The Devil's Web Read Free Page A

sleep again. “Anyone special?” he asked.
    Madeline’s eyes sparkled back into his. “Well, of course there is someone special,” she said. “Isn’t there always? Actually, Dom, he is no one new. Jason Huxtable is in town and I am quite in love with him.”
    â€œ
Colonel
Huxtable?” he said, eyebrows raised. “Your old beau from Brussels? I thought you had rejected him.”
    â€œWell, I have changed my mind,” she said. “He is quite the most handsome man in London. He has made me an offer already.”
    â€œHas he indeed?” he said. “And?”
    She laughed softly. “And nothing,” she said. “I turned the question. I am not at all ready to give my answer yet. Though I think I might accept him before the Season ends, Dom. The single state sometimes becomes tedious.
Geoffrey is being a little troublesome, too.”
    â€œNorth?” he said. “He is smitten with your charms, too?”
    â€œSilly, is it not?” she said. “We have been friends forever and now suddenly he has begun to see roses in my cheeks and stars in my eyes and other nonsense like that. Poor Geoffrey. I really do not know how to cope with a friend turned lover.”
    â€œMadeline,” Ellen, Lady Eden, called from across the room, “are you tired of holding Olivia? You must not feel obliged, you know. Shall I take her?”
    â€œOh, please let me have her for a little longer,” Madeline said.
    But her attention had been effectively diverted. Her other brother, with his daughter on his lap busily trying to undo the buttons on his waistcoat, was laughing at his wife.
    â€œDo you realize how often you have asked that question during the past year, Alex?” he said fondly. “How am I to know beyond the shadow of a doubt if James will come or not? I can only say, as I always do, that he wrote to say he was coming and that there is no reason to suppose he will not.”
    â€œBut it was last autumn when we heard from him,” the Countess of Amberley said with a sigh. “So long ago. Anything could have happened since then. But your letter also said that he was coming, Mama?” She turned to her mother, who was seated beside her.
    â€œIt is too bad of him to be coming here as a common tradesman,” Lady Beckworth said fretfully. “He could have come home as a decent gentleman instead of shaming us all this way.”
    â€œOh, Mama,” Alexandra said, laying a hand over her mother’s, “let us be thankful that he is coming at all.
If
he comes. Four years seems to have been an interminable time, and for a while it seemed that he might never come home again. Will he have changed, I wonder?”
    â€œI will not set my hopes on it,” Lord Beckworth said. “It is doubtful, Alexandra, that James will have changed at his age. The manner in which he is returning—as a tradesman, to break his mother’s heart—proves my point.”
    The countess glanced unhappily at her husband, who smiled back at her with his eyes. “I am longing to see him,” she said. “Oh, Edmund, do you think he will come? And don’t smile at me in that odious way. Caroline, sweetheart, don’t put Papa’s buttons in your mouth. I am afraid you will swallow one of them.”
    â€œSo am I,” the earl said, laughing and disengaging his button from his daughter’s mouth. “They are made of silver.”
    â€œI am looking forward to meeting your brother, too, Alexandra,” Ellen said. “You have told me so much about him. And I am sure he will come if he told you he would. He would have written otherwise, would he not?” She stooped to examine the toy brought for her inspection by Christopher, Lord Cleeves, the earl’s son.
    Lord Eden, smoothing a hand over the soft down on his child’s head, was examining his twin closely. “Well, Mad,” he said, “and what are