Chapter Thirteen
Ophelia read the marked passage twice, the paper gone soft and cold under her fingers.
Crispin tells me he is resolved to have the law on them now, not the breach of promise merely but the father’s business as well.
His lawyers assure him there are claims arising from the articles and from representations made concerning the settlement.
He means to recover every farthing the match has cost him.
Adrian had given her the letter and let her read the worst for herself, without softening it or deciding beforehand how much she could bear. He had simply placed the truth in her hands and waited.
The fire crackled in the small library, its heat barely reaching the window seat where she sat. Outside, water dripped steadily from the eaves. The snowbound world Ophelia had built around herself came down as quietly as the thaw.
She had told herself that her flight hurt no one but herself. Lady Elise had accepted the risk knowingly. Her father remained safe in London, occupied with his ships and ledgers, untouched by the loneliness and falsehood of Ophelia’s concealment.
She had been wrong.
Markham could not reach her, so he would strike Josiah instead. He would drag her father’s name through the courts and shake the confidence his business depended upon, undoing in a season what her father had built in a lifetime.
Her hiding could not protect him.
Adrian waited.
The choice was hers. He meant it.
It was the most frightening gift anyone had ever given her.
“Send the inquiry,” she said. “But Mr. Soane must buy nothing yet. Questions alone may alert Markham if they are clumsily asked.”
“He will be discreet.”
“We must also see the signed articles. We do not know what Markham can claim, only what he says his lawyers have told him.”
“Then we begin with inquiries and the articles.”
“No.” She folded the Marchioness’s letter along its existing creases. “I begin with my father.”
Adrian looked a question at her.
“I am going back to London.”
He said nothing, leaving her room to finish.
“I will face Papa and tell Markham myself that I will not marry him. I will not have the matter ended over my head, even for my benefit. If there is a price to refusing him, I will know it and choose whether to pay.”
She heard the strength enter her own voice.
“I will not allow Papa to be ruined while I hide in the snow. And I will not be a thing decided any longer. If I am to be ruined, I will choose it for myself.”
Adrian held her gaze.
“Then I will go with you, if you will have me.”
The answer came more easily than she expected.
“I will.”
Once Ophelia had decided, the household turned towards departure with astonishing speed.
Lady Elise went white at the news and then became grimly resolute.
“If you imagine you are travelling to London without a chaperone, you have taken leave of your senses. I am coming, and my respectability is coming with me, because I am still the daughter of a duke. We shall see who dares cut a woman I choose to stand beside.”
Miss Pettibone wept with excitement and began packing summer muslins, quite undeterred by the season.
Bronwen, asked whether she would go to London as Ophelia’s maid, said, “Try and stop me, miss,” and looked both terrified and thrilled.
Adrian sent the letter to Mr. Soane, instructing him to make discreet inquiries into Markham’s debts but to purchase nothing without further authority.
Ophelia stood on the steps of Plas Eira before they left. The valley ran with meltwater, and the snow sagged beneath a colourless sky.
She looked back at the long, low house that had taken her in without question. Through the open door she could see the great hall and the kissing bough Miss Pettibone had successfully defended from removal. Beyond them, the window seat where Ophelia had first told Adrian a truth about herself.
She would keep Christmas there again if she could.
Yet she was not running away this time.
The carriage carried Ophelia James towards London under her own name.
They travelled south through hard days of half-frozen mud and flooded fords, stopping at coaching inns that seemed to consist chiefly of smoke and draughts. On the second evening, as the light failed and the horses began to labour, Adrian proposed that they break their journey at Wexham Court.
“Sir Hugh Fenwick is an old friend,” he explained. “Wexham is not far off our road, and he may know something useful about Markham’s affairs.”
He looked directly at Ophelia.
“I trust him. That does not give me the right to tell him your history. What may I say?”
She considered.
“You may tell him who I am and that Markham is threatening Papa through the marriage articles. Nothing of what I overheard.”
“Nothing you have not given me leave to tell.”
Wexham Court received them with lighted windows and an open door.
Sir Hugh Fenwick came out coatless into the cold, carrying a lantern and calling a welcome to Adrian. He was broad and weathered, moving with a slight stiffness in one leg. His widowed sister, Mrs. Horrocks, followed with shawls, servants, and every propriety required to take charge of the ladies.
Wexham had the quiet solidity of a place well tended. Sir Hugh knew his servants by name, and Mrs. Horrocks kept a warm, sensible table. No one asked Ophelia to be anything but tired from the road.
At supper, Mrs. Horrocks pressed the warmest seat upon her and gave her the best of the pears in wine. She spoke of hot bricks and flooded roads, and of Miss Pettibone’s conviction that extra petticoats were essential to winter travel.
