Free The Devil's Web by Mary Balogh Page A

another word to her or any message left for her.
    She glanced up, hoping that he would be looking about him at the other dancers, hoping that he would be smiling sociably. Hoping that he would not be the old James, whom she had disliked and feared. And loved. She met dark, unfathomable eyes. That lock of hair had fallen across his forehead again. Sometimes things were so frighteningly the same that she wondered if she had imagined the four intervening years.
    She licked her lips nervously and watched his eyes follow the movement of her tongue.
    â€œIt is a pleasant evening, is it not?” she said, smiling. “I am glad. Edmund and Alexandra do not like to entertain, you know—or to be entertained, for that matter. They are never happier than when they are at home alone with the children. But the evening is turning out well. I think everyone who was invited must have come.”
    â€œIt would seem so,” he said. He did not return her smile. “The room is quite crowded.”
    â€œOf course,” she said, “it is all in your honor. Alexandra has been very excited since your letter came last summer to say you were coming home. I don’t think they would have left Amberley for any other reason even if it is the Season. They like the greater freedom of the country for the children’s sake.”
    â€œI have expressed my gratitude to Alex,” he said.
    â€œHave you met Ellen?” she asked. “She is so lovely tonight dressed in blue.”
    â€œAlex took me to call on them,” he said. “Lady Eden is quite charming.”
    Madeline listened to herself in some dismay. And she felt the bright social smile frozen to her face. She always knew she was going to behave just so with him, yet she seemed quite powerless to stop herself. Because he was so silent and because he looked at her always with those unsmiling eyes, she was always totally unnerved. She felt like a butterfly caught and spread by pins for his inspection.
    She deliberately relaxed the muscles of her face and shifted her gaze to the hand that rested on his shoulder. They danced in silence for a while. And would dance in silence forever and a day before she would break it.
    â€œYou have not changed,” he said at last.
    She looked back up into his eyes. “Is that meant to be a compliment?” she asked.
    â€œMost women, I suppose, would be glad to be told that they had not changed in four years,” he said.
    â€œBut you did not approve of me four years ago,” she said, and flushed. “You did not like me.”
    â€œBut I never disputed the fact that you are beautiful,” he said.
    Madeline’s stomach felt as if it had turned a complete somersault inside her. “It was my character of which you disapproved, then?” she said.
    â€œThat was a long time ago,” he said.
    It seemed he had nothing left to say. And she had done with nervous prattling. Or with any honest effort to initiate a conversation to which she could expect only monosyllables in reply. She tried to concentrate on the music and the couples dancing around them.
    But he was so very unmistakably James. He was leaner, stronger. But James, nevertheless. She would have known him at a touch, blindfolded. Her heartbeat would have known it and the muscles of her legs and the blood beating through her temples.
    She was touching him again, one hand on his shoulder, the other resting in his. And she could feel his other hand warm at her waist. She had spent so many weeks, even months, reliving his touch, at first with a desperate misery, and later with a dull unwillingness. So long. And now she was touching him again. And he was a stranger again. Yet so familiar that her throat ached with the tears she must withhold.
    He still disliked her. He still despised her and withheld from her even the common courtesies he would accord any other woman. She wondered why he had asked her to dance.
    â€œWhy did you ask me to