Duncan had been willing to marry her to prevent Ophelia from being ruined if Mavis spread the rumor of what she’d seen when she walked in on them in Ophelia’s bedroom. It was quite innocent, but who would believe that once the rumor got started? Raphael doubted he would have been so noble, at least not for her.
“You really didn’t contrive that compromising situation that Mavis walked in on, did you?” he said.
“No, but don’t get the wrong impression. At that point I was willing to marry Duncan just to get it over with. I’d decided he would do well enough—at least for my father. And I thought, erroneously as it turned out, that Duncan would be willing as well, once he recovered from my calling him a barbarian. If I had known at the time that he was reluctant to marry me, I probably would have arranged a compromising situation like that.”
He was bemused now. Why the deuce did she own up to that? He’d actually thought she’d been innocent in that situation.
“And you don’t see anything wrong with that?” he asked curtly.
“When I thought he’d be pleased enough with the match in the end? No, I don’t.”
He shook his head, but allowed, “I suppose you can’t be blamed for that reasoning, when women have been trapping men into marriage since the dawn of history. I personally see it as the worst sort of machinations, but then that’s from a man’s point of view, you understand.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to feel any other way. But as long as we’re on the subject, you might as well know, also, that I wouldn’t have done any such thing if I had known that there was no chance of Duncan ever being happy with me.”
Could he believe her? He supposed he could, after what she’d already admitted.
“Now let me ask you something,” she continued, giving him a pointed look. “If I had contrived those machinations of the worst sort, as you called them, how is that different from what you’re doing here, keeping me prisoner until my behavior changes—to your satisfaction? You’ve taken matters into your own hands, quite high-handedly, without asking if I wanted your help, which I didn’t. So answer me that, Rafe, if you can. What is the difference?”
She was looking rather smug, probably thinking she’d just cornered him into a spot he couldn’t get out of. “I see the similarity, but you’re overlooking the broader picture. Trapping a man into a marriage he doesn’t want would make you both miserable for the rest of your lives. There’s no escape from that without a serious scandal. Do you really want to compare that to a few brief weeks where no one gets hurt, no one ends up miserable, and you go about your merry way a much better person when we’re done here?”
“Go to hell!”
He managed not to grin. “You can keep trying to send me there, m’dear, but this halo is rather firmly attached to my head. And don’t be a poor loser.”
“Why not?” she shot back furiously. “What’s one more thing to add to your bloody long list of my despicable behaviors? And you are not an angel! You are the veriest devil and you know it!”
He tsked at her. “Your temper is showing, Phelia. This would be an excellent time to work on controlling it, don’t you think?”
She gave him a tight little smile. He had no idea how she managed that when her eyes were staring daggers at him.
But her tone was dripping sarcasm when she replied, “How’s this? And what were we discussing? Ah, yes, how many lives I’ve ruined. Let’s do get back to that.”
She shot off the couch and began pacing, which completely distracted him from their conversation. Watching the swish of her skirt and how it moved over her backside…
“Who is that?” she asked, stopping to stare at the portrait above the mantel.
He reluctantly drew his eyes off her derriere to follow her gaze. “My grandmother Agatha.”
She glanced back at him with a raised brow and a smirk in her tone as she asked, “The woman your grandfather came here to get away from?”
“No, the one he always rushed home to. In fact, when their children were grown, he often brought her here with him, to be alone with her.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, amazing him. “I was actually just teasing with that remark. But I guess I don’t have a knack for it.”
She really did look contrite, so he decided to try to put her at ease. “There’s actually a little story behind that painting. I noticed the artist trying to drown himself in a river I was riding past.”
“You mean swimming?”
“Well, that’s all I thought he was doing. It was a warm day, after all. But, no, he was trying to drown himself, he was just failing at it. He kept bobbing back to the surface! But he didn’t see the dead tree floating his way. I shouted to warn him. He didn’t hear me. And the tree took him under.”
“You saved him, didn’t you?”
“To his fury,” he said with a chuckle. “He even took a few swings at me after he got done coughing up all the water he’d swallowed. And then he started crying his woes and explaining why I’d done him such a disservice in saving him. Turned out he was so dedicated to his art that he refused to do any other sort of work, and he was starving since no one would buy his paintings. Silly chap lived in a tiny village where no one could afford his art, and he hadn’t even thought of moving.”
“So you commissioned him to paint your grandmother to help him with his finances?”
“No, actually, he found a miniature I carried of my grandmother and painted that portrait for me as a gift. I merely dragged him and his art off to the nearest city, where he’s now so much in demand he has to turn commissions down. But he’s that good, you see.” Raphael gestured to the painting. “I realized that as soon as I saw his painting. The miniature didn’t do Agatha justice, but with his artist’s eye he saw through to the real her. The portrait is nearly her exact image when she was younger, according to my father. I would have had it hung in Norford Hall, but it made Grandmother melancholy when she saw it.”
“Why, if it is such a good likeness?”
He shrugged. “Lost youth and that sort of rot, I suppose. She’s getting up there in years.”
