Free The Devil's Web by Mary Balogh

at all the gentlemen she will meet with an open mind.
    And I have vowed to myself that I will not make her a formal offer until I can be done with these infernal crutches.
    I will learn to walk again on two legs, even if one of them is not my own, or turn all over black and blue in the attempt.”
    â€œYou will do it too,” she said, smiling at him a little ruefully. “And to think that I once wanted to marry you because you would always be totally dependent upon my loving care. Oh, Allan, dear, I am happy for you. But where is she?”
    â€œJennifer?” he said, grinning. “Gone into the ballroom in high dudgeon to show me that she can enjoy herself quite well without me, thank you very much. I forbade her to sit with me all evening, you see. You would not wish to know some of the things she said in reply. They were quite unladylike.”
    Madeline laughed. “And talking about going back into the ballroom to enjoy oneself,” she said, “I must be doing the same, Allan, or Edmund will be thinking I am sick and summoning a physician. There is nothing so enjoyable as a ball, you know.”
    She smiled dazzlingly at him, and he lifted her hand to his lips.
    â€œYou will find him one day soon, I promise you,” he said quietly before releasing her.
    Madeline, on the brink of tears, smiled determinedly and joined a group in the ballroom only a few moments before she was aware of James Purnell doing the same thing. Oh, yes, she would find him soon, all right.
    She had been out of the room during the previous set, and had returned after most of the gentlemen had chosen their next partners. She became aware of the situation in some dismay only one moment before she found herself in the unspeakably embarrassing position of being almost alone with James at the edge of the dance floor while other couples were taking their places for the coming set. It was too late to make an inconspicuous exit.
    â€œLady Madeline?” he said, extending a hand to her.
    Lifting her eyes beyond his chin to meet his was the hardest thing she remembered doing in a long while. “Yes,” she said, placing her hand in his. “Thank you.”

    I T WAS A WALTZ. Of all the dances it might possibly have been, it was a waltz.
    Madeline rested a hand on James’s shoulder, set her other hand in his, and wondered if he was remembering quite as vividly as she the last time they had waltzed together. The music had been so faint that the rhythm had been felt rather than heard. The gravel of the formal gardens at Amberley had crunched underfoot. The water from the fountain had tinkled into the stone basin.
    He had been staying there with his family following the betrothal of Edmund and Alexandra. And she was there, as she always was during the summer. As they all were. Even Dominic in those days had chosen to spend most of his time at his childhood home rather than at his own estate in Wiltshire. It was before he had bought his commission and long before he had met Ellen.
    It had been at the annual summer ball at Amberley. She had been feeling restless, as she so often did even in those days. And for the same reason—she had been bewildered by her own powerful and conflicting feelings for Alexandra’s brother. Always James. Always the blight of her life. She had wandered out into the formal gardens, not knowing that he was there before her.
    He had held her correctly for a while and then drawn her against him. And after a while they had stopped moving. The music and the waltz had been forgotten. That was the time when during an embrace that had grown hotter and more intimate over the course of several minutes she had offered herself to him in all but words. The time when she had told him she loved him. And the time when he had told her that he felt nothing for her but lust. She had not believed him at the time, although she had left him there and although he had left Amberley that same night without