by Mary Balogh
She was happy for them. After the initial shock she was more than delighted. They were friends as well as being very fond of each other. Their marriage would have every chance of success. Friendship was an essential element of any marriage if it was to be successful, she had learned. Edmund and Alexandra were friends as were Dom and Ellen. She and James had never been friends.
She got up restlessly to cross the room to another group of people.
“Your husband will doubtless come down from Yorkshire for the wedding, Lady Beckworth,” one of her mother’s friends said.
Madeline smiled. “He is very busy,” she said. “And it is such a long way to come.”
“But a wedding is excuse enough to rejoin such a lovely wife,” someone else said with a wink. “And don’t tell me that he is not looking for excuses, ma’am.”
Madeline smiled brightly and moved on.
“I am to have the honor of leading Mama down the aisle and giving her away,” Edmund was saying. “Not many sons have that experience, do they?”
“And will you be overjoyed to hand her over to someone else’s keeping at last?” Uncle William asked with a broad wink.
“William!” Aunt Viola said. “The very idea. Take no notice of him, Edmund. He is just teasing. Your own sister too, William.”
Edmund laughed. “Well,” he said, “I will be quite confident in placing her hand in Sir Cedric’s. I could not wish better for her.”
Aunt Viola tucked Madeline’s hand beneath her arm and patted it. “And what are you planning to do when your mama goes away, dear?” she asked. “William and I would be delighted if you stayed with us for a while.”
“Oh, thank you,” Madeline said with a broad smile. “But I will be making some definite arrangements for my future soon. It is quite exciting, you know, to be starting a new life again.” She slipped her hand free and moved on.
Her mother’s butler tapped her on the arm and handed her a card.
“The gentleman would not have me announce him, ma’am,” he said with a bow. “He directed me to ask you if he could be admitted.”
Everything around her receded. Sights faded, voices became a distant buzz. All that existed was the card in her hand.
“No,” she said after what might have been seconds or minutes. She closed her hand about the card. “Tell Lord Beckworth that I do not wish to see him.”
The man bowed and withdrew.
Dominic was miraculously there beside her. He took her elbow and she smiled at him. She did not know if she would have fainted otherwise. She did not know if everyone in the room was aware of what had just happened. She did not look about her to see.
She did not notice Alexandra slip from the room.
“That coat is Weston’s creation, is it not?” she said. “I have been meaning to tell you how very splendid it looks, Dom.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Ellen was all admiration too when I put it on for the first time earlier this afternoon.”
“She was more likely all admiration for the man inside it,” she said.
“Well, there is that too, I suppose,” he said. “Not that I am conceited, of course.”
“Of course not,” she said, and they grinned at each other.
“You are all right?” he asked quietly.
“Perfectly,” she said. “Why would I not be?”
He drew her arm though his and they sat down with a group that included their mother and Sir Cedric.
He was in London. He had been downstairs just a few minutes before. He had come for her. Oh, God, he had come for her. At last.
More than a month had passed. What had he been doing in all that time? Had he been at home? Had he missed her? Had he been as relieved to see her go as she had been to get away?
Had he missed her?
He had not written at all.
Why had he come? Was he going to play the tyrant and drag her back home against her will? And could he do so? Did he have the right to do so? She was very much afraid that he did. But she would not go. He would have to tie her and gag her for the whole distance and then keep her behind locked doors for the rest of her life. She would not go. Besides, Edmund would not allow her to be taken back by force. And Dom would not allow it.
But they were merely her brothers. He was her husband. Would they do the honorable thing and stand aside and refuse to interfere?
“I am afraid not,” she said with a smile to the lady sitting beside her. “He is too busy and it is too great a distance to come.”
But he was here, she thought. He was in London.
Perhaps he would not force himself on her. Perhaps he would not drag her back home. Perhaps he would go away now that she had refused to receive him. Perhaps he would return home alone.
Panic grabbed at her. Perhaps she would never see him again.
Her mind was effectively brought back to the topic that was never far from it. Could it be true? It would just be too ironic after all those months of anxious waiting and agonizing disappointments. Now that it could not be true without hopelessly tangling her life, it looked as if it might be true. Three weeks overdue already.
It was the emotional turmoil she had lived with for the past month and a half. That was the cause of it. There were no other symptoms. No morning sickness. No unusual tiredness. Nothing. Only the fact that she was three weeks late. And the latest she had been in the months previous was four days.
She did not want it to be true now. He would never let her go if she was carrying a child of his. He would force her to go back. She did not want it to be true. She did not want to go back.
But several times every day she looked anxiously for signs that it was not true and lay on her bed staring upward as if the very stillness of her body would stem a flow of blood.
And he was here. He had come. He had come for her. He had come to her.
James.
“I was very, very nervous about telling my children,” her mother was saying, her eyes on Madeline. “I was afraid they would disapprove of my choice or feel betrayed.”