Ophelia came back to rejoin him on the sofa, seeming a bit more relaxed now. Clearing his throat to signal he was returning to their previous subject, he guessed, “You’re going to contend you’ve ruined no lives, aren’t you?”
“On the contrary. I did ruin Mavis’s life, obviously. I should have let her marry that bounder she fancied. She might have been quite happy with an unfaithful husband, certainly more happy than she is now.”
“I take it you stole him away from her?”
“There was no stealing involved. I wasn’t even sixteen when he asked me to marry him, long before he’d even met her. He became such a nuisance, always trying to steal kisses from me, I finally asked my mother to stop including him on her guest lists, which she did. So he started courting my best friend, which got him invited to the same parties we all attended, and he admitted to me it was just so he could get close to me again.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“Of course I did, repeatedly. She laughed it off every time. She refused to hear a single word against him, she was so infatuated. Finally I allowed him to kiss me, when I knew she would walk in on it. She wouldn’t listen, so I gave her the proof she needed.”
“I would think that would have severed your relationship with her.”
“It did, briefly. She cried. She said some nasty things. She blamed it all on me. But then she came back and said she understood, that she forgave me.”
“Obviously not.”
“No, obviously not,” Ophelia said in a small voice. “It was never the same again between us.”
Regret was written all over her face, making him feel like a cad. He wanted her to own up to the things she’d done wrong, but this obviously wasn’t one of them. She’d tried to help a friend and lost that friend because of it.
He’d prefer to deal with her anger at the moment, and the quickest way to get that
back was for him to point out, “There now, it wasn’t so difficult to get your temper under control, was it?”
She stood up. “By making me sad with painful memories? If that’s what it takes, no thank you.”
She marched out of the room. He wasn’t about to try to stop her. She’d just given him too much to think about, in particular that she’d come up with somewhat acceptable excuses for each of the transgressions he’d laid on the table so far. Of course, the worst was yet to come, her appalling treatment of one of the sweetest, kindest women he’d ever met—Sabrina Lambert.
Chapter Fifteen
O PHELIA WENT NO FARTHER THAN the top of the stairs and sat down there. She didn’t want to encounter Sadie, who might be in her room and would want to know why she looked so miserable. She didn’t want to talk to anyone other than Raphael. She actually expected him to follow her and apologize. She was giving him a chance to do so by not going far. More fool her. He didn’t follow her.
“A penny for your thoughts, gel?”
She’d heard the footsteps coming down the corridor behind her, but she’d hoped it was one of the servants. No such luck.
She stood up to address Raphael’s aunt. “You wouldn’t want to know.”
“So it’s going to cost me a pound note?”
That managed to make her grin, however briefly. “Your nephew is impossible to deal with, utterly high-handed, obnoxiously stubborn. He won’t listen to reason.”
“I would have thought he’d have you charmed by now. He’s good at charming the ladies.”
Ophelia snorted. “Perhaps in another life. I find him about as charming as a rogue boar.”
Esmeralda chuckled. Ophelia found nothing amusing about it. She’d been serious.
“Let me ask you something, Lady Esme. I was going to broach this yesterday, but Rafe convinced me I’d be wasting my time because you’re firmly in his camp. But are you? Can you really condone his keeping me here when I want to go home?”
“He assured me your parents would be quite agreeable to your brief stay here. Did he exaggerate?”
“No, he didn’t. I don’t doubt they were thrilled when they received his note. But doesn’t it matter what I think and want?”
Esmeralda squinted her eyes at her. “Are you old enough for your opinion to count in this regard? Or do your parents still hold full authority over you? If you’re old enough to make your own decisions, gel, I’ll take you back to London m’self if that’s what you want.”
Ophelia let out a bitter sigh. “No, I’m not that old. And that is so unfair. I’m old enough to marry, but not old enough to have a say in whom I will marry. I’m old enough to bear children, but I haven’t sense enough to pick out the father for them?”
“Don’t be surprised if I don’t agree with you. Course it’s all well and good for me to say that now, when all decisions about m’self are my own to make. But I do understand, and I confess I felt the same way you do when I was younger. When I found the man I wanted to marry, it was quite upsetting that I couldn’t have him without my father’s permission. There was the chance, him being a Scotsman, that my father would have said forget it, find yourself a nice English lad. He didn’t, but he could have, and there wouldn’t have been a thing I could have done about it.”
“You could have run off to be with the man you loved.”
Esmeralda chuckled. “I’m not a wild card, gel, as you seem to be. I don’t break rules or thumb my nose at the dictates of society.”
“I don’t either,” Ophelia protested.
“But you’d like to,” Esmeralda guessed. “Therein is the difference.”
Ophelia couldn’t very well deny that. “This is still so—so outrageous.”
“My nephew’s motives are well-intentioned. He likes to help people. He usually doesn’t even think twice about it. And this certainly isn’t the first time he’s gone out of his way to do so. He didn’t take the typical tour of the Continent when he was away from England, you know. He single-handedly saved a bunch of orphans from abuse when one of them picked his pocket and explained he’d done so in order to get his sister out of the dreadful orphanage he’d run away from. It took half a year, but Rafe found every one of those orphans a good home. He also helped to evacuate a whole town in France that got flooded. Saved a few lives, according to Amanda, to whom he wrote about it. Those are only a couple of examples of how he tends to help when help is needed.”
