The moment of levity faded. Not for the first time, Ophelia had to resist making a derogatory remark about her father. And then she wondered why she bothered. It wasn’t as if her mother didn’t know how she felt about her father.
She gave into the urge and said, “You know, Mama, I wish you’d make a confession, that you’d had an affair before I was born, that Father isn’t really my father.”
Mary sighed. “Darling, sometimes I too wish I could make that confession, but only for your sake. I know you and he don’t get along well together, and that’s such a shame. But I do love him, you know. He’s a good man, he can just become so bloody single-minded at times,” Mary ended in exasperation.
“Where I’m concerned.”
“Yes. But don’t fret about it, dear. You’ll look back on this someday and smile. I’m sure of it.”
Highly doubtful, Ophelia thought, but didn’t say so. She moved over to her desk where yet another pile of invitations had been stacked, these all for tonight.
“You can throw these away, Mama. I still don’t feel like going out tonight. However, you can accept one for tomorrow night. You choose. I like surprises.”
Mary nodded, then paused on her way out of the room. “Will you at least come down to dinner tonight?”
“I’d rather not. But I promise I’ll stop frowning. Really, I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping well and am going to make up for it tonight.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
T HE DUKE’S HOUSEHOLD QUICKLY KNEW that Amanda and Raphael had arrived thanks to Amanda’s squealing and shouting her greetings, and hugging everyone who appeared. Even their grandmother was drawn out of her room by the noise and, from the top of the stairs, shouted down, “Is that you, Julie?”
“It’s me, Grandma. Mandy.”
“Come give us a hug, Julie.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and bounded up the stairs to greet Agatha Locke and help her back to her room. Agatha had been mistaking family members for several years now, and it did no good to correct her. She’d think you were just playing tricks on her and get annoyed. So if she thought you were someone else, it was better just to go along with it.
“Mama has been calling me by your name lately,” Preston Locke, the tenth Duke of Norford, said as he gave Raphael a bear hug, their typical greeting. “I’m hoping when she sees us together I can get back to being me.”
Raphael grinned. His father was a big man. They were the same height, even shared the same hair and eye color, though Preston was starting to get a few gray strands mixed in with his blond, barely noticeable yet, but he’d grouched about it the last time Raphael had visited. And Preston had widened a bit over the years as well. He was quite solid. He’d just gotten—bigger.
“That—er, isn’t why you sent for me, is it?” Raphael asked.
He wasn’t really serious. He knew his father better than that. And the duke snorted to confirm it.
“Come along,” Preston said, starting toward the parlor. But then he changed his direction. “Let’s go to my study instead where we won’t be interrupted.”
Raphael frowned as he followed his father down the hall. “Won’t be interrupted” didn’t bode well for him as he related the duke’s study to punishments. Old habit, since he and Amanda always knew that if they got summoned to the study, they were in trouble.
It was a huge room, nearly as big as the parlor, and the parlor was oversize. But it was an odd room by most standards. Raphael’s mother had redecorated most of the old mansion over the years, quite tastefully, but she wasn’t allowed to touch the study. The oddity of the room was its white walls. Every other room in the house was either paneled or wallpapered. Not this one. The white background made the paintings, and there were dozens of them, stand out more boldly. Raphael actually liked the brightness of the room—when he wasn’t being called on the carpet for some misdeed.
“I understand congratulations are in order,” Preston said as he sat down behind his desk.
His father’s tone, not quite scolding, raised Raphael’s defenses even higher. “They are? But you don’t sound too happy about it.”
“Because it would have been nice if I had been the first to know, instead of hearing about it secondhand. Sit down. You’re going to tell me all about it.”
“Certainly. It might help, though, if I knew what the congratulations were for.”
Preston raised a golden brow. “You’ve accomplished more’n one feat lately?”
Raphael was frowning now. “Actually, the only thing I’m rather proud of wouldn’t be common knowledge. So what exactly are we talking about?”
“Your engagement, of course.”
Raphael had only just started to sit down, but that shot him back to his feet. “I’m…not…engaged,” he said precisely.
“I think you better be, considering what’s making the rounds.”
Raphael closed his eyes. Good God, what had Ophelia done? Not for a moment did he think his father was talking about anyone else.
Preston continued, “My old friend John Forton couldn’t wait to slap me on the back with congratulations, rushed out here to do so, but of course he assumed as the father of the groom that I—”
“I am not a groom!”
“—was fully aware of that news.” Preston’s look said, Don’t interrupt again. “He didn’t know he was knocking me on my arse with surprise. However, John did assume that the rest that he had to tell me, and he made sure he had all the facts first and then some, would bowl me over. You can imagine my concern.”
“I suppose that would depend on which facts you were apprised of.”
“There’s more’n a few?”
“Probably. Ophelia Reid is quite a controversial female. We are talking about Ophelia, correct?” Preston’s lips merely tightened, so Raphael went on, “You either love her or hate her. Well, in all fairness, that’s how it used to be. Now, she’s quite different, or at least she was until a few nights ago when she received a shock that either devastated her or sent her on the warpath. I have no idea which.”
