Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Is it your father?” Theo asked, her tone timid.
Ophelia glanced up from her untouched tea and cake.
She found all four of her friends looking back at her with worried expressions.
She sat up a little in her chair, not realizing she had slouched down in it, and picked up her fork and nudged a bit of the crumbs off of her cake.
They had dropped in for an impromptu visit, but Ophelia had not been surprised at all.
It had been days since she’d left her home or responded to their letters or invitations.
She knew it would have been only a matter of time before they arrived to check on her.
“Papa is making progress,” she said, trying to keep her tone light and free of sorrow. “He is regaining some of his strength. The exercise and diet change seem to be helping finally.”
“Ophelia, that is wonderful news,” Rose replied.
“Truly,” Seraphina agreed.
“We are so relieved to hear so,” Amelia added.
Ophelia attempted to offer her friends a smile, but her lips dropped back into a straight line not even a second after she lifted the corners.
“Thank you all so much for your support and your prayers,” she replied quietly, “It has meant much to me through this difficult time.”
“Always,” Rose and Amelia replied in unison.
A somber minute of silence ticked by before Theo cleared her throat and asked, “If it is not your father that has you so despondent, then what is, darling?”
Ophelia watched all of her friends lean a little more toward her in their chairs, giving her expectant looks. A lump suddenly formed in her throat as her eyes misted. She wanted to tell them. There seemed to be so many secrets between them now, and she hated it.
“I will be fine,” she promised. “The act of searching for a husband just has me feeling afoul. It is…more difficult to give up my dreams than I expected.”
“I will overcome this glumness, though, I promise you,” she added quickly when their faces filled with sympathy, “Just, please, do me a kindness and shift the subject away from me. It would raise my spirits to hear of your lives.”
A flurry of talk soon filled the room, quieting Ophelia’s heartache a little as she heard of the joy unfolding in their lives.
Amelia and Dominic were expanding her aviary.
Seraphina and Hugo were building a small cottage in the woods of their property; a quaint little place just for them now that their children were getting older.
Rose and Everett were planning a trip to the islands; research, Rose explained, for possible expansion into the rum market.
“All is well for Alistair and I as well,” Theo said when it was her turn, patting her swollen belly, “We are just making preparations for this little one.”
This time when Ophelia smiled, it was genuine.
“I am so excited to be an auntie again,” Ophelia replied, eyeing up her friend’s small baby bump.
Theo laughed softly as she looked down at her bump with pure affection.
“You are excellent at it,” Theo noted.
Then Ophelia noticed how Theo’s smile faded as she lifted her head and looked away.
“Is something wrong with the baby?” Ophelia asked.
“Oh no,” Theo quickly assured, though her troubled expression did not change. “Not with the babe. He or she is doing wonderfully.”
Theo then let out a despondent sigh as she shook her head.
“It is Tristan that is causing me to worry.”
Ophelia felt a jolt move through her broken heart, so intensely she flinched.
“Why would you worry for Lord Perfect?” She asked, trying to sound as nonchalant and condescending as possible. As she used to before they’d kissed…before they touched…before something other than hatred started to form between them.
“You know Tristan,” Theo said wearily, “He has always been a little…tightly wound. He is not what one would call a man of leisure, even when he was still a boy.”
Ophelia nodded, a little too readily.
“However, lately he is even more so. His temper is on edge. He will not confess it but I know he is barely sleeping. I can see it in his eyes,” Theo went on. “He looks…haunted? Tortured? I do not quite know, but I do know something is amiss. And he will not talk to me or even Alistair.”
Ophelia shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the pieces of her broken heart all filling with worry with the man that had scorned her.
She thought back to their last meeting at the masquerade last week and how profoundly confusing the entire night had been.
They had went from barely speaking, to Tristan twisting an innocent man’s arm, to nearly making love-
She paused on that particular memory, sensations of ecstasy, happiness, and desire briefly relieving the constant, nagging pain in her chest. No one had ever made her feel as good, as beautiful, as seen, as Tristan had.
Yet when he had spoken of losing his dignity, it had torn all of those lovely feelings away.
