Chapter 72- Im not sorry
Ophelia had been staring at me for hours.
Not constantly.
That would have been easier to confront.
She did it in pieces.
Long enough for me to notice, never long enough for me to ask before she looked away.
Each time I lifted my head from the documents spread across the desk, I found her watching me from the bed with the same distant expression.
Not anger. Not sadness exactly. Something quieter.
More troubling. Her brows remained drawn together.
Her mouth softened whenever our eyes met, but the softness never reached the rest of her face.
Then she would look away.
Toward the nursery.
Toward the window.
Toward nothing.
And several minutes later, I would feel her attention return.
I tried ignoring it.
That lasted perhaps half an hour.
I told myself she was tired. She had slept poorly after I found her on the nursery floor with Elowen against her chest, both of them curled beside the cradle as though the bed only several steps away had become irrelevant.
I had moved the child first. Elowen barely stirred when I placed her inside the cradle, one fist opening briefly before settling near her cheek.
Ophelia had been more difficult.
Not because she woke.
Because she did not.
I lifted her from the floor, carried her to bed, removed the crown still tangled loosely in her hair, and lay beside her until her breathing deepened. She never asked what happened after she left the office. Never asked whether Elias had taken Nathaniel's body. Never asked what I knew .
When morning came, she opened her eyes and looked at me.
That was all.
No accusation.
No questions.
Only thought.
Too much of it.
I finished signing one report.
Then another.
The third had to be read twice because I realized I had not absorbed a single word.
Ophelia stared again.
I placed the pen down.
Carefully.
The sound of metal touching wood seemed much louder than it should have.
"What is it?"
She blinked.
I leaned back in the chair.
"You have been glaring at me since sunrise."
"I have not been glaring."
"You have."
"I have been thinking."
"At me."
Her lips pressed together. As faint breath escaped her nose.
Not quite laughter.
Not enough.
I looked at her more carefully.
She sat near the center of the bed with a blanket pulled over her legs. Her hair remained loose, falling over one shoulder in dark waves. The morning light touched one side of her face and left the other softly shadowed. She looked rested only from a distance.
Up close, the exhaustion remained.
So did whatever Nathaniel had placed inside her mind before he died.
I disliked dead men who continued speaking through my wife.
"What did he say to you?"
She lowered her gaze.
For several moments, she traced one finger along the edge of the blanket.
Then she asked, quietly.
"Why did you choose me?"
I stared. The question made so little sense that I thought perhaps I had misunderstood it.
"Choose you ?" Her eyes lifted.
"Over Alexis."
The name entered the room strangely unfamiliar after of not hearing it in so long.
I frowned.
For one brief moment, I could not place her. Then memory returned.
A manor.
Dark halls.
A woman who smiled too easily.
A history I had no interest in reopening.
I exhaled and looked away.
Of course.
Nathaniel.
Even dead, the man had found a way to place a stranger between us. "Why?" Ophelia asked again.
I rubbed one hand over my face.
"I do not know."
Her expression tightened.
I immediately regretted the answer.
Not because it was untrue. Because it was incomplete.
I had never examined the question deeply enough to offer anything more elegant. Alexis had never been a possibility in my mind. There had been no great decision. No internal battle. No moment when I compared two women and selected one.
There had only ever been a line.
Alexis stood on one side of it.
Ophelia stood nowhere near it because, by the time I understood what she had become to me, she had already changed the shape of every boundary I possessed.
Ophelia pushed the blanket aside and rose from the bed.
"But why not her?"
I watched her cross the room toward me.
She did not sound jealous.
That would have been easier.
She sounded lost.
As though Nathaniel had handed her a story and she could not understand why she had been given its ending. "I do not know, Ophelia," I said again, slower this time. "I never saw her that way."
"She loved you."
"That did not require me to love her."
"She believed you had a future."
"I never promised her one."
Ophelia stopped near the desk.
Her gaze searched my face with an intensity that made irritation stir beneath my ribs.
Not at her.
At the question.
At Alexis.
At the dead man who had turned another person's longing into an accusation against my wife.
"She was kind," I said. "We were friends. We enjoyed each other's company. That was all." Ophelia remained quiet. I continued because I knew what she was truly asking.
