Web of Love (19 page)

“Then you can't imagine,” he said. “I mean, she loves me, Mad. She is not just
in
love with me. Oh, I can't explain. You will understand one day.”

“I am very happy for you,” she said, lifting his hand and laying it against her cheek. “So both of us are going to be married soon, Dom.”

He looked his inquiry.

“I am going to marry Lieutenant Penworth,” she said.

“Penworth?” he said. “I thought he didn't want to live.”

“He doesn't,” she said. “But he will live, of course. And he has come to depend upon me. He needs me, Dom. I don't know how he would go on without me. I am going to look after him for the rest of our lives.”

“You love him?” he asked.

“Of course I love him,” she said. “He needs me, Dom. It is a wonderful feeling to be needed, you know. I am going to devote my life to him.”

“I don't think you love him,” he said flatly. “It would be a mistake to marry a man because you pity him, Mad. Don't do it. Break the engagement before it is too late.”

“There is no engagement,” she said. “Not yet.” She laughed softly. “He does not know yet. But he will marry me. I shall show him that he does not need to go through life alone and miserable. I shall be there for him. It will be a good thing for both of us, Dom. I will have something, someone, to live for.”

“It's the most cork-brained thing I have ever heard of,” he said. “It won't do, Mad.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Don't be horrid,” she said. “I have been glad for you. I have told you so. And all you can tell me is that I am being cork-brained.”

“Well, that is because you are,” he said. “Heavens, where is Mama? And Edmund? They won't allow it, you know.”

“I am five-and-twenty,” she said indignantly. “They have nothing to say to the matter. And they will not be so horrid. They will welcome the lieutenant into the family even if he is crippled and has had his face disfigured.”

“Lord!” he said. “Do you think I do not want the man as a brother-in-law just because he does not have the full quota of legs and eyes? I would welcome him with no legs and no eyes, Mad, if I thought you could not live without him.”

“You are horrid!” she said, rising to her feet and looking down at him with hostile eyes. “After all you have been through, Dom, I thought you would have some sympathy for a fellow sufferer. But it is all right for you. You still have all your good looks, and you will have back all your old strength and physique. Lieutenant Penworth will not. He needs me. And I don't care what you say. I am going to marry him. I don't need your approval, or even your love. Someone else will need me, and that will be enough.”

“Little goose!” he said fondly, reaching for her hand again. But she snatched it away. “If you are determined to have him, Mad, I will say no more. Only I want to see you happy, as I am going to be happy. I care about you, you know. Whoosh! Good God! Do be careful.”

This last was said as she almost threw herself on him and planted a kiss firmly on his cheek.

“I knew you would understand,” she said, “once you got used to the idea. I knew you would. I am going to be the happiest person in the world; you will see. And you are going to be happy too. I could hug the life out of you, but I am afraid that Mrs. Simpson will come in here brandishing some weapon if I make you yell out again. I am going to love her as a sister-in-law, Dom. I really am. And I won't say anything to her on the way out, since you have not asked her yet. I must go. He will be needing me.”

She kissed him again on the other cheek, smiled gaily down at him, and was gone.

Lord Eden clasped his hands behind his head again and smiled at the door. Should he get up and go and find Ellen? She was probably still hiding her embarrassment somewhere. It was just a very good thing that she had refused to join him beneath the covers. Both she and Mad would have had an apoplexy apiece. He grinned at the canopy above him.

He closed his eyes and felt his drowsiness return. Lieutenant Penworth indeed! Mad had scarce looked at the man twice when he had two legs and two eyes. What a disaster she was going to make of her life if he could not talk her out of marrying Penworth just because she pitied him. Silly goose! He yawned loudly. He should go and find Ellen. He could just open his mouth and yell for her, but he should exert himself and get out of the bed and go to find her. Another silly goose. He was going to enjoy kissing away her blushes and explaining that Madeline was just his twin. Nobody any more formidable than that.

But when he opened his eyes, it was to find that she was standing silently in the doorway looking at him, her face a pale and expressionless mask.