They had fought, worse than ever before, and then before she’d left, the man that just snubbed her asked her not to marry the only man that was currently interested in taking her hand.
All such emotions she’d felt that night had ended up coming out in her final painting. Lust and pain clashed violently with one another on the canvas in bright splashes of red and gold. A blue shard of lightning- a hue that matched Tristan’s eyes- snaked through the center of the painting.
It speared through a woman facing away and shackled; going through her shoulder blades and making her arch against her chains.
She’d painted the naked woman with her arms spread wide in her bonds, her head thrown back in a scream that only the viewer could decide was one of ecstasy or pain.
Then to the side stood the man, barely visible through the golden-red mist. Masked and naked from the waist down with his arms folded across his chest. She had made his stance brooding and dark.
The key to the woman’s shackles- to her freedom- dangled between the man’s fingertips as he stared intensely at her from afar.
As she’d promised she’d sent the painting to Tristan’s residence in disguise.
She’d wrapped the rolled canvas in another painting she’d done; a still life of white and purple water lilies on the surface of a lake.
Then wrapped that in several layers of fabric.
She’d then sent Mr. Potter, her most trusted of staff, to deliver it to Tristan personally, and he had promised that the package had made it directly to Tristan’s hands.
Two days later, she’d found another black box and a red envelope in her room. In the box laid an astounding two-thousand pounds. Double what she had been owed. On the card in the envelope there had only been one sentence written, and as usual was not signed.
We are finished.
Ophelia had burned all of the other red cards and envelopes Tristan had sent as a precautionary measure.
Yet when it came to the final one- the one that hurt her most of all, she had not been able to do so.
It currently laid in her pillow case, where she would pull it from each night.
She did not understand why. To read it only hurt her all over again.
Yet she did so, over and over again, as if she were a glutton for punishment.
The tap of something against Ophelia’s shoe stirred her from her thoughts, and she slowly came back to the present.
She looked around at her friends, trying her best to focus on them.
The subject had been changed again. Amelia and Dominic were throwing some sort of evening garden party with an All-Hallows-Eve twist.
“It is going to be so wonderful,” Amelia explained excitedly, “We are going to place large fires throughout the garden, require our guests to wear extravagant costumes- of and of course, masks.”
Ophelia felt the urge to shoot up from her chair, her chest feeling tight as she heard the word and was once again reminded of Tristan, but again, she felt another tap at her foot. She turned toward the sensation, and found Rose staring at her with a concerned look.
“You seem very distracted today, are you sure are well, my darling?” Rose asked kindly as she moved her chair closer to Ophelia.
“I am,” Ophelia forced out the lie, “I just…have a lot on my mind. With my tutoring.”
Rose pressed her lips together as her brows furrowed slightly.
“Your tutoring,” Rose replied slowly, “With the Starlington children, correct?”
Ophelia’s skin prickled with alarm.
“Yes,” Ophelia, her tone curt. “Wonderful children. Horrid scholars. They make the work quite troublesome.”
“Mhm. I see,” Rose mused, leaning a little closer to Ophelia.
“Rose, what are you doing?” Ophelia asked, in no mood to play whatever game her friend was heading toward.
“I know you are not tutoring the Starlington children, Ophelia,” Rose whispered. “I bumped into Lady Starlington at Promenade just a day ago and inquired on how she found your services. She had no idea what I was talking about.”
As if she was not feeling lowly enough, Ophelia’s ruined heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Keeping her secrets from her father was easy enough; he never really went out and about anymore.
She should had have known, though, that it would not be long until one of her friends would find out the truth.
“What is going on with you, Ophelia? Rose asked. “Why would you lie about your tutoring?”
Ophelia’s grip tightened on the arms of her chair, her panic rising.
“The truth is I have been painting,” she confessed. “For other noble families. In disguise.”
Amelia and Theo’s conversation ceased, and once more, Ophelia felt the full weight of her friends stares.
“Whatever are you doing that for?” Seraphina asked after a tense moment of silence.
Ophelia swallowed, the urge to tell the truth bearing down on her now more than ever.
“I…” she rasped, looking from set of concerned eyes to the next. “My father needed help. Some bad investments caught up with him.”