Chapter Sixteen
Her steadiness lasted one night. By the next morning, London had begun presenting its account.
Markham had wasted no time. Three papers carried news of Ophelia’s return, each version further from the truth and nearer what London wished to believe.
The runaway heiress had been discovered in Wales.
The foreign-bred merchant’s daughter had crept back to town under ducal protection.
Worse than either, one sheet declared, she had jilted a viscount and disgraced her father, and now hoped to force herself upon society once more, her eyes on the higher prize of a ducal coronet.
The pages, still faintly damp with fresh ink, seemed soured to her before she had read a single line.
Lady Elise read the worst aloud so that Ophelia would not encounter it unprepared.
“It says here that you were found living among Welsh shepherds,” she said grimly. “Which would astonish the shepherds, if no one else.”
Ophelia almost smiled.
There was a caricature beneath the article. It showed Markham chained to an enormous money chest with Ophelia sitting upon it, her features distorted and her mother’s country reduced to jewels, feathers, and an elephant in the background.
Lady Elise folded the print twice and thrust it into the fire. “Cowards. They bite in ink because they would not dare do it to your face.”
Ophelia watched the flames take the paper.
She had known, in the abstract, that London would make sport of her upon her return, yet knowledge and experience were different things.
Choosing ruin in a quiet room in Wales was one matter; watching strangers sell it for a penny in the street was another.
Still, she could bear this much. She had chosen it with her eyes open, and nothing could make her regret she had walked away from Markham.
Then her father came.
He entered the Maddox parlour before noon, greyer than he had been the previous day. In one hand he carried a formal notice from Markham’s solicitors. In the other were two letters.
“The writ has not been issued. Not yet.” He laid the papers on the table.
“But they mean to proceed. One of my bankers has written to ask whether the reports are true, and a Liverpool partner has delayed accepting a bill until the matter is clarified. Nothing is broken yet, but men are beginning to wonder.”
Ophelia picked up the banker’s letter. Its language was courteous and deadly. Confidence remained undiminished, subject only to clarification of certain unfortunate reports.
A business could die under such courtesies.
“Mr. Soane is preparing the releases,” she said. “Markham’s creditors give us an advantage.”
“Markham has refused the terms. He would not even read them through.”
She looked up sharply. “Already?”
“He sent word to me this morning. He says his debts are irrelevant and that any interference with his creditors will be treated as further evidence of conspiracy against him.”
“He is frightened.”
“He is angry,” Josiah said, beginning to pace. His great hands opened and closed at his sides. “That may be worse.”
“He can still be stopped. If Sir Hugh and Bellamy...”
Josiah did not let her finish. “And if he lets the matter go into court out of spite? If the creditors panic before Calder can secure the debts? If my partners decide that the James Company cannot meet its obligations?”
Each question found a place already bruised.
Her father stopped before her. The fire in the grate cracked and settled, indifferent to what was about to be asked in front of it. Then, slowly and stiffly, Josiah James went down on one knee.
“Papa, do not.”
He took her hands. “Marry him and it stops. The proceedings stop. The talk dies. My credit steadies, and you become a viscountess with a husband’s name between you and the world.”
She tried to draw back, but he held on. His eyes were wet.
“I know what I did before,” he continued. “I know I was wrong. I have heard what manner of man he is, and I shall carry the shame of giving you to him until I die. But let me mend it. Let me save what remains.”
“By giving me to him again?”
“By ending this before it destroys us both.”
The love in his face was real. That was the cruelty of it.
Markham she could refuse. Her father’s terror was harder. Josiah had wronged her, but he had not chosen to place his business, his name, and the labour of his life in danger when she fled. Ophelia had claimed freedom for herself. She had not understood then what that choice might cost him.
“No,” she said, but the word came weakly.
Her father heard it. He released her hands and rose.
“I will not press you now. Only think what is being spent and who must pay it.”
He gathered the letters and left the notice on the table. Ophelia remained where she was after the door closed, staring at the place where he had knelt.
Lady Elise entered a few minutes later. One glance at Ophelia’s face told her enough.