“Oh, Mama.” Madeline leaped from her chair and crossed the short distance to her mother. She hugged her and sat on the arm of her chair, an arm about her shoulders. “I could not possibly be more happy for you. My only complaint is that you did not make Sir Cedric our steppapa years ago.” She wrinkled her nose at Sir Cedric. “Will you expect us to call you Papa?”
The whole group laughed.
Where was he now? Madeline wondered. Would he come back? Or would he go away and never come near her again?
She would die if he did not come back.
And yet over the next ten days she denied him admittance ten times.
“JAMES.” The butler had delivered his message, and James had turned away before Alexandra was halfway down the stairs. She hurtled the rest of the way down as he turned back and opened his arms to her. “James.” She pulled him toward a small salon.
“Alex,” he said, hugging her again when they were inside. “How good it is to see you again. You are losing your figure already.”
She pulled back after a while and looked at him. He was quite haggard, his face thin and sallow, his eyes very dark and haunted. His hair was overlong. She lifted a hand to push back the lock that had fallen over his forehead and into his eyes.
“I knew you would come,” she said. “Edmund has been planning to leave for Yorkshire, but I knew you would come.”
His smile was almost a grimace. “The grim elder brother?” he said. “Coming to dish out punishment?”
She lowered her hand to his shoulder. “You are talking about Edmund,” she said. “He is a concerned elder brother, James. He was coming to see if anything might be patched up.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “She has just refused to see me.”
“James,” she said, smoothing her hands over the lapels of his coat. “Oh, James, it is not true, is it? Dora is not your mistress?”
He grimaced. “I suppose everyone has been told that,
” he said, “and believes it. It’s not true, Alex.”
“I knew it could not be,” she said, “though Dominic told Edmund that that was what the trouble was. James, when did you last sleep? You look dreadful.”
His eyes held a moment’s amusement. “Do I?” he said. “Perhaps it is as well she would not see me today, then. Will she see me, Alex? How is she?”
She shook her head. “Busy and smiling and enjoying the Season,” she said.
They looked into each other’s eyes. “She is miserable, then,” he said.
“Yes.”
He turned from her and walked to the window. “I made a mess of it,” he said. “I should never have married her.”
“I thought you loved her,” she said, her voice flat and unhappy.
“I do,” he said. “That’s the whole trouble.”
She put her arms about him from behind and rested a cheek against his back. “I thought you had changed when you came back last summer,” she said. “I thought you had put all the old troubles behind you and started to live again. I was very happy when you married Madeline. I love her too.”
“I had changed,” he said. “I had come to terms with myself and life. I had even begun to find some meaning. God, perhaps, though not the God we were brought up to know, Alex.”
“He is not the real God,” she said quickly. “Edmund taught me that, and my life with him has shown me that he is right.”
“But I suppose there was still something in me,” he said, “that told me I did not deserve a wife I loved. Or happiness either.”
“Dora?” she said. “Is she very unhappy? Has she suffered as much as you have? And does she still suffer?”
He laughed rather bleakly. “She seems perfectly content,” he said. “And there is no sign that she suffered greatly even at the time it was all happening, though there was some disappointment, I gather. She expected marriage to her son’s father.”
“It was not your fault,” she said tightly. “You must stop blaming yourself, James. And Papa too. He did only what he thought best at the time, though it was very wrong of him not even to consult you.”
“The child is Peterleigh’s,” he said.
Her arms fell from his waist. “The Duke of Peterleigh?”she said rather foolishly.
“The same,” he said. “The very duke for whom you were not good enough, Alex, after being kidnapped and forced to spend a night alone in Edmund’s house.”
“Dora’s child is his?” She stared at his back, her eyes wide and disbelieving.
“We were dupes,” he said. “Papa and I, I mean. It was better, apparently, to smear our names than to lower Peterleigh’s in everyone’s esteem. Not that I was blameless, of course. It might have been my child, and Dora was only seventeen at the time.”
“But …” she said, and seemed lost for words for a time. “All this burden you have borne, James. It was all unnecessary?”
His fists were clenched at his sides. “And Madeline has been destroyed by it all,” he said. “That is the worst of it. I have destroyed her.”
“No, James.” She hugged him from behind again. “No, that is not so. Nothing is ever so bad that it cannot be put right. She will understand when you have explained to her. There is still time to put everything right. You love her and I am convinced she loves you.”
He laughed. “If she had feelings for me at the start,” he said, “I don’t think they could possibly have survived, Alex. And she will not see me.”
“But she will,” she said. “If you persist, she will. You won’t give up, will you?”
“I will call on her every day for as long as it takes,” he said. “But I won’t force myself on her. I have no right. There are other things, Alex, that you don’t know and that I am not about to tell you of. Unless she has told you, of course. But I doubt it.”
“Whatever do you mean?” she said.