“Ellen!” he said, sitting up sharply and wincing. “You have not taken it so much to heart, have you?”

“What have we done?” Her voice was toneless.

“What…?” He frowned at her.

“We have been living here together for almost a week,” she said, “like a pair of carefree lovers. You are Charlie's closest friend. I am his wife. What have we done? He trusted us both. We have both cheated him.”

“No.” He stood up and reached out a hand to her, but she did not move from where she stood. “No, that is not true, Ellen. I never…Good God, I never thought of you in this way while you were married to Charlie. You never thought of me in this way.”

“I am an adulteress,” she said.

He passed a hand over his eyes and felt for the edge of the bed with the backs of his knees. “No,” he said. “Of course you are not. Calm down, Ellen. You were always a faithful wife. I always admired you for that. So did everyone who knew you.”

She laughed harshly. “A faithful wife indeed,” she said. “I have been lying with you in that bed each night, taking pleasure from you. As if pleasure were relevant to my life at present. In that bed. My husband's bed. Oh, my God!”

He sat down heavily. “Don't make it sordid, Ellen,” he said. “Please don't do that. It has not been a matter of simple pleasure. You know that. It has been love. I have loved you in the past five days. You have loved me.”

She laughed again. “Love!” she said. “I do not love you, my lord. You are a very attractive man. I have given in to the power of your attraction. And you do not love me. I am the woman who has nursed you during your recovery from injury. You have seen no other woman in three weeks, except for your sister. Did you not know that men always fall in love with the women who nurse them? This has not been love. This has been lust. And sordid. Oh, yes, very sordid.”

He was angry. He surged to his feet and grasped his side. The wind felt as if it had been knocked out of him for a moment. “So you would spoil it all,” he said, “because my own carelessness and the arrival of Madeline earlier embarrassed you. I am sorry about that, Ellen. But don't make something ugly about what has happened here. It is not ugly. We love each other.”

“I love Charlie!” she cried. “I love him. I worship him. He is twice the man you are. And now what have I done to him? What have I done?”

“You have done nothing,” he said. He took a few steps toward her. “Charlie is dead, Ellen.”

She stared back at him, her mouth open. The color that had returned to her face with her anger fled again.

“He is dead,” he said dully. “Charlie is dead, Ellen. He died on the battlefield south of Waterloo. I was with him.”

She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. But when he took another step toward her, she looked up and held a hand in front of her.

“Don't come near me,” she said. “Don't touch me.” She swallowed more than once and looked down at herself. “I am dressed in green. Green. The color he liked me to wear. Not in black. I have known for almost a month that he is dead, and I am not wearing black. And I have not gone out as other women have on the fruitless search for his body. I have allowed him to be buried in an anonymous grave. I have refused to open the doors of my mind to the truth. He is away with the army, I have persuaded myself. A month, and I am not in mourning.” She smiled.

“Ellen,” he said, “come and sit down.”

“You knew he was dead.” She looked up at him, the strange smile still on her face. “You knew he was dead, my lord. You were with him. You brought me the news. And yet this is what you have done to his memory?” She pointed to the bed behind him.

He shook his head slowly. “Don't,” he said. “It has been with me as with you, Ellen. He was my closest friend. I watched him die. I told you—I did, didn't I?—and then I let go of the knowledge.”

“So,” she said with a little laugh. “We are a pair of fools, my Lord Eden. And a pair of sinners.”

“No,” he said, “not that. We would not have done what we have done if Charlie were still alive. Both you and I are incapable of that. You know it. This has not been wrong, Ellen. Only very poorly timed. We should have waited—for a year, perhaps. But love will not always wait. And we have needed the comfort of each other.”

She held her hands palm-up before her and looked down at them. “Charlie is dead,” she said. “This time he is not coming back. I will never see him again. There will be no cottage in the country. No safe and secure times together. Only the past. Only memories. He's gone.”

“Come over here, Ellen,” he said softly, reaching out a hand to her again. “Let me comfort you. Let us comfort each other.”

