Chapter Twenty-Two #3
"I hate you for making me notice. I wasn't supposed to notice. Noticing leads to wanting, and wanting leads to caring, and caring leads to..." he gestured wildly with his glass, spilling a bit, "this. Whatever this is."
"This is you drunk and finally saying what you really think."
"This is me drunk and saying far too much." But he didn't stop. The words seemed to pour out of him like the brandy from the bottle. "Do you know what I thought when I saw you at the altar?"
"That you'd made a terrible mistake?"
"That you looked like hope. Even terrified, even about to be sick, you looked like hope. And then you were sick on me, and somehow that made it worse because you were human and real and not some distant idea I could ignore."
"Being sick on you made me more attractive?" Ophelia laughed, that snorting laugh he'd mentioned.
"There! That! That sound!" He pointed at her accusingly. "That's what I mean. How is that endearing? It shouldn't be endearing. It should be annoying. But instead, I sit in my study thinking of ways to make you laugh just to hear it."
"You do?"
"Constantly. It's very distracting. I'm trying to review accounts, and instead I'm wondering if you'd laugh if I told you about the time Frederick got his head stuck in a vase trying to retrieve a wager he'd dropped inside."
"Did he really?"
"We had to break the vase. It was worth a fortune.
My father was furious." He smiled at the memory, then seemed to realize he was smiling and frowned instead.
"See? You're making me tell amusing stories.
I don't tell amusing stories. I tell boring stories about parliamentary procedure and estate management. "
"Tell me another one."
"About parliamentary procedure?"
"About your cousin."
"Oh, Frederick's an endless source of disasters. Once he decided to serenade a girl he fancied, but he got so drunk beforehand that he serenaded the wrong window. Woke up her father, who chased him through the garden with a riding crop. He had to hide in the fountain until dawn."
Ophelia giggled, and Alexander looked triumphant. "There! I made you laugh. On purpose. With a story."
"You're very proud of yourself."
"I'm very drunk is what I am. This is all your fault too."
"Everything seems to be my fault tonight."
"Everything is your fault since you arrived. The flowers everywhere...your fault. The servants humming while they work...your fault. Me lying awake at night wondering what you're thinking...definitely your fault."
"You lie awake thinking about me?"
"Constantly. It's very annoying. I'm trying to sleep, and instead I'm replaying conversations, wondering if I was too harsh, too cold, too... me."
Ophelia stood, swaying slightly herself, and moved to sit on the arm of his chair. "You're not too you. You're just... very specifically you."
"That made no sense."
"I'm drunk too. I'm allowed not to make sense."
"You're sitting very close."
"Is that a problem?"
"It's a proximity issue. When you're close, I want to touch you. When you're far away, I want you closer. It's very inconvenient."
"Then touch me."
The words hung in the air between them, charged with possibility. Alexander set down his glass carefully, then reached up to touch her face, his fingers gentle against her cheek.
"Your skin is soft," he said wonderingly. "I've wanted to know if it was soft."
"And?"
"Softer than I imagined. Everything about you is more than I imagined."
"You've imagined me?"
"Constantly. Another very annoying habit you've given me." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "I imagined kissing you during that disaster of a wedding breakfast. Just to make everyone stop talking."
"That would have certainly given them something else to talk about."
"I imagined it at the inn, when we were sitting by the fire and you looked golden in the light."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I'm a fool with excellent self-control. Or terrible self-control, depending on how you look at it." His hand was in her hair now, loosening the pins she'd hastily put in after her bath. "I have no self-control right now."
"Good."
"Good?"
Instead of answering, Ophelia leaned down and kissed him. It was awkward at first but then Alexander made a sound like surrender and pulled her properly into his lap, and suddenly everything aligned perfectly.
The kiss was nothing like she'd imagined a first kiss should be.
It wasn't gentle or tentative. It was desperate, weeks of frustration and loneliness and want poured into the connection.
Alexander kissed like he did everything else, with intense focus and determination, but there was something else too, something vulnerable and needy that made her heart ache.
When they finally broke apart, both were breathing hard.
"That was..." Alexander started.
"Don't overthink it."
"I overthink everything. It's another very annoying habit."
"Then I'll have to distract you." She kissed him again, shorter this time, sweeter.
