A Countess to Corrupt (The Devil’s Masquerade #5)
Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Twelve Years Later
“You need new paints? Again?”
Miss Ophelia Wexley, the only child to the Viscount Whitebridge, brought her green eyes up from the row of potted paints laid out before her and met Theo’s questioning look.
The Mayfair marketplace by the park was busy today.
Far too busy for Ophelia’s liking, but she had let two of her dear friends, Lady Theodosia Harleigh, Duchess of Caldermere, and Lady Rosalind Duskwell, Duchess of Stapletone, coax her out of the house.
They’d been shopping for a few hours now, and while Theo and Rose had been drawn to stalls of jewelry and books, Ophelia had found herself wondering to those that sold paints, canvasses, and brushes.
“What of it?” Ophelia asked, glancing back down to the paints. She picked up one of cerulean blue, admiring the deep hue of it.
“Well, it is just that you seem to be painting quite a bit lately,” Rose remarked after sharing a glance with Theo, “Yet you have yet to show us your finished projects as you normally do.”
Ophelia subtly bit her bottom lip, thinking of the secret she could not share with her friends. There used to be a time where she could where she could tell them anything. Now, though, life had grown…complicated.
“I will show you when they are ready,” Ophelia replied, trying to sound casual, “I am…”
She floundered, trying to think of a quick lie.
“I am growing more finicky with my work,” she finally added. “My standards for perfection are increasing, I am afraid.”
“Goodness you sound like Tristan,” Theo teased.
Ophelia gasped and crinkled her small, sharp nose; feigning a look of great offense.
“Do not dare compare to me the Lord of Perfection!” She playfully scolded.
The three of them laughed, then Ophelia turned back to the paints.
She handed the pot of cerulean paint to the stall merchant, along with pots of black, violet, and a deep emerald green, and forced her hands not to shake as she reached into her baby blue silk wrist bag and drew out her precious few coins.
“Interesting choice of colors you have picked,” Theo mused as Ophelia put the paints in her basket.
“Oh?” Ophelia asked, turning back to her friends. “Why is that?”
“They are the colors of a peacock, are they not?” Rose asked.
Ophelia let out a dry laugh as the three of them continued to walk again.
“Yes, I suppose they are,” she agreed, playing coy. Another secret.
“You have not seen it yet, have you?” Theo asked, looping her arm through Ophelia’s.
“Seen what?” Ophelia asked, her excitement growing.
“The mystery painter has broken into the Royal Gallery again,” Rose said excitedly. “Or rather, he painted the gallery this time! The front doors from top to bottom now resemble the most beautiful, lifelike portrait of a peacock with the words societatum rebel!”
Ophelia hid the smile threatening to bloom on her lips, and gave a bored eye roll.
“Oh. Him.”
Theo and Rose each let out a short laugh.
“I cannot believe you, as an artist and as someone who adores the disruption of society, do not like the mystery painter’s work,” Theo teased. “I thought you would be his biggest admirer!”
Ophelia shrugged.
“I have seen better,” she said with a bored sigh.
It was true. The peacock hadn’t been her best work.
She would have preferred to add some golden accents and better brush strokes.
Unfortunately, she underestimated the size of her secret project and had nearly run out of paint; forcing her to use broader, clumsier strokes to finish it.
It wasn’t her worst work, though, and as always, she’d signed it Societatum Rebel.
“You and your demands for perfection,” Theo sighed, “Dare I say you truly are starting to sound like Tristan.”
This time there was no smile to hide as Ophelia drew her lips back in genuine sneer.
“No, you may not dare,” she chastised, “The first time was barely humorous, but now a second barb? Are you trying to wound me? Do not ever compare me to the Dandy Lord of Perfection again.”
Though she said it with a gruffness, Ophelia erupted into laughter along with Theo and Rose.
“You know,” Rose said through her laughter, “You are probably the only person in the entirety of England that does not like Tristan. He is such a proper gentleman. Certainly the most gentlest of his kind.”
“He is annoyingly well-liked among our society,” Theo added with a droll tone. “Growing up in his shadow was not easy.”
Ophelia rolled her eyes as they made their way to the end of the stall-filled street.
“That is because I am the only one who sees him for what he is,” she replied dryly. “A pompous prig that cares too much for reputation and likability.”