Her eyes were brimming with unshed tears when she looked up. “You cannot comfort me,” she said. “He was my husband. My life. I loved him.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you did. And he was my friend, Ellen. You are my friend. Let me hold you.”

“You are not my friend,” she said. “Not any longer. Not ever again. You are my guilt. For all during these months in Brussels I have wanted you. I have looked at you and touched you and wanted you. Even though I had the best man in the world as a husband. Even though I loved him more than I love life.”

He put his head down and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “We each need some time alone,” he said. “The atmosphere is too charged at the moment for either of us to talk sense. Let us not say anything that we will forever regret, Ellen. Let's talk later.”

When he looked up, she was staring down at her hands again, her expression stony. One tear had escaped and was trickling unchecked down her cheek.

“There is nothing to say,” she said.

“Only perhaps that I love you.”

She shook her head. “Not even that,” she said. “You will see that it is not true when you have had time to think. There is nothing to say, my lord. Nothing at all.”

She turned without looking at him and left the room.

He was sitting on the bed, his head in his hands, when he heard the outer door of her rooms open and close and knew himself to be quite alone.

S
OMEWHAT LATER THE SAME EVENING Madeline was summoned downstairs in Colonel Potts's home. She closed the book she had been reading aloud from, smiled cheerfully at Lieutenant Penworth, who was lying staring at the canopy over his bed with his one good eye, and promised that she would return in time to make him comfortable for the night. She ran lightly down the stairs.

And positively hurtled down the last ten, shrieking in a manner quite unbecoming a house in which there was sickness. Her arms wound themselves around the Earl of Amberley's neck, and he lifted her from two stairs up and twirled her around twice before setting her on her feet.

“Edmund!” she cried. “I was never more happy to see you in my life. I thought you must have disappeared from the face of the earth. And Mama!” She shrieked again and threw herself into her mother's arms, laughing and crying all at once.

“My darling girl,” her mother said, hugging her very tightly. “Looking creased and uncombed and quite hagged. And behaving like a hoyden. And more dear than you have ever looked in your life.”

“Have you just arrived?” Madeline asked eagerly. “Why did you not let me know you were coming? Why have you not answered any of my letters? Oh, do come into the salon.”

“Your first letter reached us the day before we left,” the earl said, taking his mother's elbow and following his sister across the hallway to the salon, from which the wounded had long ago been moved. “We thought we could get here faster than the mail. Dominic?” His voice was tense.

“Oh!” Madeline said. “You have read only my first letter? How dreadful! Dom is well on the road to recovery, I do assure you, and has been for almost two weeks. He has totally defied the surgeon who was calling on him, and is eating like a horse and prowling around his room like a caged bear.”

The Earl of Amberley took his mother by the arm again. Her hands had gone up to cover her face. “Thank God!” he said, drawing her into his arms. His voice was shaking and his own eyes suspiciously bright. “Thank God.”

“What dreadful suspense you must have been living in!” Madeline said. “My first letter must have been dreadfully gloomy. And the second. He was gravely ill, you know. The surgeon told Mrs. Simpson that we must expect the worst.”

The dowager Lady Amberley pushed herself away from her son, searched in her reticule for a handkerchief, and blew her nose. “But Dominic would not give in,” she said. “He is positively the strongest and most stubborn boy I have known. I was not glad of it three years ago, but now I am. We were afraid to go to Mrs. Simpson's first, Madeline. We did not know what we might find.”

Madeline smiled brightly. “I was there this afternoon,” she said, “and was taken quite by surprise. I am not at all sure that the scene would have been good for you, Mama. Dominic and Mrs. Simpson have fallen in love with each other and are to be married. Except that Dom has not asked her yet. But she is sure to say yes, he says. And I have never seen him so glowingly happy.”

Her mother looked inquiringly at the earl, who was frowning. “This is rather sudden, is it not?” he said. “I have the greatest liking and respect for Mrs. Simpson, but she lost her husband just a month ago. Can she be thinking of remarrying already?”

“It is just like Dominic to be so impulsive,” his mother said. “Will she suit, Edmund?”

“Oh, assuredly,” he said. “She is not at all Dominic's usual type.”

