Free The Devil's Web by Mary Balogh Page B

dance?” she asked.
    He raised his eyebrows. “It seemed the civil thing to do,” he said. “This occasion is for dancing, is it not?”
    â€œWas it because Anna said no and I was the closest lady to you apart from her?” she asked.
    â€œYes, I suppose that is the reason,” he said. “Are you offended?”
    â€œNo,” she said. But she was offended. Or hurt, perhaps.
    Or outraged at honesty that did not try to mask itself in tact and good manners. “Why should I be offended?”
    There was nothing else to say. Madeline waited tensely for the music to end and guessed that her partner was no less eager to be rid of her. What neither of them had realized, she discovered with dismay when the music actually did draw to an end, was that it was the supper dance they had been engaged in. The members of the orchestra laid down their instruments.
    â€œThere is no need for you to lead me in to supper,” she said hastily.
    â€œBut there is every need,” he said. “Good manners dictate that I now offer you my arm and take you in. Do you think I have forgotten such niceties of polite behavior in the North American wilderness, Madeline?”This time it was her heart that somersaulted. And all at the sound of her given name on his lips without the formality of her title before it. Was she a green girl fresh from the schoolroom to be so affected by one word spoken by an attractive gentleman?
    She placed a hand on his arm without replying.

    T HE E ARL OF A MBERLEY seated his wife at a table in the supper room. “I don’t care if it is not quite the thing to lead my own countess in to supper,” he said. “I have been apart from you quite long enough for one evening, Alex.”
    â€œI am not arguing,” she said. “You do not need to defend yourself to me, Edmund. I was hoping that James would dance the supper dance with Miss Cameron. She truly is a delightful girl, is she not? And I do not care at all that some people might say that she is not quite
haut ton
. But I suppose it was unrealistic of me to expect some sort of announcement tonight.”
    â€œProbably,” he said, smiling at her with amused affection. “Here come Ellen and Dominic. They are together, you see. I feel reassured.”
    Lord Eden held a chair so that his wife could seat herself beside Alexandra. “We have been upstairs feeding the babies,” he said, “and giving them strict orders to sleep through until a decent hour of the morning. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say, I suppose, that Ellen has been feeding the babies. Have we missed anything startling? Madeline has not contracted or broken any engagements, has she?”
    â€œNot to my knowledge,” the earl said. “But North has a tendency to gaze on her like a lost puppy, poor devil.”
    â€œI do believe she is at last serious over Colonel Huxtable,” Alexandra said. “Indeed, when I saw him draw her aside during the very first set of the evening, I thought perhaps matters would come to their conclusion tonight. But no matter.”
    â€œHere she is with Mr. Purnell,” Ellen said, looking toward the doorway. “I cannot help thinking that they make a rather splendid couple. It is a pity you cannot persuade him to stay in England, Alexandra.”
    Her sister-in-law looked at the approaching couple, arrested. “James and Madeline,” she said. “Gracious, I had never thought of it before. How very splendid that would be. But of course there is no chance. He is to return to Canada before the summer is over, and Madeline has eyes for no one but the colonel these days. Oh, Ellen, do you think there is the faintest chance?”
    Lord Amberley pursed his lips and looked with marked amusement across the table at his younger brother. But Lord Eden, his face quite serious, was gazing across the room at his twin sister.
    Jennifer Simpson and Lord North, Duncan