The Gilded Web (2 page)

D
OMINIC
R
AINE
, L
ORD
E
DEN,
blew out his breath through puffed cheeks when he returned to the ballroom from the garden and saw Madeline, his twin sister, quite close by, flanked by her bosom friends Miss Wickhill and Lady Pamela Paisley, the three of them laughing at something Lord Crane had just finished saying.

What a relief to see her there. He had made enough of a cake of himself as it was in the past hour. He had been justly served for jumping so hastily to conclusions. But it could have been worse—a lot worse. He would never have lived the matter down if his plan for Faber and Jones to bundle Madeline off to Edmund's house had been carried out. Her wrath would have been dreadful to behold. Not to mention Edmund's.

But all was well. Provided that couple of loose screws didn't still try to abduct her from the middle of the ballroom, of course. He would not put it past those two. The more difficult the scheme, the more likely they were to take the risk. And he was no better, he had to admit. He would not be able to resist the challenge if he were in their place. He must find them. Tell them the whole thing was off.

First, though, perhaps he had better warn Madeline. Tell her the whole story in such a way that she would think it all a great joke. He fingered his neckcloth to check that it was straight and sauntered over to the group of which his sister was a part. She flashed him a smile and finished the story she was telling to an attentive group. A burst of laughter greeted her final words.

She turned to her brother with a grin, her green eyes dancing up into his. “I thought you must have gone to the card room, Dom,” she said. “I was prepared to call a physician for you tomorrow. It is unlike you to miss a single dance.”

Lord Eden bowed to the group at large. “I have been taking a breath of air,” he said. “It is like December out there. Will you waltz, Mad?”

He noticed that Miss Wickhill chortled as she always did when he forgot himself and called his sister by the old pet name, something he did more often than not.

“I don't believe it,” Madeline said, linking her arm through his. “Am I finally to dance with the handsomest gentleman in town? You are usually too busy leading out all the beauties.”

“Of whom you are surely one, my dear,” he said with a grin, drawing her away from the group. “Have I told you how I like your hair like that? I must confess I was horrified when Mama told me you had had it all shorn off, but it suits you, Mad. The short curls emphasize your large eyes and high cheekbones.”

“I could wish it were darker or blonder or redder or some more definite color,” Madeline said with a shrug, placing her hand on her twin's shoulder and waiting for the music to begin. “But to what do I owe the honor, Dom? You look rather as if you had seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost exactly,” he said, looking at her rather sheepishly. “Just Sir Hedley Fairhaven.”

She looked back at him expectantly. “Yes?” she said.

“At the bottom of the garden,” he said. “Standing outside a traveling chaise.”

Madeline frowned and fit her step to her brother's as the orchestra began to play a waltz. “Is this a riddle?” she asked. “I am supposed to guess what it is all about, yes? It was a new traveling chaise? It was missing one wheel? It was pulled by four grays you would cheerfully kill for? They had pink ribbons threaded through their manes? Sir Hedley had a ring in his nose?”

“He was waiting for a lady to elope with,” Lord Eden said, twirling her as they reached a corner of the ballroom.

“Really?” Madeline's eyes sparkled up at him. “Are you sure, Dom? How deliciously scandalous! Who? Do tell me. You did not challenge him to a duel in order to protect the lady's honor, did you? She wasn't one of your flirts, was she?”

She did not hear his mumbled reply.

“What?” she said, leaning toward him.

“I thought she was you,” he said.

“What?” Madeline stopped in the middle of a spin. “You thought I was going to elope with Sir Hedley Fairhaven? Have your wits gone totally begging? If we were not exactly where we are at this moment, Dominic Raine, I would take you on for this. And black both your eyes too.”

“Hush, Mad!” he said, flushing and glancing uneasily about him. “People will be looking. It was half your fault that I made such an embarrassing mistake, you know. You have been hanging around with Fairhaven all over London for the past month, and you distinctly told me just last week that you would marry him too if you chose to do so, and I was to keep my nose out of your affairs, thank you very much.”

“And you know me so little,” she said, dancing valiantly on, an empty smile on her face as she waltzed past friends and acquaintances, “that you think I would do anything so very tasteless and so very…stupid? How could you, Dom! To marry Sir Hedley, of all people. And to elope with him!”

“You must admit that you tried it once before, Mad,” Lord Eden said. “How was I to know that you would not do it again?”

“Oh! I was eighteen,” she said indignantly, “and fell in love with a uniform. And it is horrid of you to remind me of that youthful indiscretion, Dom. As if I have learned no wisdom and acquired no maturity in four years. Why did you think I was going to elope with Sir Hedley tonight, anyway?”

“I overheard him,” he said. “I was sitting in one of the alcoves with Miss Pope and he was sitting just the other side of the curtain. I suppose he didn't know there was anyone there, because we…well, we weren't talking, anyway.”

“I cannot imagine what you were doing with Miss Pope if you were not talking with her,” Madeline said caustically. “But whom was he talking to and what did he say?”

“I don't know who the other man was,” Lord Eden said. “But Fairhaven was planning to leave with some lady at midnight, and he was giving directions to the other about what to do tomorrow when the cat was out of the bag.”

“And you assumed I was the one running away with him,” Madeline said.

“I'm afraid so,” he admitted, giving her a disarming smile.

“Why have you told me this, Dom?” she asked suspiciously. “It was surely not in order that I might have a good laugh at your stupidity.”