She kept to herself that there was one thing and one thing only she liked about her best friend’s brother- his hands.
“From an artist’s perspective he had the perfect hands.
Strong and masculine, but not too meaty.
Fingers neither too long or too clubbed.
A perfect proportion of veins. They were what she pictured when she practiced drawing or painting the human form.
They left the busy market street for the quieter streets leading toward their homes.
Away from the collection of people, the crisp autumn air blew softly around them as a few leaves loosed from the nearby trees and fluttered from the ground.
It was Ophelia’s favorite time of the year.
One, because the bright, vivid hues of greens and purples and pinks of the summer shifted to the more subtle tones of gold, red, and rich brown of the autumn.
Two, because it meant that the summer parties and balls garden tea gatherings were drawing to an end.
Ophelia took a moment to appreciate the changing colors surrounding her, then looked down at Theo’s swollen belly and smiled fondly.
“Enough about Lord Perfect,” she went on, “How are you? How is my little nephew or niece?”
Though none of them were bonded by blood, Ophelia was an auntie to all of her friends’ children.
Seraphina, the first of them to get married, and her husband Hugo, the Duke of Merrivale had three children now.
The twins; one boy, one girl were now four, and their little girl, who’d just turned one.
Amelia and her husband Dominic, the Duke of Ellsworth had a little girl who was now two.
Rose and her husband Everett, the Duke of Stapleton, had just had their little boy about nine months ago.
Theo and her husband Alistair, the Duke of Caldermere, already had a bouncy baby girl delivered just a few months before Rose’s baby boy, and she was now three months along with her second.
Then of course there were the other children who had found themselves under the care of their strange yet close knit group.
Everett’s twin nieces, now almost seven.
And of course Amelia’s younger sisters, who were adopted by her and Dominic shortly after they were married.
The oldest had come out this past season and had a plethora of admirers, and the youngest was not too far behind.
“I am fine,” Theo sighed, stroking her belly affectionately. “My morning sickness has finally subsided, but now I’m starving all of the time and my feet are horribly swollen. I had to have the cordwainer making me new ones nearly three times bigger than my usual slippers!”
On the other side of Ophelia, Rose tsked.
“Theo! Why did you not tell us so? We would not have walked so much. Or at least we could organized a carriage!” She chastised.
“Indeed,” Ophelia quickly agreed. “You should not keep such discomfort from us.”
“Ladies, please,” Theo laughed softly, “I am fine! I wanted to walk today. Besides, with the weather turning this might be my last walk in the warm air before the baby arrives.”
She then wagged her eyebrows suggestively as she drew in a little closer to Ophelia.
“Additionally, Alistair gives me heavenly foot massages, and he gives me an extra long one when he knows I’ve been walking extensively.”
Rose laughed along with Theo as Ophelia rolled her eyes.
The only true problem she had with her friends was that they were all married to Tristan’s closest friends.
Alistair had been the most recent addition, which was probably why Ophelia minded him the least, but for the most part, she was annoyed by them all.
Their only upside was that they did not try as hard as Tristan did to appear perfect in each and every way.
“Do not roll your eyes!” Theo chastised on a laugh. “If you ever find a husband- or a paramore- you will understand the pleasure of a foot massage, and the lengths you will go to obtain one.”
Ophelia smiled cheekily at Theo, appreciating that she added the or after husband.
Though at one time nearly all of them were against the idea of marriage, it was Ophelia that had been the most steadfast to such an idea.
She’d preached of her hope for spinsterhood often the last few years, and now at the age of twenty-seven, she’d finally secured it.
She was now too old for the marriage mart, and blessedly, too old to catch the eyes the desperate men seeking wives for the sake of their titles.
“You truly are not going to venture for a paramour, are you, Ophelia?” Rose asked, her tone laced with worry. “I know you do not want to marry but you should at least honor your reputation.”
“My dear Rose, there is no need to worry,” Ophelia stated.
Normally she would answer such a question with more wit, but not with Rose.
She was the most sensitive of them all. Not only did she have the tenderest heart among the five of them, but she was also most familiar with rumors of paramours; thanks to the brutally public display her mother had put on for years after Rose’s father died.
Thankfully Rose’s mother, Betty, had grown sober and more mature in the last two years or so. Even still, Rose was sensitive to the gossip of the ton and was the one that paid the most attention to it.