“That sounds decidedly promising,” the dowager said with a smile.

“I shall fetch a shawl and bonnet,” Madeline said, “and walk there with you.”

Her brother held up a staying hand. “I think we must curb our impatience to see him,” he said, “especially since he is out of all danger. It is rather late in the day to be paying social calls. Besides, Mama and I have not even found a hotel yet. We shall take rooms at the Hôtel d'Angleterre if there are any available and pay our call at the Rue de la Montagne in the morning.”

“Yes, I think it would be best,” his mother agreed. “As it is, we have disturbed Lady Andrea's household.”

She kissed and hugged Madeline again, as did Lord Amberley, and they parted for the night. Madeline ran up the stairs again to share her good news with the lieutenant. She chattered brightly to him as she washed him with deft and gentle hands, straightened out his bedclothes, and turned and plumped his pillows.

She resisted the urge to kiss his forehead as she was leaving the room. She had not yet done so, and he might think it forward of her. He did not yet know that she was going to marry him and look after him for the rest of his life.

Neither did Mama and Edmund. She sobered somewhat as she reached her own room. It was going to be tricky. She hoped they would not voice some of the same silly notions that Dom had had. But she did not care anyway. She loved Lieutenant Penworth with a deep tenderness. And she would be able to pour out her love for him for the rest of their lives. He would always need her.

 

T
HE
E
ARL OF
A
MBERLEY
and his mother were surprised the following morning when they arrived at the Rue de la Montagne to find that Mrs. Simpson looked far from being a woman newly in love and planning a marriage. She was dressed in deepest mourning, her hair pulled severely back from her pale, drawn face. She looked as if she were close to collapse.

“Mrs. Simpson.” The earl held out both hands to her and took one of hers within their clasp.

“Good day, my lord,” she said. “You have come. Lord Eden will be glad.” Her voice was totally devoid of expression.

“My very deepest sympathies, ma'am,” he said. “Your husband was one of the kindest gentlemen of my acquaintance, and I know you were devoted to him.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

“May I present my mother, the dowager Countess of Amberley?” he said. “Mrs. Simpson, Mama.”

Ellen curtsied.

“You have been wonderfully kind to my boy,” Lady Amberley said, stretching out both hands to her new acquaintance. “And oh, my dear, how you have been suffering on your own account.” She gathered the other woman into her arms when Ellen's face crumpled. “Oh, my poor dear. My poor dear child.”

Lord Amberley walked quietly past them and on to the closed doors that must lead to the bedchambers. The second one he opened showed him his brother, standing at the window, his back to the room, looking somewhat thinner than he had looked five weeks before.

Lord Eden's shoulders tensed when the door opened, and he turned slowly. His brother looked at him in shock. He had expected to see him looking somewhat less than his usual fit, ebullient self. But he had not expected to see the pale, haggard face, the haunted eyes.

“Edmund,” Lord Eden said. “God, Edmund!”

He took two steps forward, but his brother was across the room before he could move any farther, and had him in a close embrace. Lord Amberley felt a nasty lurching of his stomach when his brother leaned his head on his shoulder and broke into racking sobs.

“Dominic!” he said, aghast. “My God, is this what war does to a man? Well, you are with me now, and I am going to take you home with me no matter what ideas anyone else may have. I have never interfered with what you want of life, and have no right to do so now. But I will use all my influence on you, and set Alex to using hers, to persuade you to sell out of this infernal life.”

Lord Eden straightened up. “I never thought to make such a prize idiot of myself,” he said. “If you only knew how I have longed and longed this morning to see just your very person. I am so helpless here on my own, Edmund. As weak as an infant. I doubt I could get down the stairs to the street without assistance.”

“You are on your feet and standing straight,” his brother said, “when two weeks ago, by all accounts, it was just as likely you would not even live. Don't rush things, Dominic. Let us be thankful for great mercies. Your strength and freedom of movement will return.”

“Take me away from here,” Lord Eden said. “Will you? Today?”

Lord Amberley frowned and looked closely at him. “You are that restless?” he asked.

