The Gilded Web (45 page)

Unlovely? He looked down at her shining dark hair and the teasing curls at her neck, at the dark lashes fanning her cheeks, the heightened color in those cheeks. He looked down at the creamy smooth skin of her shoulders and at the generous swelling of her breasts beneath the delicate fabric of her gown. Alex unlovely? She must be the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

And cold? He thought of her fierce independence and of the passion she had shown in his arms on more than one occasion. He thought of the music he had heard her create. Alex was probably capable of more feeling and more passion than even he could imagine.

She looked up at him. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “You will marry? You will have children?”

“I have been looking around the room wondering to whom I could pay my addresses before the end of the ball,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, her eyes startled. “Oh, pray be serious.”

He smiled. “No,” he said. “I shall not marry, Alex. I don't think I could do so after knowing you.”

She stared at him for several moments, her dark eyes wide and unfathomable. Then she looked sharply away.

“Excuse me,” she said as soon as the music came to an end. “I must leave for a while.”

He released his hold on her hand and watched her go, his smile firmly in place.

L
ORD EDEN WAS STANDING WITH HIS BACK TO one of the French windows, enjoying the coolness of the night air on his back and wondering if he should ask his Aunt Viola to dance the set that was forming or if that evening breeze was going to prove too tempting. He wished there were someone he could wander outside with, but he had to remember that this was Amberley and not London. It was not so easy here to indulge in a casual flirtation. Besides, he was not in the mood.

Suddenly a little pink whirlwind that was looking back over its shoulder collided with his chest and stepped with a light slippered foot on his toe.

“Oh!” Susan looked up at him, all blushes and confusion. “Oh, my lord, I do beg your pardon. I was not looking where I was going. I was going to slip outside for some fresh air.”

“What?” he said, catching her by the arms to steady her. “Alone, Susan? You are not dancing?”

“I had promised to humor Colin and dance with him,” she said. “But I told him I must go outside. It is so hot.” Large hazel eyes gazed up into his.

Lord Eden felt every resolution slip from him. He could not let her go outside alone. True, this was the country and not town, but even so he had had painful proof within the past few weeks of what might happen to a young lady wandering alone outside a ballroom. Besides, she looked so deuced pretty.

“By strange coincidence I am partnerless for this set too,” he said. “Perhaps you will save me from being a wallflower, Susan, and walk with me?”

“Oh.” She giggled. “You a wallflower, my lord? How funny you are.”

He was relieved to find that they were not the only couple on the terrace. Even so, their footsteps somehow took them to the far end of it, where the lights from the chandeliers did not reach. There they stopped and gazed out into the darkness.

“I think I have offended you,” she said so quietly that he had to bend his head down to hear her.

“Offended me? You, Susan? Impossible,” he said.

“You have not danced with me,” she said. “I know I should not expect it because I am a mere nobody and you are Lord Eden. But I did think perhaps you would ask for one set.”

He was quiet for a while. “It is not that I did not want to, Susan,” he said. “Believe me, my dear, I have scarcely been aware of anyone all evening except you. I dared not dance with you or come near you, that is all.”

“I have done something to offend you, then,” she said, gazing up at him with troubled eyes.

“No.” He smiled at her and resisted the urge to cup her face in his hands. “You have offended me only by being so very pretty and so very sweet, Susan. But I respect you too deeply, I love you too dearly to try to take advantage of you. And I cannot offer you more than flirtation. Not now, anyway. Perhaps never.”

Even in the half-light he could see her eyes brighten with tears. “I have never expected anything from you,” she said. “I know I am unworthy.”

“Susan!” he said. “Oh, don't say that. You are so very dear to me. I must take you back inside. I cannot trust myself to be with you any longer.”

“I love you,” she said, clasping her hands to her bosom. “Is that so very wrong? I would not demand anything. Only the chance to love you. Oh…No, I must not say more.”

“I cannot offer you the life I would wish to offer you,” he said. “Not at present anyway. It would be cruel to draw you into the life I am about to lead, Susan. I must not, dear. Come back with me now to the ballroom, or I will lose my resolution and hate myself for the rest of my life.”

She put her hands to her mouth and looked at him with large tear-filled eyes.

Lord Eden raked one hand through his hair, leaving it looking considerably disheveled. “I am a monster,” he said. “A monster. I have never wanted to make you cry, Susan. You were not made for tears. I cannot marry you, dear, and I will not offer you anything less.”

One tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek. Suddenly Susan brushed past him and hurried in the direction of the ballroom.

Lord Eden did not turn to watch her go. He stood with teeth and fists clenched and eyes gazing fixedly up at the dark sky. Temptation had almost got the better of him. If she had stayed one second longer, he would have had her in his arms and then there would have been no letting her go until he had begged her to marry him.

The thought had been the first to leap to his mind when Miss Purnell had refused him earlier. He was free, he had thought, free to marry Susan. But of course he was no more free than he had been before. He could never ask Susan to be an officer's wife, not during a time of war, anyway. She was so sweet and timid and fragile. It would be cruel to ask her to face the life of constant anxiety that must be the lot of every soldier's wife. And it would be self-indulgent in the extreme to ask her to wait for him, to wait until the war was over. It would be no less cruel to ask her to wait on the chance that he would still be alive and whole at the end of it all.

No, he had decided, he must leave her free to marry a man who could look after her and offer her the security she deserved. And she would have many an offer. Susan was not highly born, but she had the manners of a lady and the looks and character of an angel.

