Chapter Fourteen
They reached London on the fourth of January, well in time for the Marchioness’s Twelfth Night party.
The city closed around the carriage in the early dark, lamps smoking in the drizzle, wheels grinding over wet stone. Voices rose from the pavements, and traffic pressed upon them from every side.
After weeks of mountain silence, the noise was enormous.
Ophelia sat very straight and watched her reflection appear and vanish in the glass, catching each lit window and losing it again to the dark.
I chose to come.
She repeated it with every passing lamp.
Lady Elise had sent ahead, so they went directly to the Maddox town house. The modest rooms had been hastily opened and warmed, though the air still smelled of dust and long disuse, and a fire not yet drawing well sent smoke curling back into the hall.
Adrian did not press his company upon her.
“I am a quarter-hour away at Daventry House,” he told her in the hall. “Send word and I will come, for anything or for nothing.”
Ophelia managed only two words through a tremendous lump that had suddenly arrived in her throat.
“Thank you.”
He bowed and went out into the rain.
Ophelia held to it through a near-sleepless night, listening to the house’s unfamiliar creaks and the rattle of carriages that never seemed to stop.
Her father came before she had finished breakfast.
She had written to him from the road: that she lived, that she was returning, and where she might be found. She had not managed more.
His voice filled the house before the parlour door opened.
Ophelia turned to find Josiah James standing in the doorway with his hat crushed between his hands.
For a moment neither spoke.
He had aged. In two months, his heavy, handsome face had gone grey and seamed. His eyes were red.
“Ophelia.”
The sight of her seemed to break something in him, and suddenly tears were streaming down his cheeks.
He crossed the room and caught her in his arms, holding her so tightly it hurt.
“My girl. My girl. I thought you dead.”
Ophelia wept against his shoulder.
Whatever he had done, he was her father and he loved her. The love was real, and that was the tragedy of it: he loved her enough to want the very best for her, but the best he could find had been a cage.
Then the embrace loosened, and Josiah began to repair his composure.
“It is not too late.” He held her by the shoulders and looked into her face. “Thank God you are alive. The rest can be mended. You were ill; that will be the account of it, a brain fever, perhaps. You were taken care of by your godmother. No one need know more.”
“Papa...”
“Markham will still have you. He has said as much. He has been patient beyond what any man could be expected to bear. Once you are married, the talk will die and you will be safe.”
“No.”
She said it quietly.
Josiah stared at her.
Ophelia stepped out of his hands.
“No, Papa. I will not marry him. I was not ill, and I knew what I was doing when I left. I came back to tell you so to your face.”
“You do not understand what is at stake.”
“I understand very well. I know he means to bring a suit against you.”
Her father’s expression changed.
“How?”
“It does not matter. I came because I will not leave you to face him alone. But I will not be talked, shamed, or bullied into that marriage.”
“You will destroy us both.”
“I am trying to prevent that.”
“The settlements stand. He has the law behind him.”
“He has weapons in the law. That does not give him the right to my life.”
Josiah began with anger. When anger failed, he appealed to duty, then to gratitude, then to her mother’s memory, then to the ruin that waited for them both if she persisted. Ophelia heard each argument in its turn and remained where she was.
It was harder than defying Markham could ever be. Markham she could hate. Her father she loved.
“I have made my choice,” she said. “I am sorry it grieves you. It remains my choice.”
Josiah turned away from her.
“I sent word to Markham as soon as your letter came.”
Ophelia’s stomach tightened.
“You had no right.”
“He must know the matter can still be repaired.”
The knocker sounded.
Her father looked towards the door with relief, his shoulders easing.
Ophelia did not.
Markham entered the parlour smiling.
The sight of him turned Ophelia cold. He was handsome and polished, entirely at his ease, his pale eyes moving over her with the assessing look she had never forgotten.
She made herself meet it.
Markham was good. Warmth came from him as naturally as firelight. His concern could have persuaded a stranger, and had once persuaded a motherless girl desperate to be wanted.
The charm was real.
There was simply nothing beneath it.