After supper, Miss Pettibone retired with Bronwen to attend to her, and the rest of the party sat down in the parlour by the fire.
Mrs. Horrocks was clearly prepared to carry the conversation on light topics, but Adrian said seriously that he had some important business he wished to speak of with Sir Hugh, and he thought Mrs. Horrocks might have some sensible observations to make as well.
“Are you sure about this, Ophelia?” Lady Elise asked quietly.
“I am.” She smiled at her godmother. “We have discussed this, Lady Elise. I trust Calder, and he trusts Sir Hugh.”
“Very well.” Elise looked as though she wanted to say something else, but sat back in her chair.
Adrian spoke first. “You realised, I am sure when we gave her name, that Miss James is the ‘runaway bride’ that has been in all the newspapers.”
Both Sir Hugh and Mrs. Horrocks nodded. They were far too well-bred to have said anything, but now that Adrian had addressed the matter directly, curiosity filled both their expressions.
“Miss James has given me permission to tell you that Lord Markham is threatening legal action against her and her father concerning the broken engagement and the marriage articles.”
Fenwick’s expression hardened. “I had heard the gossip. I had not thought Markham would stoop to that.”
“May I ask,” Mrs. Horrocks said delicately, “if there was a particular reason you decided not to proceed with the wedding?”
“I discovered that his interest was only in my fortune,” Ophelia said baldly. “And while many a woman has been married for her fortune before and made the best of it, discovering that Markham actively despised me, when I overheard him gossiping with his friends, was the last straw.”
“I quite understand,” Mrs. Horrocks said kindly. “Markham is… well, Hugh has had some dealings with him, have you not, brother?”
Sir Hugh rose without a word, left the room, and returned several minutes later carrying some papers.
“Markham came to me in October,” he said. “He required a large sum and had no security worth the name. He brought a draft of his proposed marriage settlement and swore that the bride’s portion would clear the debt when they married.”
He laid a note and a folded document on the table.
“I was fool enough to lend him the money. He promised me the first claim upon the portion after the marriage. I have not seen a penny.”
Ophelia reached for the draft, then stopped.
“May I?”
Fenwick pushed it towards her. “It is yours to read, Miss James, in every sense that matters.”
She opened it.
At first glance, the draft resembled the articles her father had shown her before she signed. Then she began to see the differences.
“This is not the final settlement.”
“You are certain?” Adrian asked.
“Yes.”
The earlier draft placed a substantial part of her fortune at Markham’s disposal upon marriage.
Her father’s lawyers had rejected that arrangement.
Under the signed articles, the capital was to pass into trust, passing in full to Ophelia’s children when they reached their majorities.
Markham would receive income and specified allowances, but he would never hold the principal outright.
She checked the date on Fenwick’s note.
“This was signed after the final articles.”
Fenwick leaned forward. “What does that mean?”
“It means Markham knew this draft no longer governed the marriage when he showed it to you. He promised you security from money he would never own.”
Adrian’s expression sharpened. “And if he made the same promise to others?”
“He may have pledged the same fortune several times. Perhaps as a first claim each time.” She looked again at the note. “That would depend upon what he represented and what the lenders relied upon. But if he borrowed upon a draft he knew had been rejected, he deceived Sir Hugh.”
Fenwick’s face darkened. “I was a fool.”
“No,” Ophelia said. “You trusted someone you believed was your friend. The shame is his.”
Fenwick looked at her for a moment, then nodded.
Mrs. Horrocks broke the silence.
“You need not go on to London tomorrow.”
The offer was made to Ophelia, not to Adrian or Elise.
“You may remain here as long as you wish, as our guest. Markham’s debt owed to Hugh means he will never willingly come here. You will be quite safe.”
It was a tempting picture: a quiet house and a kind woman offering friendship.
Ophelia looked down at Markham’s note.
“Thank you. But I have chosen London.”
Mrs. Horrocks did not argue. “Wexham remains open if you should choose it later,” she said.
Ophelia handed the draft to Adrian.
“We must compare this with the signed articles. Papa will have them.”
“And Soane will know what use can be made of the difference,” Adrian said.
“Perhaps. It is not a weapon yet.”
“No.”
“But it is a trail.”
Adrian’s eyes met hers. “Then we shall follow it.”
They left Wexham the next morning with Fenwick’s note and the rejected draft wrapped in oilcloth and secured in Lady Elise’s travelling case.
London waited. And for the first time since they left Plas Eira, Ophelia felt they were carrying something besides courage.
They were carrying evidence.