"We were convenient for each other for a time."
The words felt ugly spoken aloud.
Not because they were false.
Because honesty stripped away every softer explanation people used when they wanted desire to resemble devotion.
"She understood what it was," I said. "I never told her it was love. I never offered marriage. I never asked her to wait for me. We were two lonely people who found temporary comfort in each other."
Ophelia's mouth tightened.
Jealousy.
There.
Small.
Sharp.
Familiar enough that I almost smiled.
"Did you love her at all?"
"No."
The answer came without hesitation. Ophelia looked at me as though she expected more. There was no more.
I had cared whether Alexis lived.
I had cared whether she was safe, whether Elias treated her fairly, whether she had enough money to leave if she wished. I had enjoyed speaking with her. I had trusted her more than most people near the crown.
None of that had been love.
Care and love were not the same thing simply because someone wanted them to be.
"Then why did she kill herself over losing you?"
I stared at her.
"What?"
"Nathaniel said she died because she lost the future she believed she would have with you."
My confusion became irritation so quickly that I had to pause before speaking.
"How could she lose me when she never had me?"
Ophelia flinched.
Not visibly enough for anyone else.
I saw it.
I softened my voice.
Not the truth.
Only the edge.
"Listen to me."
She did.
"Alexis and I were never together in the way Nathaniel described. I do not know what she believed. I do not know what she told herself after we stopped speaking. I do not know what he encouraged her to believe."
I looked down at the papers on the desk and found myself seeing none of them.
"The last time I saw her, she crossed a line." Ophelia remained still. "She touched me after I told her not to."
Her eyes moved toward the scar near my collar, though the memory had nothing to do with it.
"I stabbed her hand."
The words entered quietly.
Her expression changed.
"She survived," I added.
"You stabbed her."
"Yes."
"Because she touched you."
"Because she crossed a line ." There was no pride in it. No regret either. Only fact. "I was married," I said. "I had made my choice. She knew that." Ophelia's breathing slowed. "She knew what you meant to me. She knew I would not betray you. She knew there was no place for her inside our marriage."
I watched her face.
"That was the last conversation we had."
"And you never knew she was with Nathaniel?"
"No."
"Never?"
"No."
The truth sounded absurd even to me.
A woman I once considered a friend had built an entire life beyond my knowledge.
"I would have been glad for her," I said. Ophelia's brows lifted slightly. "If she and Nathaniel had found happiness, I would have wished them well."
"You mean that?"
"Yes."
I leaned back.
"Why would I not?"
She gave me a look.
I understood.
Because I was not generous with former affection.
Because jealousy lived in me too, though mine was less graceful than hers.
But Alexis had never belonged to me.
I had never wanted her to.
"She had potential," I said. "She was intelligent. Capable. She could have built something meaningful."
M My voice hardened despite the effort to prevent it. "She chose otherwise."
Ophelia stared at me.
"You do not feel sorry for her."
"I feel sorry that she died."
"That is not the same thing."
"No."
The answer remained honest.
"I am not going to mourn a future I never wanted."
Her face tightened again.
I continued before silence turned the truth into cruelty.
"Call me heartless."
"I did not."
"You are thinking it."
I stood.
The chair scraped softly behind me as I moved around the desk. Ophelia did not step away when I approached. I stopped close enough to touch her and chose not to.
Not yet.
"She made her decision," I said. "Nathaniel made his. I did not force either of them to destroy themselves over something I never promised."
Her gaze dropped.
"I was honest with Alexis."
I hated saying her name again.
It made the room feel occupied by someone who did not belong inside it.
"I never lied to her. Never deceived her. Never allowed her to believe I intended to marry her."
"You went back to her."
The accusation came softly.
I closed my eye.
"Yes. Because I was lonely. Because I was bored.
Because she happened to be there. If Alexis had closed the door in my face, I would have knocked on someone else's before the night was over.
There were always women eager to share my bed.
She was never special because she let me in.
She was simply the one who happened to say yes.
I chose her because I believed she understood the arrangement. No promises. No future. No love. Just two adults using one another for different reasons.
She wanted my name, my protection, and the status that came with standing beside me. I wanted a distraction. She spoke about her dreams.