The Devil's Web by Mary Balogh

committed to attending a ball at his sister’s house. The best thing he could do, perhaps, was something he had grown quite expert at doing. He must just block his mind until the evening came and he could not avoid the meeting. He would think of Duncan Cameron, whom he was about to take along to White’s Club, and imagine what his friend’s reaction would be to the news that he was about to be invited to a grand ball at the home of the Earl of Amberley.

    M ADELINE HAD MADE a decision. She was going to marry Jason Huxtable. It was true that he was an officer of the Guards and she had never felt particularly drawn to the
life of a soldier’s wife. A strange thought, perhaps, when she had almost eloped with a half-pay officer at the age of eighteen and had been actually betrothed to a lieutenant just the year before after the Battle of Waterloo. But there it was. Ideally, she would not choose to marry an officer.
    But it would be foolish to reject Jason’s suit just on that score. She could hardly do better. He was a kindly and a dependable man, and she was old enough to realize that those were important qualities in a husband. And she enjoyed his company. She found him attractive.
    More than anything, it was time she married. Very much past time, in fact. She should have married long ago, when she would have found it far easier to adapt to a husband’s ways. Now she would not find it easy to do so. But it must be done. The thought of living her life out as a spinster, forever dependent upon Edmund or Dominic, was rather frightening.
    She must marry. And soon. And if she must, then she could not do better than marry Jason. She was going to marry him. And moreover, she was going to accept him at Edmund’s ball. If he asked her, that was. But he had asked her once already that Season, and her woman’s intuition told her that he would ask again and soon.
    What more appropriate occasion than a ball given by her brother?
    She was going to accept him. Perhaps she would even have Edmund announce the betrothal before the evening was over.
    And so she dressed with care in a sea-green gown that she had been saving for a special occasion. And she sparkled with the knowledge that her future was about to be settled at long last. With Jason Huxtable, whom she
liked as well as she had ever liked any man, and far better than she had liked most.
    She was quite determined to enjoy the evening. And since she was seated at a part of the dinner table where she was surrounded by relatives and friends with whom she felt thoroughly comfortable, the evening started very well indeed. It helped that James Purnell and Miss Cameron were seated farther down the table on the same side as she with the result that she did not have to look at either of them, and did not have to listen to them either provided she kept talking herself.
    If the ball had been a play she was attending, she thought with some happiness as the evening progressed, then she might have written the script. For the colonel claimed her hand for the opening set and then wasted part of his half hour on the dance floor with her by maneuvering her to the door and into a small reception room next to the ballroom and empty at such an early hour.
    â€œI thought army officers were supposed to be the fittest of mortals,” she said gaily. “Are you footsore already, Jason? For shame!”
    â€œNot footsore,” he said. “Impatient. I know perfectly well that I should wait for a later and more romantic hour.
I know all about tactics in battle, it seems, but not about tactics in love. I want you to marry me, Madeline. Will you? You know that I adore you. And you did not answer me when I asked you last.”
    Madeline opened her fan and waved it slowly before her face. She could have written the script thus far. And she knew the ending of the play. But she had not written the middle of it, and did not know how it should proceed.
“Oh, dear,”