“No.” He grinned apologetically down at her. “It's just that at the time I wanted to be able to concentrate my attention and my fists on Fairhaven. I set Faber and Jones to spiriting you off to Edmund's so that I would know you were safe. I couldn't find them in the garden after my talk with Fairhaven. They doubtless took themselves off when they did not find you there. But I thought I had better warn you anyway.”

“You set those two to…to kidnap me!” Madeline's voice had risen almost to a squeak. “I suppose they were to bind me hand and foot and gag and blindfold me?”

Her twin looked uncomfortable. “I don't think all that would have been necessary,” he said. “But you know yourself that you would not have gone willingly, Mad. Especially if you had had your heart set on an elopement. I had to arrange it all hastily in the past hour. I did tell them to, ah, insist that you go with them.”

“Oh, Dom,” Madeline said, smiling dazzlingly at one of her favorite admirers, who was standing close by, watching her, “you have had a narrow escape, brother mine. I would have had your head on a platter for breakfast if your friends had laid one fingernail on my person. And I would wager that Edmund would have done the ax work for me.”

“Yes, well,” he said, “I thought I should warn you, Mad, to have an eye open for those two. I needn't have said anything to you, you know. I could have taken the chance of keeping quiet. This is all pretty embarrassing, as you might imagine.”

“Pamela thought you were coming to ask her to waltz,” she said. “I know she did, Dom. She blushed in that way she has whenever she sees you coming. And she always thinks that you are going to notice her. She really does have a painful
tendre
for you. You will dance the next set with her?”

“This is my punishment?” he asked, grinning ruefully down at her.

“Pamela is my friend,” she said. “I do not consider it punishment for a gentleman to dance with her, Dom. She dotes on you, you know. And you really are very handsome. I see the way all the girls look at you. And so many of them this year are years younger than you and I.”

“We will have to dust off a spinster cap for you soon,” he said. “You are getting very close to your dotage, Mad. No, don't look at me like that. The next set it is for Lady Pamela. You see how contrite I am?”

Lord Eden duly danced with his sister's friend and unconsciously enslaved her even further with his charm and his sunny smile. There was nothing to keep him at the ball once the set was over. Miss Pope had proved a disappointment, perhaps because his attention had been taken by Fairhaven when he was kissing her. And Miss Carstairs had not appeared at all that evening, having contracted a cold in the head at Vauxhall Gardens a few evenings before. And since he was currently in love with Miss Carstairs, her absence made even the most glittering of social occasions dreary.

Besides, he was still feeling decidedly foolish over the Fairhaven affair. He had gone out to that carriage all fire and brimstone and brotherly outrage, ready to challenge the man to meet him at dawn on a foggy heath with pistols and seconds. He was fortunate to have got away without being challenged himself, but Fairhaven had appeared to have other matters on his mind, most notably, the little female who was lurking in the shadows obviously waiting for her lover's visitor to take himself off.

Lord Eden sallied forth from the ball to one of his clubs in the hope of finding some diversion to take his mind off the night's
faux pas
. If he were fortunate, too, perhaps he would run into Faber and Jones and persuade them that it would be as well to keep their mouths shut about the night's dealings or lack thereof.

He did not believe Miss Pope would start any awkward gossip. Even if she had heard, Madeline's name had not been mentioned. But it was doubtful that she had been aware of the scandalous conversation going on behind the curtain in the alcove anyway. He had kissed her with sufficient ardor to distract her as he had listened with all his attention. And she had looked suitably witless when he had finally lifted his mouth from hers. Perhaps that was why he had found her disappointing. It was far more intriguing to kiss a female whose manner left one in some doubt over whether one's hand would be welcomed or slapped if it chose to wander somewhere where it had no business to be.

It really was not all his fault that he had jumped to such a conclusion about Madeline and Fairhaven. Madeline really had tried to run off with a half-pay officer less than a week after her eighteenth birthday. Was he to blame if he had assumed that Fairhaven's traveling companion to Gretna was to be Madeline? She had said less than a week before that she would marry him if she chose. And it was just the sort of thing she would do, too, just to spite him. She never had got over the humiliation of being a full half-hour younger than he. Though to do her justice, she had never shown any indignation over the fact that she had been born female and had not therefore inherited one of their father's junior titles as he had.

What a very narrow and fortunate escape he had had that night! Lord Eden handed his hat and cane to the doorman at Boodle's and prepared to enjoy what remained of the night.

J
AMES
P
URNELL WAS WATCHING
the dancers. He had come from the card room just a few minutes before, where he had watched rather than participated. He had danced earlier, with his cousin Caroline and with two other young girls who had been smiling brightly as if they did not mind at all having no partner for the sets that had already begun.

He felt restless—as usual. He had been glad to leave the country, where he could never feel at home ever again, where his strained relations with his father were more in evidence than they were here, and where he was allowed no hand in the running of the estate. And yet he was not glad to be in London, where the endless social round seemed pointless and silly. It fell upon him to escort his mother and sister to almost all the events of the
ton
. A quiet soiree or a musical evening might coax his father abroad, but balls and routs and the theater were fitting only for females intent on making a showing with the people who mattered. Lord Beckworth stayed at home with his books and sermons.

Purnell watched broodingly the tall, slender young dancer in blue. She was somewhat older than most of the other unmarried girls, but she had all the freshness and glow of youth. He tended to notice her almost wherever he went, though he had never been presented to her or asked to be. Lady Madeline Raine. She was no prettier than a score of other girls in the ballroom. There was nothing particularly unusual about her short dark blond curls or her eyes, which might be blue or green—he had never been close enough to know which. Her figure was good but by no means unusually so.