweated blood tying this neckcloth and now it looks like a limp rag. He will sulk for a week.”
“Oh, Dom,” she said, “I have missed you so.”
“We were hoping to see you at Christmas,” he said.
“James said we might come,” she said. “But I would not because I did not want anyone to see that we were not perfectly happy together. A laughable scruple under present circumstances, was it not? What do you think of Edmund and Alexandra having another child?”
“I am delighted for them,” he said, “since they are so very pleased about it themselves.”
“I am so envious,” she said. “I wish I could have had just one child before all this happened. But how foolish. I could not have left then, could I, and he would not have let me go. Do you think Mama and Ellen are counting sequins on that gown?”
“What gown?” he said, and they both chuckled.
• • •
THE EARL OF AMBERLEY stood in the doorway of the music room and watched his wife. She was playing her own composition on the pianoforte, as she so often did, while Caroline stood beside her, her elbows on the stool, her chin resting on her hands, staring up at her. Christopher was lying on his stomach at the other side of the room, painting. Nanny Rey would scold them all indiscriminately. According to her notions, paints had no business anywhere else but in the nursery.
They all saw him at the same moment. Caroline danced across the room and hugged one of his legs. Christopher picked up his painting and brought it for inspection. Alexandra smiled at him and stopped playing.
“You are back already,” she said. “I thought you were to be at the village all morning, Edmund.”
“I decided to come back early,” he said, swinging his daughter up into his arms, tousling his son’s hair, and advancing into the room. “Kisses, princess?” He turned his head to meet the puckered mouth of his daughter.
“Come,” Alexandra said, crossing the room and setting her hands on her son’s shoulders after looking carefully at his painting, “let’s take you back to Nanny Rey. I will play for you again tomorrow, Caroline, shall I? Are you going to wash your own brushes, Christopher, so that Nanny doesn’t scold?”
She soon had the children upstairs and settled. She left the nursery and tucked her arm through her husband’s.
“What is wrong?” she asked, leading him in the direction of her sitting room.
“How do you know there is something wrong?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Edmund!” she said. “I have been married to you for almost five years. A poor wife I would be if I did not know instantly when you had something on your mind.”
“It used to amaze me,” he said, “how Madeline and Dominic used to understand each other so well even without the medium of words. Now I can experience it too with you.” He leaned down and kissed her on the nose before standing aside so that she could precede him into the sitting room.
“So,” she said, turning to him as he closed the door behind them, “what is it?”
“I intercepted the mail in the village,” he said. “There’s a letter from Dominic. Madeline is in London.”
Her face lit up. “Will they come here?” she asked. “Or can we go there? Can we, Edmund?”
“She is alone,” he said.
She looked at him in incomprehension.
“She has left James.” He looked at her as she sat down straight-backed on the nearest chair. “Dominic did not give details, but it does not sound like a petty quarrel. She has really left him. Are you all right, Alex?”
She was sitting pale on her chair, staring at him.
“I knew it could not work,” she said. “It would have been too good to be true. He gave up so many years to stay with me until I could be happy. And all I have ever wanted for him is his happiness. I thought perhaps he would find it. I thought perhaps Madeline would be right for him. And he for her. But it would have been too good to be true.”
“She is pretty distraught, according to Dominic,” he said. “Putting a brave face on it, as one might expect with Madeline, and smiling and talking and declaring that she will make a new life for herself. But quite broken up and ready to fly into pieces at the smallest provocation.”
She bit her lip. “But why did James let her go?” she asked. “Where is he, Edmund?”
He shook his head. “Not in London when Dominic wrote this letter anyway,” he said. “What do you want me to do, Alex? Write to him? Go to him? Will you be hurt if I go to London to see Madeline?”
“Hurt?” She frowned. “Why should I be hurt?”
He sat down opposite her and smiled ruefully. “It has stru
ck me throughout the return ride from the village,” he said, “that you and I could easily be caught on opposite sides of the fence on this one, Alex. Whatever has happened between them, it would be natural for you to take James’s part and equally natural for me to take Madeline’s. Can we talk sensibly now and prevent that from happening?”
She leaped to her feet. “Oh, no,” she said. “That is absurd, Edmund. I love Madeline, who is my sister by two separate close ties. I could not turn against her. And as for taking sides, that would be the most stupid thing we could do. They have a problem, and doubtless it has been compounded by foolishness and all the misunderstandings and stubbornness that come so easily when one lives close to someone else. You taught me very early in our marriage how to combat those occasions. You have always made me talk to you, and you have always talked to me. Are we to quarrel over someone else’s quarrel when we have learned to avoid our own?”
He sat back in his chair and smiled at her. “You are angry with me,” he said.
“I certainly am.” Her eyes were flashing. “Don’t you trust me to be as committed to your family as I am to my own? My children are your family. They have your name.”
He was on his feet too suddenly and taking her by the arms. “I am sorry, love,” he said. “Forgive me? I was terrified that your attachment to your brother would cause you to fly off in a fury with Madeline. I don’t know you as well as you know me, I suppose. Forgive me?”
She smoothed the lapels of his coat and lifted her face for his kiss. Then she twined her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder.
“What can have happened?” she said. “I so wanted them both to be happy, Edmund. What could have happened to make her take such a drastic step? She has left him. What did he do to her to make her leave? There is so much love in James. It sustained me for years. But somehow he has driven her away.”
“If you can manage without me for a few days,” he said, “I will go up to London and see what I can find out. Perhaps it is just a foolish quarrel after all that can be settled with some cool mediation. Though perhaps those few days will have to be extended if I need to go to Yorkshire.”