“You didn’t tell her?”
“I avoided doing so.”
“Why? Were you intending to keep it a secret?”
“No, it’s just she isn’t likely to understand.”
“That you could want to help someone like me?”
“No, that I haven’t made you my mistress yet. She’ll think I’ve lost my finesse.”
Ophelia leaned back and gave him a curious look, then she actually chuckled. “That’s a bad habit you’ve gotten into, teasing me.”
“What makes you think I’m teasing?” He gave her a roguish look. “Did I mention I know a way to make you forget that you’re famished?”
She burst out laughing.
Chapter Twenty-one
“T HERE YOU ARE,” ESMERALDA SAID perkily as Raphael and Ophelia stepped into the parlor together. “What an odd time of year to go off for a country drive. But at least you’re not too late getting back. We held up dinner for you. Shall we?”
Raphael smiled at his aunt as she stood up to lead the way into the dining room. It was a nice attempt to make Ophelia’s failed escape seem like an ordinary outing when it was anything but. It just wasn’t going to work with his sister, and in fact, Amanda, who had been sitting next to Esmeralda on the sofa, didn’t move an inch and was staring incredulously at Ophelia.
Ophelia was probably too accustomed to odd reactions from people to remark on Amanda’s open mouth. She merely said, “Hello, Amanda. How nice of you to leave the gaiety of London for a visit in the country.”
Amanda hadn’t yet sufficiently recovered to reply or even realize that she was sitting there with her mouth hanging open. Raphael sighed to himself.
“You two go ahead,” he said to his aunt. “I know Phelia is famished, so don’t wait any longer. Mandy and I will come along in a moment.”
Ophelia’s departure didn’t snap his sister out of it, she was just staring wide-eyed at the empty doorway now. Raphael rolled his eyes and said, “It’s a good thing there aren’t any flies in my house at this time of the year.”
“What?” Amanda said, then leapt to her feet in her usual exuberant way and exclaimed, “Good God, Rafe, I love you to pieces, but you really didn’t need to go to such lengths to help me out.”
Since that wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to hear, he said, “I’d go to any lengths to help you, m’dear, you know that—if you needed help. But since you don’t need help, what the deuce are you talking about?”
Her frown showed up immediately. “But that’s why you did it, isn’t it?”
“Did what?”
“Invited that woman here. You did it to remove her from the competition for me. So I’d have a chance to find a husband without having to compete with her.”
He shook his head. The way the female mind worked sometimes was quite beyond his comprehension.
“Mandy, think about what you just said for a moment, would you? You’re implying that any man interested in you would immediately turn his interest to Ophelia instead, if she showed up. Is that the kind of man you want?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“There are no buts in that analysis.”
“There are some things that would tempt a man beyond good sense. She’s one of them.”
He would have liked to argue with that statement, but since he was already experiencing some of that temptation, he couldn’t. “Perhaps. But if a man is going to be that fickle, I’d think you’d want to know about it before you drag him to the altar.”
“Drag?” she started to sputter.
“You know what I mean. Before you get a proposal. Before you fall in love.”
She gave him a thoughtful look. “That would be a good test, wouldn’t it?”
He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling. “I said it before, why don’t you stop worrying about finding a husband and just let it happen naturally.”
“Because the Season is half-over. I’m running out of time!”
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you don’t find a husband in your first Season.”
“Are you mad!” she gasped. “Of course it would be. Two of my best friends are already engaged!”
“I swear, Mandy, if you follow the pack and settle for a husband you won’t really be happy with, just because your friends are getting married—”
“I wouldn’t. I’m not that stupid. But I’ll be mortified if the Season ends without my at least getting engaged.”
“No, you won’t, you’ll just start ordering a new wardrobe for the summer Season and begin again. Now let’s go have some dinner. I’m—”
“Wait just a minute,” Amanda said without budging. “If you didn’t invite Ophelia here for my benefit—oh, good God, Rafe, don’t tell me you’ve followed the pack and are enamored with her too!”
“That’s a bad habit you’ve developed, jumping to wrong conclusions. No, I’m not enamored with her. I barely like her.”
“Barely? The last I heard, you didn’t like her a’tall.”
He shrugged. “So I’m finding out she isn’t quite the prima donna I thought she was.”
“But what is she doing here? Did she just show up without an invitation and you don’t know how to get rid of her? I’ll take her back to London with me if that’s the case.”
“There you go, doing it again. Stop guessing, and stop trying to wheedle information from me that is none of your business.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, she guessed again, “She’s hiding here, isn’t she? She thinks her second breakup with MacTavish made quite the scandal, which it should have done, but didn’t. I can assure her that it didn’t.”
“Amanda.”
She caught the warning tone this time and protested vehemently, “You can’t leave me in the dark! She’s too beautiful, too well-known, and too sensational to just be here for no good reason!”
“There’s a perfectly good reason,” he relented enough to say. “I’m helping her to develop a few good qualities to add to the pitifully few she has now.”
“Oh, sure you are,” his sister snorted.
