Page 26 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

His thumb moved once against her cheekbone.

“If I come to you, Ophelia, it will be in the open. The choice will be wholly yours. But do not doubt that I will come.”

Something in her chest turned over at the certainty of it.

“I have run from everything in my life,” he said. “I am not going to run from you.”

He lowered his hand, bowed, and went upstairs.

Ophelia remained at the foot of the stairs with her fingers pressed to the place he had touched, listening to the last of his footsteps fade above her.

She had staked her whole heart upon a snowbound happiness the thaw must end. Yet for that one night, she allowed herself to possess it without counting the price.

In the morning the wind changed.

By noon, water had begun to drip from the eaves, and at the bottom of the valley the river stirred, remembering how to run.

Chapter Twelve

The thaw came as quietly as the snow had come violently.

The air softened. Grey cloud replaced the hard blue sky, and the icicles at the eaves lengthened until they began to fall. The white shoulders of the valley turned sodden. The river rose and grew loud below, and the lane emerged from the drifts inch by muddy inch. The scent of wet earth rose from the ground, and a gutter below the yard dripped steadily into the mud.

Adrian watched with a divided heart.

The thaw ended the strange peace they had found at Plas Eira. It also opened the only road by which he might help Ophelia. He could not have one without surrendering the other.

He had been thinking harder than he had ever thought about anything. It did not come naturally. Adrian had spent his life leaving thought to stewards, agents, and men of business while he charmed and drifted. Now he made himself sit in the small library with paper before him and arrange what he knew.

Markham intended to sue for breach of promise and to drag Josiah James’s name, credit, and business through the proceedings. Whether the claims ultimately succeeded might matter less than the scandal and delay. Trade rested upon confidence, and confidence could be ruined long before a court reached judgment.

Adrian knew enough of Markham’s finances to suspect there was an advantage to be found in them.

Crispin had lived upon credit for years. His creditors had remained patient because the James marriage promised money enough to satisfy them, and more, when Markham gambled and lost further. If that patience ended, Markham might be forced to bargain.

Adrian could attempt to discover who held the debts. He could employ agents to buy them quietly, place Markham under pressure, and offer relief in exchange for the abandonment of his claims against Ophelia and her father.

It was only the beginning of an idea. Adrian did not know whether it would work. He did not know the details of the marriage articles, the state of Josiah’s business, or the exact nature of Markham’s claims.

More importantly, the choice was not Adrian’s alone.

The whole Calder fortune stood ready for him to use. He had lawyers, money, influence, and the ear of men who would deny Ophelia even an audience. He could set every one of those forces in motion with a handful of letters.

He could decide everything, could manage it all.

The temptation frightened him.

He remembered Ophelia in the croft, telling him what it meant to be a thing other people decided. Her father had arranged her future for love and ambition. Markham had planned to use her for money. Adrian would not become another man who seized control of her life and called it protection.

The thaw was scarcely half a day old when the first post reached Plas Eira. A rider came up the muddy lane near noon with a leather bag swollen by weeks of accumulated letters.

Among them was a thick packet in his mother’s hand.

Adrian carried it into the small library and broke the seal by the window.

The letter began as his mother’s letters generally did; full of outrage at his fleeing London before she arrived, but graciously forgiving him since he had gone to visit his aunt, who would surely be glad of his company at Christmas. There was news of marriages, deaths, illnesses, and social defeats disguised as triumphs. Her Twelfth Night party had grown until it threatened to include half the fashionable world. A soprano had offended three hostesses by accepting invitations from all of them. Hothouse pineapples had become an outrage.

Threaded through the pages was Crispin Hale.