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Prologue
Cheltenham, England, 1818
“Goodbye, thank you for coming. We have both been truly touched by your kindness.”
Ophelia was wooden as she spoke to the guests taking their leave after the funeral and the wake. She offered brief smiles, trying to tamp down the lump in her throat and stop the tingling of her eyes. She’d already cried enough to fill a lake that week; she didn’t need to cry anymore. Her eyes were dry and itchy, with the tell-tale redness around her eyelids that betrayed how she had spent most of her days.
“Goodbye, Miss Townsend. Take care of yourself.”
The latest guests took their leave, turning and stepping out beyond the door of the house. Ophelia stood numbly in the doorway, waving with her black mourning shawl around her shoulders. There should be another standing there beside her, completing the business of the formal goodbyes, but Gertrude was in a fearful state.
“Are they gone?” her stepmother’s voice called from the sitting room as soon as Ophelia closed the door.
“Yes, they are gone.” Slowly, Ophelia followed Gertrude’s voice and walked into the sitting room.
Sitting near to the fireplace, Gertrude was half bent over, with a handkerchief screwed up in her hand. She dabbed at her cheeks occasionally, trying to dry her tears.
“Here, use this one. Yours is sodden.” Ophelia offered her another handkerchief and Gertrude thanked her kindly for it. Sitting straight and sniffing, in an attempt to stop her tears, Gertrude pushed the dark black locks of her hair back from her face. She had pulled on a few loose tendrils that hung down from her updo, hiding the redness of her cheeks behind those locks for most of the evening.
“What a miserable day.” Gertrude heartily blew her nose into the handkerchief, urging Ophelia to retreat and choose another chair in the room.
She sat down in the fine rococo settee, remembering the day her father had bought it. He had been so pleased they could afford something so fine. It had been one of the earliest of many such fine purchases since.
“How miserable funerals are!” Gertrude wailed.
“Well, they cannot be joyous affairs, can they?” Ophelia muttered quietly.
“This is not the time for your dryness, Ophelia,” Gertrude reminded her.
“My apologies. It is my way of coping.” She averted her eyes and stared into the fire, knowing if she continued to stare at her stepmother as she cried, it would not be long before she teared up again. “I didn’t think he would leave us so soon.”
In emphasis to her words, Gertrude blew her nose again, so harshly that Ophelia jumped in her seat. It had hardly escaped her notice that in the last ten years her father had been married to Gertrude, the lady lacked some refineries, but it did not bother Ophelia. Gertrude had been devoted to her father, and that was all that had ever mattered.
“Neither… did I.” Gertrude’s breath hitched in her words before she bent forward and wiped away more of her tears. “I suppose I should say the funeral was beautiful. It is what people say, is it not? The flowers were a good choice, Ophelia. You arranged everything perfectly.”
“Thank you.” Ophelia kept her eyes on the fire as she spoke, not wanting to look away from the dancing flames.
It didn’t seem to matter that the responsibility of arranging the funeral should have fallen to her father’s wife as there was no male relative. Gertrude had been in no fit state to handle it, and her lack of understanding when it came to money had meant that if a funeral was to happen at all, Ophelia would be the one to deal with it.
She had found it strangely calming, making the preparations to say goodbye to her father. It didn’t help with the pain, though. Nothing would.
“We should retire for the night.” Gertrude stood to her feet and gestured to the room around them. “The staff will clean up in here when we are gone.”
Ophelia nodded softly. Born to a merchant, the youngest of five sons of a viscount,, her family had not had much money when she had first entered the world. It meant she had been raised without much help in the way of staff.
When her father had made his fortune in the merchant business, the staff and the fine things had arrived, but Ophelia’s habits were just the same. She’d often tidy the house, trying to help the staff in any way that she could. More than once had Gertrude told her she was too wealthy to do such things, but Ophelia would do it anyway.
But tonight was different. She did not have the energy or the heart to tidy.
“Maybe retiring early to bed is a good idea.” Ophelia nodded with the words and stood to her feet. She took one of the candles that had kept them company and led the way out of the room, with Gertrude following behind her.
On the stairs, Gertrude tried to return her handkerchief to Ophelia, but she refused, insisting her stepmother should keep it. She had plenty herself in her bedchamber, and she had no wish to touch the soiled handkerchief now.
“This house seems empty without him already,” Gertrude declared as she reached the top of the stairs, pausing and looking down the steps. Ophelia paused too, following her stepmother’s gaze. “I keep expecting his strong stride to come round the corner of the corridor, or for his deep laughter to echo through these walls.”
“I know.” Ophelia smiled at the description, for it was the very same thing she pictured. Her father had been fond of jesting, as well as pursuing his athletic life. There was hardly a day that he and Ophelia had not gone riding together. Since the sudden illness that had taken him so quickly, however, she hadn’t been riding. “I wish his laugh was still here.”
“Well, we must find a way to cope, Ophelia, mustn’t we?” Gertrude forced a smile and turned to face her. Her grey eyes were as red as Ophelia’s own. “We will miss your father, but we have each other. We will have a comfortable life here too, with the house and the money. We will be quite safe; I am sure of it.”