He wasn’t going to try to convince her it was true. He said instead, “And you are not to repeat that or mention to anyone that she’s here. I do not want my name linked to hers or have the entire town of London going through the same sort of ridiculous speculating that you’ve just done. Am I quite clear about that?”
“Then give me a crumb!”
He sighed to himself. When did his little sister become so bloody stubborn?
“I’ll give you dinner instead, a bed for the night, and see you on your way back to your husband-hunting in the morning. Amanda, her parents know she’s here and Aunt Esme is acting as her chaperone. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurring here. So keep your pretty nose out of what doesn’t concern you.”
“Fine, so don’t tell me!” Amanda huffed on her way out the door.
Chapter Twenty-two
I T WASN’T HARD TO DEDUCE that Amanda Locke was annoyed about something from the way she marched stiffly into the dining room without removing her glower. Ophelia had toyed with the idea of enlisting the girl to help her get back to London, despite Rafe’s warning not to.
“She’s a scatterbrain,” he’d told her as they arrived back at the Nest. “She’ll end up causing a scandal about your being here without meaning to. So it would be better for all involved if she not know that you’d rather not be here.”
That wasn’t what made Ophelia decide to say nothing. The animosity that kept coming her way from Amanda during dinner was just a small part of it too. Obviously the girl didn’t like her at all. Mere jealousy? Perhaps. So many young women she met reacted that way to her. But because of it, like Mavis, Amanda would no doubt gloat over Ophelia’s predicament instead of helping her out of it. But that wasn’t why she wasn’t going to ask the girl for help.
Incredibly, she didn’t really want to leave now. What had happened in the coach after Rafe had found her today w
as such an amazing experience, she simply had to examine further what she’d felt and experienced. And what if he was right?
When her worst flaws showed up, her temper, her ridiculous jealousies, she couldn’t recall ever being able to keep those horrid emotions from spilling out to someone’s detriment, even her own. Not even her regrets could prevent the same vicious cycle from occurring again. Because she’d never had any other outlet for her passions? That was Rafe’s guess, and it seemed so plausible, she could find no way to disagree with it.
Having found a new outlet, as it were, she felt remarkably tranquil and at peace. Every one of her vitriolic emotions was quite dormant. She felt that nothing could disturb her this evening. Even her worst emotion was noticeably missing, the bitterness that had been her constant companion since she was a child.
It had begun with her father. She was barely out of swaddling clothes before he started plotting how he could benefit from such a remarkable child. She just didn’t know it until the day she found out everything she’d believed to be true wasn’t true at all. The memory was still so painful she usually shied away from it. But she was so content just now, even, dare she say, happy, that she could face even that memory.
It was her eighth birthday. She could barely contain her excitement. Her birthdays meant lots of presents from her friends. And her mother always gave her a wonderful party to celebrate the occasion. This party was no different, or it wouldn’t have been if she’d just remained in the dining room where all the guests were seated enjoying the luncheon that had been prepared for them. But she’d received a new trinket from her mother for her birthday, a pretty locket. She’d been going upstairs to fetch it to show one of the girls at her party when her parents’ raised voices drew her toward her father’s study instead.
“This can’t continue,” her mother was saying. “You can’t keep buying her friends.”
“You’d prefer to explain to her why you can’t fill a guest list for a simple birthday party?” her father said in an annoyed tone.
“That was your guest list,” Mary reminded him. “Filled with lofty titles. Half of those children are too jealous of Ophelia to want to be around her, the other half have never been here before. Of course they wouldn’t come. And this new list you gave me is no different. She doesn’t know any of these children, not a single one. I should have canceled this party when those original names you gave me all turned down my invitations. She’s going to know something is wrong.”
“Nonsense. This is excellent exposure for her. I should have thought of it sooner. Inviting only lesser titles as you’ve been doing is pointless. None of them will do for my daughter.”
“But those are her real friends!”
“Are they? Or do their parents only come here to curry favor with me.”
“Not everyone thinks the way you do.”
“Of course they do,” Ophelia’s father scoffed. “It’s all about who you know in this town and who you impress. And we have a gem that can impress anyone. Her looks are priceless, and she gets prettier every year. I still can’t believe it m’self. You were a beauty when I married you, but I never dreamed you’d produce such a remarkable child!”
“And I never dreamed your only thought would be how you could benefit from her. Why can’t you just love her as I do and—”
“Love her?” her father snorted. “Children are a nuisance and she’s no different in that regard. If it weren’t necessary for her to be here to show off—well, you can be sure she would have been shipped off to some school instead of being taught at home with private tutors.”
“And trotted out at every party I give as if she were your pet doing tricks for the entertainment,” her mother replied bitterly.
“Stop making so bloody much of it. Entertaining is what you live for. Watching your guests stare at our daughter in disbelief is what I live for.” Her father laughed. “And did you really look at the new guest list I gave you for this party? That one boy is in line for the title of marquis. She could catch his eye, you know.”
