Page 21 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

Everyone except Ophelia.

“I knew he did not love me. I had not expected love. I thought respect might be enough. I would be a viscountess; my father would be happy, and the money would please Markham.”

She folded her hands in her lap.

“A week before the wedding, we came to the Markham house in town one afternoon; I was to meet with his mother, who was taking me to her modiste on Bond Street. I was in the hallway waiting for his mother when I heard his voice through a half-open door. He was with several friends, playing billiards. They were speaking of me.”

She told Adrian how Markham had named the sum he expected from the settlement and itemised what it would purchase: the payment of his debts, horses, play, and a life free from the vulgar necessity of economy.

“He called me his dusky little Croesus. He said he supposed he must get an heir upon me, but afterward he need scarcely see me again. A man could shut his eyes, he said, for twenty thousand a year, and the rest of my father’s fortune once he died.”

The room became very still.

“His friends laughed,” Ophelia said. “I stood on the stairs with my hand over my mouth and understood that I had never been a person to any of them. My father priced me one way and Markham another. Between them, there was nowhere left for me to exist at all.”

Adrian’s hands closed slowly on the arms of his chair.

“What did you do?”

It was the first question he had asked, and the one answer she no longer minded giving.

“That day, I did nothing. Markham’s mother came down and took me shopping, and I watched from the corner of my eye as she marched the modiste into the back corner of the shop, and ordered her to overlook my skin and dress me as though I were a princess, and send the bills to my father, and ordered herself ten new gowns on the same bill. And I saw her sneer at me when she thought I was looking at gloves, and knew I would never be more than tolerated in that family. So I decided I would not marry into it.”

She had tried to tell her father, that same evening, but Josiah had waved off her concerns as wedding nerves and gone out the door, going to dinner with his friends. Alone in the house, Ophelia came to the realisation that the only person who could save her was herself. So, on the morning of the wedding, she had put on her plainest gown and taken her jewel case, her mother’s book, and the letter containing Elise’s direction. Shirin had given her that address years before and told her, if ever you are desperate, this is the door that will open.

“I stepped into the street and did not look back.”

It had taken a fortnight to reach Wales by indirect stages. She had travelled by mail coach, carrier’s cart, and whatever conveyance could take her north and west without requiring too many questions, her coin dwindling with every mile. Every horseman on the road had seemed a pursuer.

Then Elise’s door had opened.

“And I became no one,” Ophelia said. “It was safe, being no one.”

She lifted her chin and looked at him.

“Now you know. You may do as you like with the knowledge, Your Grace, as every man I have ever known has done as he liked with me.”

Adrian lowered his face briefly into his hands.

When he looked up, he was white and plainly furious. There was no charm left in him, and the fury was not directed at her.

“I knew Markham well at Oxford,” he said. “I drank with him, gamed with him, and called him friend. My mother has always been fond of him. He was often at Daventry House, and I heard him say things of a piece with what you have described. Never so foul, perhaps, but near enough that I knew what manner of cruelty it was.”

His fingers tightened against the chair, knuckles paling against the dark wood.

“And do you know what I did? I laughed. Or I said nothing, which is the same thing. I told myself it was only Crispin’s way, only the world as it was. Objecting would have cost me something, and I have spent my life avoiding any expense that could not be paid in coin.”

“Adrian…”

“No. You must let me say it.”

He had never asked her for that before. Ophelia fell silent.

“I was wrong. Markham’s contempt for you, and for everyone he considers beneath him, is a rotten thing. I should have named it years ago. I will name it now, to his face if need be, whatever it costs me.”

His voice lowered.

“I do not ask you to forgive my silence. I only could not let you tell me what he said and leave you believing I am one more man who will call it harmless because opposing him would be inconvenient.”