"Very effective distraction," he murmured against her lips. "Though the brandy is also helping. Have I mentioned the brandy is excellent?"
"Several times."
"It bears repeating. Excellent brandy. Excellent wife. Terrible decision-making skills currently, but excellent everything else."
"Why terrible decision-making skills?"
"Because I'm about to say things I'll probably regret when I'm sober."
"Such as?"
"Such as I'm falling in love with you, which is absolutely ridiculous because we've been married for weeks and I've spent most of them being horrible to you."
Ophelia's heart stopped. "You're what?"
"Falling in love with you. Possibly already fallen. Definitely somewhere in the falling process. It's very inconvenient and entirely your fault."
"You can't just announce you're falling in love with someone and blame them for it!"
"I can and I am. If you hadn't been so persistently yourself, I could have maintained my comfortable emotional distance.
But no, you had to be kind to servants and save sick children and organize village mutual aid societies.
You had to have opinions and challenge me and make me think about things I'd successfully avoided thinking about for years. "
"Alexander..."
"I'm not finished. I'm drunk and finally saying things, so I'm going to say all of them.
" He pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her waist. "Your brothers were right.
You deserve better than me. You deserve someone who knows how to be warm and open and human without needing most of a bottle of brandy to manage it. "
"My brothers were wrong about a lot of things."
"They were right that you were disappearing. I could see it happening, you becoming quieter and smaller, trying to fit into what you thought I wanted. It was killing me but I didn't know how to stop it without admitting I cared."
"And admitting you cared was that terrible?"
"Admitting I cared meant being vulnerable. Being vulnerable meant possibly losing you. Losing you meant..." he paused, seeming to struggle with the words. "I don't know what it meant because I couldn't let myself think about it."
Ophelia touched his face, mirroring his earlier gesture. "You're not going to lose me."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually. Because I'm falling in love with you too, which is possibly the most foolish thing I've ever done, but here we are."
Alexander stared at her. "You're what?"
"Falling in love with you. The you that defended me tonight. The you that forgave the Wheelers' debt. The you that's currently drunk and rambling and more human than I've ever seen you."
"This is the brandy talking."
"The brandy's just letting us say what we've been thinking." She kissed him again, softly. "I've been falling for you since you stood at that altar covered in vomit and still married me."
"That's a terrible basis for love."
"It's a perfect basis. You could have humiliated me completely. You could have walked away. You had every right to. But you stayed."
"I had to stay. The contracts..."
"You stayed," she repeated firmly. "And tonight, you defended me like I actually mattered to you."
"You've always mattered. I'm just very bad at showing it." He rested his forehead against hers. "I'm probably going to continue being bad at it."
"I can work with that."
"I'll try to be better. Less cold. More... whatever the opposite of cold is."
"Warm?"
"That. Yes. Warm. I'll try to be warm. Though I should warn you, I have no idea how to do that without brandy."
"We'll practices."
"Practise being warm?"
"Practise being us. Whatever that looks like."
They sat there for a moment, her in his lap, his arms around her, both slightly drunk and emotionally overwhelmed by their admissions.
"This changes everything," Alexander said finally.
"Everything was already changing."
"Yes, but now it's changing with kissing. That's different."
Ophelia laughed, that snorting laugh he apparently loved. "You're much funnier when you're drunk."
"I'm much everything when I'm drunk. It's very alarming. I might actually be enjoying myself."
"The horror."
"Complete horror. My ancestors are probably furious. Generations of proper Montclaires, and here I am, drunk on excellent brandy, with my Coleridge wife in my lap, having feelings all over the place."
"All over the place?"
"Everywhere. It's very messy. I don't like mess usually, but this is... acceptable mess."
"High praise."
"The highest." He pulled her closer, burying his face in her neck. "You smell like soap and something flowery."
"Lavender."
"Lavender. Of course. You've made me actually notice scents now too. Another annoying development."
"Should I start keeping a list of all the ways I'm annoying you?"
"It would be a very long list. You're exceptionally annoying. Beautifully annoying. Perfectly annoying."
"You're not making sense anymore."
"I stopped making sense three brandies ago. Now I'm just talking because apparently, I do that when I'm drunk. I can't seem to stop."