“Sit down, Rafe.”
He did, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know why I’m surprised at this turn of events. She was a rumormonger, after all. That would have been her first line of offense.”
Preston sighed in exasperation now. “Stop talking to yourself and talk to me. What I was told doesn’t sound as if it came from a female, unless she doesn’t mind running her own name through the mud.”
“Just what were you told?”
“You were spotted leaving Summers Glade with her. That was the start of it, and that neither of you were seen again for the next week. I don’t need to tell you what sort of speculation that produced. But during that week, her father let it be known that she’d been invited here. Seems he was quite busting-at-the-britches proud of that coup, but that’s understandable. We don’t usually invite strangers to Norford Hall.”
Raphael winced as he explained, “That was my fault. I told him that I was taking her under my wing and that she’d be visiting my family.”
“So you lied to him?”
“No, I just wasn’t specific about which family members we’d visit. Our family is spread out all over England, and in fact, we did visit your sister Esmeralda and took her with us to the Nest as a chaperone.”
Preston shot to his feet now. “You took a virginal debutante to Alder’s Nest? Good God, Rafe, what were you thinking?”
“Well, certainly that it wouldn’t be common knowledge and it’s not. Is it?”
“No, thank God,” Preston replied. “But the very fact that you took her to meet ‘the family’ as it were leads to only one conclusion.”
“The devil it does.”
“It does when you’re seen kissing her in her own house, with both parents under roof, on her very first day back in London.”
Raphael slumped down in his chair somewhat. “That wasn’t my fault, she did the kissing.”
“
Does it matter who kissed whom?”
Raphael sighed. “Anything else?”
“Claiming the first dance with her at the Wilcotts ball her second night back.”
“Bloody hell, was it the first dance?”
“Apparently.”
“Who keeps track of these things?”
“The old dames who’ve got nothing better to do. But that’s neither here nor there. The consensus is that you’re already engaged to her and just haven’t made the official announcement yet. Do you know how bloody hard it is to break a consensus once it’s been made?”
“Not in this case. I merely have to deny it.”
“You’d think it would be that easy, wouldn’t you?” Preston waxed philosophical. “Except for one little hitch in this case. Because you hied off with her in her own coach without a proper chaperone—”
“Her maid was with her—”
“Without a proper chaperone,” Preston repeated with slightly narrowed eyes. “And because you kissed her—no, don’t interrupt again. She might have started it, but you participated. Given just those two damning pieces of the rumor, you know bloody well the girl will be ruined if you aren’t engaged to her. So, I suppose my question now would be, are you engaged to her—yet?”
Raphael didn’t need to be hit over the head to figure out that his father had just ordered him to get married. He slumped even farther down in his chair.
“Did Forton happen to tell you anything about this girl you now want me to bring into the family?”
Preston shrugged. “You mean that she’s quite likely the most beautiful chit to ever show up in London?”
“Well, there is that.”
“And a bit haughty because of it.”
“She was.”
“And a bit of a shrew.”
“Not anymore.”
“Really? Well, damn, I’m feeling better about this unasked-for match already.”
“I wouldn’t be. She’s also probably going to be after my blood when she finds out that we have to marry, if she wasn’t already after it. Actually, she could refuse and be damned to the consequences.”
“Nonsense.”
“You just don’t know how destructive she can be when her temper shows up.”
“I didn’t raise fools, and you, my boy, are quite the charmer when you want to be. I have no doubt you’ll talk her around.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
R APHAEL SPENT AN EXTRA DAY VISITING with his family. Ophelia’s name didn’t come up again, but she was never far from his thoughts. She wasn’t mentioned again because he’d spent several more hours in his father’s study after their initial discussion, explaining practically everything that he’d done concerning her, and why. It didn’t alter Preston’s opinion that Raphael was going to have to wed her, but he was sure his father wouldn’t be too disappointed now if he could find a way out of it without any damaging repercussions.
The only thing he didn’t discuss, and hoped he’d never have to, was that he’d made love to her. His father was old school. That information would have Raphael leg-shackled to Ophelia so quickly, it would be done before he’d noticed. But from what his father had been told by his friend, it didn’t really sound as if Ophelia was behind any of the rumors that were circulating through the ton. In fact, if she was furious with him about the bet, and she’d given every indication that night at the ball that she was, these rumors would just amplify that.
He would have swallowed his medicine and offered her marriage if she had cried foul and insisted she was compromised. He didn’t make a habit of seducing earls’ virginal daughters after all, stayed well away from virgins as a matter of course, had kept his affairs to experienced women only—until now. But he had compromised this particular virgin. She’d done just the opposite, though, assuring him that she’d keep it to herself, that she didn’t want to marry him. She’d been adamant about not settling on a husband whose social position would delight her father.
And now? Was she still determined to spite her father by not marrying Raphael, or was she angry enough now to spite him instead by making sure they did marry? He had no way of knowing and wouldn’t, until he talked to her. If she’d talk to him. If she didn’t try to kill him first.