“She’s too young to catch anyone’s eye! For God’s sake, why can’t you let her grow up first before you start shopping for her husband.”
Having heard every word, the child was too shocked to cry yet. She didn’t go upstairs for her trinket. In a daze, she returned to the dining room where her friends were all seated at the long table. Friends?
She’d known the children gathered there were all strangers to her, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. She’d merely thought her real friends would still be coming, that they were just late. So she hadn’t thought anything was amiss. She was so accustomed to meeting new children who came to dinners with their parents. Her mother entertained weekly. Even when there were no children for her to meet, she was still summoned to the parlor or the dining room or wherever the guests were gathered, to be introduced….
She stopped by a boy much older than she was, slumped in his chair, talking to no one. “Why are you here?” she asked him frankly, as children will do.
“It’s a party. I usually enjoy parties,” he replied petulantly.
“You’re not enjoying this one,” she said, pointing out what was obvious.
He shrugged and said candidly, “They said if I came and pretended to like you, I’d have a new horse. The one I have now is getting old. My father wouldn’t buy me a new one, but he said yours would if I came here today and pretended to have fun.”
A tightness filled her throat as she replied, “I guess you didn’t really want the horse.”
“Of course I do!”
“Then you should have pretended.”
He glared at her. “There’s no point in my staying then, is there?”
“No, there isn’t,” she agreed, and turned to the boy sitting next to him, who appeared to be closer to her age, and asked him also, “Why are you here?”
With the first boy already on his way out the door, this one was just as candid. “Your father paid mine twenty pounds so I was told I had to come. I’d rather be in the park sailing my new boat.”
“I’d rather you were in the park too,” she replied, her voice more quiet, the words more difficult to get out past the lump in her throat.
Her eyes were starting to sting with tears now. Even her chest was hurting when she glanced at the plain-looking girl across the table from him. This one was older than all the others, too old to be attending an eight-year-old’s birthday party.
“And you?” she asked the older girl. “Why have you come here?”
“I was curious,” the girl replied snobbishly. “I wanted to know why it took bribery to get me here. I understand now. You’re too pretty to have any real friends.”
Ophelia didn’t need to ask any of the others her question. And she couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. Before they spilled down her cheeks to her further mortification, she shouted, “Get out, all of you!”
Ophelia had never looked at a friend the same way after that day. She doubted them all and easily caught them in their placating lies. And usually those very lies provoked her to do exactly what others tried to prevent by lying. She’d come across a few of those birthday guests again over the years. All of them had apologized to her and swore they wouldn’t have needed to be bribed to come to her party if they’d just met her first. She didn’t believe them and scorned the lot of them.
She never looked at her father the same way either. She had adored him. Finding out that he bore her no love in return, that he saw her only as a tool in his social-climbing schemes, had ripped her heart out and left only bitterness in its place.
But it was all gone today—because of Rafe. It surprised her that she was even thinking of him as Rafe now, but then formality between them would seem silly after today. And his theory was easy enough to test. That’s really why she didn’t want to leave the Nest quite yet. This new outlet for her passions not only tempered her emotions, it had been too pleasant not to want to explore it again.
She
ignored Amanda, who pouted through the meal, but she couldn’t ignore Rafe. Her eyes were drawn to him repeatedly whether he was speaking or not, though he did try to put some normalcy to the meal by keeping up a conversation with his aunt. He tried several times to draw his sister into it, but she would just glower at him, so he gave up the effort. Ophelia found it easy enough to join in, though, when the new snowstorm was mentioned.
“I think I’ll have to trample through the snow again in the morning, now that it’s thoroughly covered up my earlier tracks,” she said, then added with a grin, “Care to have another snow fight, Rafe?”
He laughed. “You lost the last one.”
“I did not.” She chuckled as well. “That was a draw and you know it!”
That was apparently too much familiarity between them for Amanda to stomach, because she stood up angrily and warned Ophelia, “Don’t try to seduce my brother into marriage. Our father would never approve of a woman like you.”
Ophelia actually blushed. She hadn’t intended to do any such thing, but the unprovoked attack did jar her tranquillity a notch. Rafe, on the other hand, was appalled at his sister’s remarks.
“Good God, Mandy, have you taken leave of your senses? I am utterly ashamed of you.”
“So am I, gel,” Esmerelda added.
“What?” Amanda protested in a whine. “You might not be tempted by her beauty or have designs on her, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t set her cap for you. You don’t see the way she looks at you?”
“There can be no excuse for such rudeness and you know it,” Rafe said. “Apologize this instant.”
“I will not!” Amanda refused. “Don’t be blind. It needed to be said!”
“The devil it did.”
Red-cheeked now, Amanda threw down her napkin. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you being led to the slaughter. When you’ve finished wasting your time doing whatever it is you won’t confide in me about, you’ll know where to find me. And I’ll apologize to you when you’ve regained your senses, but I won’t apologize to her! And don’t you dare apologize for me!” she added on her way out the door.
The Devil Who Tamed Her Page 12