That was supposed to make what he was doing to her all right? “I didn’t ask for his help!”
“No, but he claims you made a big mess of things at that gathering you both attended recently at Summer’s Glade. If I were you, I’d want to make sure I didn’t muck things up like that again.”
“I have a few flaws,” Ophelia grumbled. “I don’t deny them.”
“We all do, gel.”
“Mine might be a little excessive.”
Esmerelda chuckled. “A little, eh? Then maybe just a few lessons in restraint might be in order? Just to curb the excess, mind you.”
“How do you control an uncontrollable temper?” Ophelia knew it was a hopeless question.
But the older woman actually answered from experience. “By biting my tongue.”
Ophelia grinned. “You don’t have a temper.”
“I did, oh, quite a nasty one.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. It used to amuse my husband no end, him being a Scotsman with no temper a’tall!”
Ophelia laughed. The sound drew Raphael out of the parlor. Seeing her at the top of the stairs with his aunt and apparently in a much better mood, he asked, “Feeling better?”
She scowled at him. “Not in the least.”
He rolled his eyes and went back into the parlor. Esmerelda tsked beside her.
“He really does get your hackles up, doesn’t he?”
“Without even trying,” Ophelia said in a lower tone, just in case Raphael was still within hearing distance. But then she amended, “No, I take that back. He does seem to make a concerted effort to do just that.”
“Is it strategy, perhaps? To help you deal with your temper in a more acceptable fashion.”
“Then he needs another lesson in strategies, because it’s not working.”
“Are you even trying to curb this infamous temper you’ve mentioned?”
Ophelia sighed. “I have curbed it, actually. I stopped screaming at him.”
Esmerelda grinned, but then her look turned thoughtful. “Let me ask you this: Why don’t you want to be here? You have one of the most eligible bachelors in all of England going out of his way to try to help you. I’d think you’d want to take advantage of that.”
“I don’t.”
“But why not? He tried to tell me you don’t like him, but I don’t see how anyone can not like that boy. He’s personable, he’s witty, he’s pleasing to look at, and he comes from one of the most prestigious families in the realm, if I do say so m’self.”
“I hate to point it out, but you are in fact quite prejudiced. Perfectly understandable, with him being your nephew. But none of what you’ve mentioned makes a jot of difference when he had no right to interfere in my life like this!”
Esmerelda frowned. “So you’re not going to cooperate and benefit from what he’s trying to do?”
Ophelia let out a long sigh. “It may not seem like it, but I am cooperating. It’s the only thing I could think to do, to get this over with so I can go home.”
Chapter Sixteen
“A MANDA! WHAT THE DEUCE ARE you doing here?”
The last person Raphael expected to see, was his younger sister. She’d never come to the Nest before, and now she was standing just inside the door to the parlor, briskly wiping off the dusting of snow on her coat. The snow had started up again about an hour ago, just after Ophelia had left him. Amanda didn’t like snow, but he doubted that was why she was looking quite put out.
She spared him a glare. “What am I doing here? Missing a very ni
ce ball to come here to find out what you’re doing here. You were supposed to follow me to London. Why didn’t you?”
“I never said—”
She wasn’t finished, interrupting him, “Everyone was asking after you. All my friends were quite disappointed that you didn’t return to town with me.”
“I warned you I wasn’t escorting you to any more parties. The one at Summers Glade was the last. We have numerous cousins and two aunts who live right in London, quite enough escorts for you, m’dear. So it hardly matters when I get to London, now does it?”
“Yes, but you’re the one everyone wants to see.”
He raised a brow at her. “Everyone as in that gaggle of giggling chits you call friends?”
“Well, they do adore you. All the ladies do.”
“Not all,” he replied, thinking of his houseguest. “And remove your coat. It’s quite warm in here. Or are you not staying?”
She missed the hopeful note in his voice and huffed as she marched directly to the fireplace and stuck her hands out toward the heat. “I’ll keep it on a bit longer, thank you. I am quite frozen, I don’t mind telling you. The coals in the brazier didn’t last for this long of a trip. They died out about two hours ago. My maid and I had to bundle under the same lap robe to try and keep warm, but it barely worked. And why the deuce do you only have one lap robe in your coach?”
“Because the brazier usually keeps it warm enough that none are needed. You came here in my coach?”
“Well, of course I did. I don’t have one of my own. Never needed one, now did I? It’s not as if father doesn’t have a half dozen of them in the carriage house at Norford Hall that I could use, if I had left from there. But I came here straight from your town house in London.”
Before he’d met Ophelia, he could honestly have said that his sister was the most beautiful girl he knew. It wasn’t familial loyalty that had made him think so. It was quite true. With her blond hair, shades darker than his, her blue eyes quite lighter, more a powder blue, and the aristocratic bones that ran in his family, no one had doubted that she would outshine all the other debutantes this Season. But then no one in his family had ever met or heard of Ophelia Reid before the party at Summers Glade. And no one, including Amanda, could hold a candle to Ophelia’s beauty.