But the pain was somewhat hard to bear at the moment. He had found himself a few minutes before making the painful choice between Susan and the army. And he had chosen the army. He must live now by that decision. He must live with his misery and hope that the new life he faced would soon drown out all else but the adventure and excitement of military action.

If only he could have saved Susan from misery! If only he could convince himself that he had done nothing to encourage her. But he had flirted with her from the start and unconsciously done what he had always determined never to do. He had raised hopes where he could not fulfill them.

Lord Eden rested his arms on the stone balustrade that bordered the terrace and stared out into the night.

A
LEXANDRA HAD BEEN IN
the chapel for half an hour. She had taken a single candle with her and set it on the altar. And she had knelt at the back, looking up to the darkened windows, beyond which were the hills, as she had seen on two previous visits.

A God of love, he had said. Not a God of vengeance and restrictive commands, but a God of love. It had sounded wonderful. After a life in which she had been taught that she had to live up to the high expectations of a vengeful God, it had been a sweet, seductive idea that perhaps God was simply love.

But love is not a powerful enough force, she had discovered, to be God. Love is not enough. She loved the Earl of Amberley. Yes, she really did. She could not think of one way in which she did not love him. And she had reason to believe that perhaps he returned that love. And yet they had just publicly ended their betrothal. Tomorrow or the day after at the latest, she would be going away from him and would probably never see him again.

Love was not enough. Why not? she wondered. If God was love and God was everything, why was not love enough?

She had discovered that her self-respect was more important to her, her need to assert herself as a person. Lord Amberley was the kindest, most considerate man she could ever hope to find. He would be most women's dream of a husband, someone who would care for a wife and protect her for as long as they both lived.

But she had found his protectiveness suffocating. She would have had no sense of her own worth, of her own personhood, if she had allowed their marriage plans to proceed. She had to assert herself. She had to know that she could, if she must, exist without a man to dictate her every action or protect her from pain.

And so she had been forced to give up the one man who could have filled her life with joy and companionship. She had been forced to give up love in order that she might know herself as a person.

And now that it was done, did she feel more of a person? She had grown up for twenty-one years as the obedient daughter of a man who had given her not one moment of freedom, not one opportunity to think or do for herself. And she had been passed on to a man who would have protected her with his life for the rest of her days. In a strange way, opposites as they seemed to be, Papa and Lord Amberley were two sides of the same coin.

Yes, she felt more of a person now. She was in control of her own life. She was not happier. She was not at all happy, in fact. But then, she had not expected to be. Happiness was not the point at all. The point was that she was now a person as well as a woman. It was not a great victory. She could not now go out to conquer the world. She was, when all was said and done, still a woman living in a man's world. But she did not have to be a puppet, a simple possession.

Yes, she was unhappy. She could be with Edmund now, in the final hours of the ball, enjoying herself, looking at his handsome figure and knowing that he was hers, furthering her acquaintance with his relatives and friends. She could be looking forward to marriage with him, to a lifetime spent at Amberley. She could have been happy. She could have chosen love.

But she had not. And what about Edmund? Could she really accuse him of being similar to Papa in any way at all? When he had finally known what he was doing to her, he had not tried to justify his actions. He had understood and sympathized. He had made it easy for her to be free. He had even been prepared to take upon himself all the blame for the breakup of their engagement. He had not tried to hold her against her will. He had let her go.

Edmund lived by love. What greater sign of his love could he have given than his willingness to set her free? It sounded like a paradox. But Edmund had shown the ultimate unselfishness. He had ignored his own feelings entirely in a concern for her. He had even been willing to face about the worst scandal a gentleman could face. He was doing, in fact, what he had always done, according to his family: he was living for someone else.

He had never lived for himself, if other people were to be believed, and if the evidence of her own experience was typical. Always for others. One almost forgot that he too had needs. That he was a person. He had been left with the responsibility of being head of his family at the age of nineteen, and it seemed that he had taken that responsibility very seriously ever since.

How much freedom had Edmund ever known? In his own way, he had been as bound as she had ever been. Bound by his own concern for others and his desire to make life easier for them. He had added her to his list of responsibilities when his brother had spoiled her life. And he had protected his brother at the same time.

And what had been his reward? What had ever been his reward? Lord Eden was off to the wars to fulfill a life's dream. And she was on her way out of his life in search of a future of her own making. And Lord Amberley was left with his home and his estates and his dependents, his mother, his sister. His loneliness.

He
was
a lonely man. She had not realized it before. So many people depended upon him, and even loved him, that one tended to miss the obvious fact that he was lonely. He had no particularly close friend, no confidant, no lover.

She might have been all three.

And so which of them was in the more enviable situation now? He for whom love was all? Or she for whom self-respect was more important?

Who was the more selfish?

And therefore ultimately the more unhappy?

Alexandra, her elbows on the pew in front of her, her forehead resting on her clasped hands, could not answer her own questions. Or would not. She rose after a while and left the chapel, taking her candle with her. She must go back to the ballroom, she decided. She must see this night, at least, through to the end.

“Alex!” She turned as she passed through the great hall, having deposited her candle on a table. Her brother was hurrying down the stairs, no longer in his ball dress. He was wearing riding clothes.

“James?” she said.

He caught her by the hand and hurried her through the front doors, which stood open, and down the marble steps.