He was going back to London to make sure it didn’t happen, and yet he couldn’t get the notion out of his mind. Marriage to Ophelia. It just wouldn’t do, of course. He wasn’t nearly ready to settle down. He had yet to enjoy his bachelorhood to the fullest. But incredibly, the thought of being with other women now was the farthest thing from his mind.
Bloody hell. He knew it would be a mistake bedding her. She was the best, the most exquisite, the wittiest, the most beautiful, the most passionate woman he’d ever come across. Every other female would come up short now and be a disappointment. After all, what could you aspire to after having the best?
Marriage to Ophelia. It could be hell. It could be heaven.
“I’d be after your head m’self,” Amanda said as if she’d been reading his mind.
She was returning to London with him. They were a good hour into the journey and she hadn’t said two words to him. He’d almost forgotten she was in the coach, he’d been so deep in thought. Until now.
“Where, pray tell, did that thought come from?” he asked, raising a brow at her.
“The bet. Yes, I listened at the door to the study. Well, what did you expect when you refused to tell me what you were doing at the Nest with Ophelia? I was dying with curiosity to know.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Everything.” She grinned at him triumphantly. “I came right back downstairs after I took grandmother to her room. All I wanted to know was why you’d been summoned home. Didn’t expect to hear your secrets as well. You wouldn’t believe how many scolding looks I got from the servants who passed me in the hall. I was so enthralled I didn’t even try to pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
He scowled at her. “Not a word of that goes beyond here, Mandy.”
She gave him a hurt look. “Stop doubting my loyalty. It wasn’t necessary to say that.”
“Sorry.” He sighed. “I’m just rather undone at the moment.”
“I’m not surprised. Getting married when you weren’t planning on it is quite a milestone for you.”
“I’m not getting married.”
“But father said—”
“Pay attention, m’dear. One, Phelia probably won’t have me. Two, you were more’n likely correct in your first assumption. I have little doubt she’ll be after my head.”
“I’d rather not be right, you know.” Then she sighed as well. “But that doesn’t surprise me. How could you do that to her, try to change her life as a silly bet?”
“I thought you said you heard it all?”
“Well, grandmother did come back to the top of the stairs to find out what was keeping me. I’d told her I’d be right back. So I had to hide for a few minutes. You mean I missed something really important?”
“My bet with Duncan only set the whole thing in motion. It was a rather noble endeavor, if I do say so m’self, but there were many reasons to attempt what I did, including her own happiness. You know how she was before. And you’ve seen how she is now. Quite the difference, isn’t it?”
“Indeed. I’m just amazed that she agreed to accept your tutelage—actually, she didn’t, did she? You only told Father you had her parents’ permission. Oh my God, Rafe, you absconded with her, didn’t you?”
He tsked. “What an appalling word. But she only ranted and raved for a few days. She quickly realized that I was sincere in trying to help her. And she showed me a side of her that few people, if any, see. She can be witty and charming when she sets the bitterness aside. And obviously she wanted to change. She was cooperating fully before we returned to London.”
“She told you why she spread all those rumors?”
“We discussed everything, Mandy.”
“You got to know her pretty well, then???
? She gave him a thoughtful look. “Are you sure you don’t want to marry her?”
Bloody hell, no, he wasn’t sure at all.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“A RE YOU RUNNING OUT OF ball gowns?” Mary asked from the bottom of the stairs when Ophelia came down to join her in the entry hall.
“No, not quite, though I may need one or two more before the Season ends,” Ophelia answered. “Why?”
“You’re only wearing an evening gown,” Mary said, pointing out the obvious. “Quite lovely. That shade of blue definitely becomes you. But we’re going to a ball tonight. I don’t want you to feel out of place.”
Ophelia chuckled. “It wouldn’t be the first time I haven’t dressed for the occasion, or overdressed. But the ball is tomorrow night, Mama. Tonight is Lady Cade’s musical soiree and dinner.”
“Oh my, then I’m overdressed.” Mary shrugged out of her cloak to reveal the ball gown she was wearing. “I’m afraid we accepted too many invitations all at once. I’m going to have to make a list to keep track of them. Give me a few moments to change. Really, I won’t be long a’tall.”
Mary rushed upstairs. Ophelia smiled to herself. Her mother simply wasn’t used to leaving the house or accepting invitations during a Season. Her forte was sending out invitations!
Ophelia moved into the parlor to sit while she waited, but wished she hadn’t. Her father was there, reading a book. He glanced at her with something of a smirk.
“You wouldn’t have to wait if I were escorting you,” he said, apparently having heard Mary. “That was a ridiculous excuse you came up with anyway, to go with your mother instead of me.”
“It wasn’t anything of the sort. How do you expect me to concentrate on finding a husband if I’m so furious that I scare all the prospects away?”
He ground his teeth together, his smirk gone. “You and I don’t have to fight, you know.”
“You don’t have to control my life either, but when did that stop you from doing so?”
“Enough,” he grumbled. “We don’t need to get into this again. By the by, that color really does become you. You should wear it more often.”