“You will not listen to him.”
“He is frightened.”
“He has been frightened since your mother died, and fear has made him cruel to you in the name of love. It does not become wisdom merely because he weeps while he speaks it.”
“His business may fail.”
“And marrying Markham may not save it. You know better than anyone what his promises are worth.”
Ophelia did know. Fear did not care what she knew.
Lady Daventry received Ophelia at noon.
She and Elise entered Daventry House through rooms in magnificent disorder as servants prepared for the evening’s party.
Chandeliers had been lowered and polished.
Fresh greenery replaced what had browned.
Footmen carried chairs and musicians’ stands through the corridors, while the kitchens sent up waves of heat and the scent of sugar.
Beeswax and hothouse hyacinth threaded beneath it all, the particular scent of a house dressing itself for scrutiny.
The Marchioness awaited them in her morning room. She was a handsome woman, still striking, with Adrian’s dark eyes and none of his careless ease. She greeted Elise with restrained affection and Ophelia with exact courtesy.
“Miss James.”
“My lady.” Ophelia offered a respectful curtsey.
“Sit, if you please. I have no wish to conduct an inquisition, however much my son may have prepared you for one.”
“He did not.”
“No. Adrian seldom prepares anyone for anything.”
Elise sat beside Ophelia. Lady Daventry remained standing for a moment, studying her.
Ophelia knew the look. Women had used it upon Shirin and upon her, measuring complexion, gown, manners, and fortune. Yet the Marchioness’s examination contained no contempt, only doubt and pain, and an effort at fairness that did not come easily.
At last Lady Daventry took the chair opposite.
“Adrian has told me what Lord Markham said of you. He told me what he himself heard yesterday as well. I have known Crispin since he was a boy. I loved his mother, and after her death I allowed myself to mistake affection for evidence of character.” Her voice tightened briefly. “I was wrong.”
Ophelia had prepared herself for disbelief. The admission left her without a defence. “I am sorry,” was all she could think to say.
Lady Daventry looked almost offended. “You have nothing for which to apologise. That is the first matter between us.”
She smoothed her skirts deliberately, then continued.
“The second is tonight. If you attend my party under your own name, I will receive you. You will enter with Lady Elise, and no one in my house will dare insult you without answering to me.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet. I offer justice, Miss James, not comfort.”
Elise shifted beside her. “Marian.”
“No. She must know.” Lady Daventry kept her gaze on Ophelia.
“Receiving you will divide the room. Some will follow my lead because they possess sense. More will follow because they fear exclusion from my next invitation. Others will smile beneath my roof and tear you apart beneath their own. I can open a door, but I cannot make everyone beyond it kind.”
“I understand.”
“And then there is Adrian.”
Ophelia’s fingers curled tight in her lap.
“My son is a duke. That fact has given him freedoms few men possess. But the title is also a trust. His marriage concerns a family, an inheritance, and a succession that does not belong only to him.”
“Adrian has made me no offer.”
“No. He appears to have acquired some judgment in Wales.”
“Marian,” Elise warned again.
Lady Daventry ignored her, keeping her eyes on Ophelia. “He loves you.”
Ophelia could not speak.
“I asked him,” the Marchioness continued. “He answered plainly, which was unpleasant enough that I believed him.”
Her expression softened, though her voice did not.
“I will not tell you to refuse him. Nor will I pretend that becoming Duchess of Calder would cost either of you nothing. The papers already use his name beside yours. If he publicly binds his life to yours, some doors will close. The family will be discussed, the succession examined, and any children you might have will be made to answer for an ancestry London will judge harshly.”
Each word was measured and without malice. That made them cut more deeply.
“I tell you this because men in love are inclined to call sacrifice easy before they begin paying the price for it. Adrian believes he can bear the cost. He may be right. But you should know what it is before either of you decides.”
Ophelia lowered her gaze to her folded hands. Her father’s words returned to her.
Think what is being spent and who must pay it.
Lady Daventry rose, signalling that the interview was over.
“I will receive you tonight if you come, and I will stand by that choice afterwards. What you do beyond it is between you and my son.”