He shook his head. “I must leave,” he said. “I have no right in her mother’s house at present.”
“Where will you go?” she asked. “Come and stay with us, James.”
He turned and smiled at her. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Would you have me put your husband in such an awkward position? I’ll stay where I stayed last spring.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “How are the children?”
“Well,” she said.
“And you? Are you happy to be increasing again?”
She nodded.
“Well,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her on the cheek, “go back upstairs, Alex. I don’t want to cause any dissension between you and your husband.”
“You won’t,” she said. “We are very close friends, James.”
He smiled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Friendship. The essential ingredient.” And he opened the door to let her out into the hallway ahead of him.
THE EARL OF AMBERLEY ORGANIZED A BALL in honor of his mother’s betrothal. It was hastily arranged, coming as it did two weeks after the announcement and two before the wedding. He was not at all sure that many guests would come since it was early in June and the members of the ton still had a vast number of entertainments to choose among.
“But enough people will come, Edmund,” his wife assured him. “And I shall put off my mourning for the occasion, shall I? Does it matter that not quite a year has passed, do you think?”
“I am longing to see you in colors again,” he said, kissing her.
“Perhaps the ball can serve another function too,” she said, looking at him a little warily. “Perhaps we can get Madeline and James together at last. May I invite him?”
“Of course,” he said. “But you must also tell Madeline, love. She has been quite adamant about not receiving him.”
“Yes, I will,” she said, and sighed. “Is she not foolish, Edmund? It is perfectly obvious that nothing can be settled between them unless they talk. And it is equally obvious that she is as miserable as he is.”
“It is their marriage,” he said. “They must work out their problems as best they can. Are you ready to take the children walking?”
“Yes, I am,” she said.
MADELINE ARRIVED with her mother and Sir Cedric at the ball. She had seriously considered not going at all, but she could not absent herself from such a family celebration. Besides, she must come face-to-face with him eventually. For two weeks she had lived in terror that he would eventually stop calling at her mother’s house and sending up his card. Surely the day would come when he would decide that he had had enough.
And yet she could not send down the message that he might come up. For some reason she could not bring herself to do so. She did not want to see him. She did not want to be persuaded to go back home with him. She wanted to be left to herself so that she could begin a new life. And she longed for him and pined for him.
She was altogether bewildered by her conflicting feelings.
She handed her wrap to her brother’s footman and ascended the stairs at her mother’s side. She smiled at the people in her direct line of vision and dared not turn her head to either side. She drew confidence from the new gold ball gown she wore and her new coiffure—her hair had grown long enough that her maid had been able to pin it on top of her head, with a liberal shower of curls cascading down the back of her head and along her neck.
“Edmund,” she said, hugging him after he had released her mother. “There will be a veritable squeeze here this evening, believe me. Everyone I have spoken to in the past week is coming. Alexandra, what a lovely shade of blue. It seems strange to see you again without your blacks.”
“I am not at all sure it is the thing to be hostess of such a very tonnish function in my present, ah, shape, though,” Alexandra said, flushing.
“What nonsense!” Madeline said.
Alexandra smiled. “Edmund’s exact words,” she said.
Madeline turned her attention to Dominic and Ellen and Lord Harrowby, who had also arrived early. She had not told anyone of her own almost certain pregnancy. Five weeks late
now. And her feelings about it were as ambivalent as her feelings about seeing James. She did not want a child now. A child would complicate her plans to live apart from her husband and begin a new life. And yet beyond the realm of rational thought there was a warmth and a complaisance and a joy that she would not allow to bubble to the surface.
She was going to have a child. She was going to be a mother at last. And it was to be James’s child. She was carrying a part of him within her.
She had seen him once. For the first week after his arrival, she had been afraid to go out. She had received her friends at her mother’s house and made laughing excuses not to go riding with them or to the theater with them or anywhere else with them. But after that week she had resumed her normal way of life—or what had become normal since her arrival in town. She would not hide from him or anyone else. And she would not care what sort of gossip was going on about her living apart from her husband. She would not cower indoors for fear that he was waiting in ambush beyond the front doors, ready to bear her off back to Yorkshire.
She had been riding in Lord Carrondale’s phaeton when she saw him. He was on foot, walking along a busy thoroughfare. He had seen her too. But he had made no sign and kept on walking. And she had smiled and twirled her parasol and turned to say something to her companion. But every part of her insides had performed a somersault, and she had still felt weak at the knees and short of breath when Lord Carrondale had handed her down outside her mother’s door a full half hour later.
Madeline stood in the doorway of the ballroom, lifted her chin, and looked deliberately about her. But of course there was scarcely anyone there yet. And he was not among those few who had come very early.
And how foolish she was to take for granted that he would come. It was very possible that he would stay away. After all, she had been snubbing him for all of two weeks. And he was under no great obligation to come. Mama was not his mother. Perhaps she could after all relax and enjoy the evening.