“I am imposing on her,” his brother said. “I have no right here. She has her own life, her own grief. She will be wanting to return to England.”

“Mama is with her now,” the earl said quietly. “She is very broken up, Dominic. But it is hardly surprising. They were a devoted couple.” He watched his brother.

“Mama?” Lord Eden frowned. “Mama is here? And I suppose I have eyes as red as a petulant schoolboy's. I must get over to that washstand. Mama! Whatever possessed her to leave England?”

“Merely a son who was at death's door,” Lord Amberley said. “I want to see that wound, Dominic, and more to the point, I want a physician to see it. I hear that you sent the army surgeon packing.”

“So would you have,” Lord Eden said, gasping as he dashed a handful of cold water onto his face. “Having blood pumped from you daily and toast and weak tea pumped back in again is not conducive to good health, I would have you know. I would still be flat on my back. Or else six feet under.”

“I am sure we can manage better than that,” his brother said. “Do you think you can travel in a hired carriage? We have one outside. What about Mrs. Simpson, Dominic? Is she fit to be left alone? Will she need help in returning to England?”

“You can ask her,” Lord Eden said. “Will you, Edmund? I can't. I mean, I am in no shape to offer anyone help, am I?”

There were a dozen questions racing through the earl's mind. He asked none of them. He watched his brother sit heavily on the bed and stretch out on it, wincing slightly, and turned to leave.

His mother was sitting on a sofa next to Mrs. Simpson, holding both her hands and talking to her.

Ellen looked up. “You will want to see your son,” she said. “I am sorry. I have been keeping you from him.”

“You must not apologize,” the dowager said, squeezing tightly the hands that she held. “Gracious heavens. When I think of how much I am in your debt, my dear, dear child!”

She rose to her feet and hurried to the open doorway of Lord Eden's room.

Lord Amberley stood looking down at the fair head of Mrs. Simpson.

“I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for my brother,” he said. “I shall always consider myself in your debt.”

She looked up at him with reddened, miserable eyes. “You must not do so,” she said. “It is the role of army women to tend the wounded, my lord. There is nothing out of the ordinary in what I have done.”

“Ah, but to me there is,” he said. “For you have tended my only and very dear brother, ma'am. And at a time when the burden of your own grief has been very heavy on you. Is there anything I can do for you, my dear?”

“No,” she said. She rose to her feet. “I thank you, but no, there is nothing.”

“I shall be taking Dominic away with me,” he said, “as soon as I can return to the Hôtel d'Angleterre and bring back some clothes for him. Apparently you had to cut away his uniform? So one burden at least I can remove from you, ma'am. We have imposed upon your hospitality long enough.” He watched her closely.

“It has been no imposition,” she said. Her eyes were directed at his waistcoat.

“What will you do?” he asked. “Will you return to England?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have my stepdaughter to look after. And I promised my husband that I would go to his sister in London if anything happened to him.” Her voice wavered slightly.

“May I arrange for your passage?” he asked. “I wish I might offer you the protection of our company on the way home, but I believe it might be several weeks before my brother is fit enough to travel.”

“Thank you,” she said, “but I will be able to manage quite well on my own.”

“Yes, I am sure you will,” he said, wishing there were some way to discover her financial circumstances and to offer her money. “One thing you must allow me to do, though, if you please. I will hire a maid to accompany you. Please?” He added the final plea hastily, noting that she was about to open her mouth in protest.

She looked up into his eyes and nodded briefly. “If you wish,” she said. “Thank you.”

She stayed in the parlor, sitting quite still, when he left to fetch clothes for Lord Eden. And she stayed there when the dowager countess joined her as Lord Eden dressed with his brother's assistance. She got to her feet and moved to a shadowed alcove by the fireplace when the door opened again.

“Will you be able to descend the stairs, Dominic?” his mother asked anxiously.

“Quite easily,” he said, “with Edmund's help.”

His face was very white and set. Mother and elder son exchanged glances.

Lord Eden looked about him until he saw Ellen in the shadows. He crossed the room to stand in front of her. She was staring down at her clasped hands.