Elise waited until they were in the carriage before giving voice to her anger. “She had no right.”
“She told me the truth,” Ophelia said wearily.
“She told you her fears and dressed them as facts.”
“Some of them are facts.”
“Some,” Elise conceded. “Not all.”
Ophelia turned towards the window and watched London pass.
Adrian had spent his life beneath the weight of his name.
He had only just begun to believe himself capable of carrying it.
Loving Ophelia would add her scandal to that burden, along with every insult England could devise for Shirin’s daughter and her children.
He believed he could bear it.
Ophelia loved him too well not to wonder whether he should have to.
She sat in her room and stared at the ball gown spread out on the bed, waiting for her to call Bronwen and begin to get ready. And in her head, the old voice was whispering.
Make yourself small. Give in. It is what you are for.
If she resisted, Markham might proceed. Her father’s credit might fail before Adrian and Soane secured enough advantage over him.
Elise would stand beside her and be mocked for it.
Lady Daventry would divide her family and her world to receive her.
Adrian would tie the Calder name to a scandal already staining him in print.
If Ophelia married Markham, he had promised the proceedings would stop. She knew what his promises were worth, but in the darkness she began treating this one as truth because surrender required it.
Her father would be safe. Elise could return to Wales. Adrian would be spared the necessity of choosing between Ophelia and his family. He would hate her decision, but hatred would pass. In time, he might marry a woman the world welcomed and remember Wales as a winter madness.
The thought hurt so badly that she mistook the pain for proof that it was noble. She called it sacrifice because cowardice was an uglier word.
Yet in the one honest corner of herself, Ophelia knew what she was considering. Markham had not left her without another path. He had only made that path public, difficult, and bright.
The evidence against him existed. She understood it as well as any man among them, yet if private pressure failed, she would have to stand openly behind the accusation.
She would have to let London see what Olivia Jones had hidden: Shirin Sethna’s daughter, Josiah James’s pupil, the woman who could read a settlement and follow money through a lie.
She had spent years pretending that woman did not exist.
Marriage asked her only to disappear again. The other path asked her to be seen.
Ophelia opened her strongbox and took out her mother’s bangles. The gold lay heavy and warm in her hands, chased with the pattern Shirin had worn every day of her adult life, in Bombay and then in England.
Ophelia had hidden them because they revealed too much. They named the mother she had been taught to soften into silence and the inheritance society preferred her to apologise for.
She could sell them. Markham would give her no money of her own once they were married, but the bangles might purchase some small liberty within the cage.
Or she could wear them that night.
That frightened her more.
Bronwen found her sitting on the edge of the bed with the gold in her lap. The maid stopped in the doorway and studied her face.
“Don’t, miss.”
“Do not what?”
“Whatever you are thinking of doing that has put that look on you.”
Ophelia’s fingers closed around the bangles. “You do not know what I am thinking.”
“No. But you look the way you did when His Grace first came. As though you have gone somewhere no one can follow.”
Bronwen crossed the room and knelt before her.
“You did not cross half the kingdom to give Lord Markham the thing you ran to save.”
“My father may be ruined.”
“And marrying that man will mend him, will it?”
“He says it will.”
“Men say a great many things.” Bronwen sniffed magnificently. “They’re wrong about near all of them.”
Ophelia looked down at the bangles. “You think me braver than I am.”
“I think you’re frightened. That’s not the same as being a coward.”
“I know what must be done. I do not know whether I can do it.”
Bronwen closed both hands around hers, bangles and all.
“Then let us get you dressed. You need not decide the whole of it sitting here in your shift.”
Despite everything, a laugh caught painfully in Ophelia’s throat.
Bronwen rose and reached for the dress, a gown of deep green silk, simple in line but finer than anything Ophelia had worn since her flight. Beside it lay the modest pearls she was expected to wear.
“Which jewels, miss?” Bronwen asked.
Ophelia looked at the pearls, then at her mother’s bangles, bright against the dark coverlet.
“Dress me first,” she said. “I will decide afterwards.”