“My dear Miss James.” He bowed as though she had arrived late to a dinner. “How you have frightened us all.”
“Good morning, Lord Markham.”
“And how well you look. Wales agrees with you. One would never think you had been at death’s door.”
“I have not been.”
His smile did not alter.
“So much the better. I am come to assure you of my forgiveness and my readiness to proceed as arranged. No word need ever be spoken of this unfortunate interlude.”
“I will not marry you.”
Josiah made a sound of protest. Markham lifted one hand, silencing him without looking away from Ophelia.
“I have been patient,” he said. “More patient than most men would have been.”
“Your patience is no concern of mine.”
A muscle tightened at the corner of his jaw, there and gone.
“A breach-of-promise action is an ugly thing, Miss James. So is litigation arising from the settlement and the representations your father made concerning it. His business rests upon confidence, as you know. A public suit would damage that confidence very quickly.”
Her father sank into a chair.
“I should hate to see him ruined,” Markham continued. “I am fond of you both. Therefore I offer the simplest remedy. We marry by Lady Day. The talk ends, the articles are fulfilled, and your father’s name remains untouched.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I seek redress. The proceedings will entertain London for months.”
His smile remained gentle.
“The choice, my dear, is entirely yours.”
It was no choice at all, only the same vice closing around her again: marry a man who despised her, or watch her father’s business destroyed.
The old instinct rose in her.
Be still. Be silent. Let them decide.
Ophelia held her ground.
“You will do as you think best, my lord. As will I. But I will not marry you.”
Markham’s smile thinned, and for the first time he allowed a snap to enter his voice, the charm vanishing.
“And why not, pray?”
“I heard you,” she answered him simply.
For the first time, he looked uncertain.
“The week before our wedding,” Ophelia said. “You were speaking to your friends in the billiard room. I heard what you called me. I heard what you said of my mother’s people and of the use you meant to make of me after you had my money.”
Josiah stared at Markham. “What use?”
Ophelia continued before either man could say anything more.
“I would sooner be ruined honestly than marry a man who holds me in contempt and expects me to hold myself in it too. You may sue. My answer will remain no.”
The polish cracked, fully.
“We shall see how brave you are when the writs are served,” Markham said, with a snarl in his voice.
“You have my answer.” She held her head high and her voice steady, though inside she was trembling.
He took his leave.
The front door shut behind him.
Ophelia looked down at her hands.
They were not shaking.
Her father sat in silence.
At last he said, “You heard him say those things?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
Ophelia looked at him.
“I tried. You called it wedding nerves.”
Josiah opened his mouth, and closed it again. He bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I stood in his drawing room and shook his hand. I told you the match was your good fortune.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I was giving you everything your mother should have had.”
“You were giving me to a man who saw me as England saw her.”
Her father covered his face.
Ophelia did not tell him that everything was forgiven, because it was not, and she would not promise that love could mend what love had broken. But she sat beside him.
After a moment, his hand found hers, rough and cold.
Lady Elise came down soon afterwards and found them that way. When she heard what had happened, she nodded approvingly. “You did right,” she told Ophelia. “Exactly right.”
Then she turned upon Josiah.
“You will not speak of reviving that match again in my presence. His Grace and Mr. Soane are making the inquiries Ophelia authorised. Sir Hugh Fenwick has also provided documents concerning Markham’s borrowing.”
Josiah lifted his head. “What documents?”
“Evidence that Lord Markham may have borrowed upon a version of the settlement he knew had been rejected.”
For the first time that morning, Josiah looked less defeated, his eyes sharpening, the astute businessman awakening.
“I want to see it.”
“So do we all,” Ophelia said. “And we need the signed articles.”
“They are in my strong room.”
“Then you will bring them to Mr. Soane, this afternoon.”
Her father looked at her.
The old Josiah might have demanded to know when his daughter had begun giving instructions.
This Josiah only nodded.
The reckoning had begun. Markham would strike, and the law gave him weapons. Ophelia could not yet see the path through it.
Yet she had stood before both men who had tried to decide her life and said no in her own voice.
She thought Adrian would be proud of her.