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“A walk?” Gertrude frowned, not looking best pleased. “You should be preparing for your wedding, Ophelia.” She folded her arms across her chest even as Ophelia opened the door, ready to make her exit.
Ophelia was tempted to argue another time, to point out that she had never once said yes to marrying Lord Chester.
“You still refuse to acknowledge I have turned him down, do you not?” she said quietly between gritted teeth.
“I am your guardian, Ophelia. Must I remind you of it again?” Gertrude asked, her voice seething.
“You have reminded me of it enough times.” Ophelia sighed, as if resigning herself. “I suppose there is no more argument I can make. I will ask Margery to accompany me as I shop for my wedding trousseau.”
“Oh.” Gertrude smiled at once. “Well, I am glad to see you have come round to my way of thinking.” That smile just kept on growing, until it was quite maniacal.
Ophelia began to retreat through the door. “I will see you later on, Gertrude.”
“Goodbye, dear.”
Ophelia ignored the nicety and hurried out of the house. For now, acting as if she had accepted her fate could be enough to put Gertrude off the scent.
Ophelia was quick to take her horse through town. She passed through busy roads laden with carriages and over the bridge that crossed the Thames before she reached Margery’s house. She knocked impatiently on the door, waiting as Margery appeared beside her butler.
“It is Miss Townsend,” the butler said, turning to see Margery.
“Yes, I can see who it is.” Margery laughed and stepped through the door. “I’d be lost without you, Jenkins.” Ophelia held back her own laugh. “I will be out for a while; we are to go walking. Do tell my mother for me.”
“Yes, Miss Blakely.” The butler bowed as Margery stepped outside to join Ophelia.
“Good Lord, you were rather persistent in your knocking this morning. Is all well?” Margery asked. Ophelia cast a weary glance up and down the street, checking no one they knew was nearby, before she took Margery’s arm and urged her to walk faster. “Are we in a race?”
“It may well feel like it. There is something I must tell you and we must speak of it away from anyone else’s ears.”
“Well, you have me intrigued.”
“I’m intrigued myself,” Ophelia confessed. Since seeing the Duke of Northmore the day before, she had not managed to persuade him to leave her mind. She kept thinking of that kiss and the few touches they had shared when shooting arrows. There was something between them, an intensity she had never known with anyone else before.
What is this feeling?
When they crossed into a park, Ophelia drew her friend away from the crowds.
“I see you are insistent today,” Margery said with a chuckle.
“Very insistent indeed.” When they were separated from others in the park thanks to a bank of trees, she decided to impart her news. “You remember what I told you of my stepmother, Gertrude, and how she is encouraging Lord Chester’s attentions?”
“All too easily.” Margery sighed, as if in pain as they walked. “Your last letter two days ago said she was ordering you to marry him. Please tell me it is not true?”
“I wish I could say it was not.” Ophelia could feel her hands fidgeting. She wrung the gloved fingers repeatedly. “Suffice it to say that the woman I knew before my father passed, well, she seems quite gone now.”
“Gone? Surely not.” Margery took Ophelia’s arm once again. “You have known Gertrude since you were ten. She has been in your life for years.”
“Yes, she has.” Ophelia chewed her lip as she thought over the matter. Gertrude had been her stepmother, and a good wife to her father, but she had never quite bridged the gap to being like a mother to Ophelia. There had always been a cool distance there. “She may not love me as if I were her own, but I always thought there was respect there. Clearly, I was wrong. Margery, listen closely, for I fear I will go mad if I keep this secret much longer.”
“Mad? How mad?”
“Hopping around this park on one leg.”
“It is a good start. Go on,” Margery encouraged her with a wave of her hand.
The words passed Ophelia’s lips. She told Margery of all that had happened two nights before, of how she had realised Gertrude wanted to see her marry Lord Chester in order to have the fortune, and how Ophelia had then saved the Duke of Northmore, plus their agreed proposition.
“Are you telling me that you are about to wed a duke?” Margery asked, so flummoxed that her voice was rather too loud.
