by Maia Chance
“What? Oh. Yes.” Ophelia couldn’t even begin to explain the parakeet. “It’s very nice to see you, Count. How long has it been? Three weeks?”
Griffe’s burly chest rose and fell. “Nineteen days, twenty hours, and thirty-two minutes.”
Right.
Forthwith was out of the coach and pumping Griffe’s hand. “Count de Griffe,” he said with a toothy white smile, “pleased to meet you. My sister has told me all about you.”
Ophelia’s belly lurched.
“Sister?” Griffe frowned.
“I beg your pardon,” Forthwith said. “I’m Forthwith Stonewall, Ophelia’s brother. Didn’t my sister tell you I was coming along?”
The rat.
“Ah!” Griffe clapped Forthwith on the shoulder. “Mr. Stonewall! Perhaps your sister did mention it—I have been most distracted by business matters in England, très forgetful . . . And who is this?” Griffe nodded to Henrietta as she stepped down from the coach. “Another delightful American relation, eh?”
It had better not be. Ophelia said, “This is—”
“Mrs. Henrietta Brighton,” Henrietta said quickly, and then gave a sad smile.
Precisely when had Miss Henrietta Bright become Mrs. Henrietta Brighton? And . . . oh, merciful heavens. How could Ophelia have been so blind? Henrietta was in black. All in black.
“Did Miss Stonewall neglect to mention that I would chaperone her on this visit?” Henrietta asked Griffe. “I am a close friend of the Stonewall family, and I have been on a Grand Tour in order to take my mind away from my poor darling—darling . . . oh.” She dabbed her eyes with a hankie.
Griffe took Henrietta’s arm and patted it as he led her through the front door. “A widow, oui? My most profound condolences, Madame Brighton. You are very welcome here.”
Ophelia and Forthwith followed. The parakeet’s feet clung to Ophelia’s finger, and tiny snowflakes fell from the darkening sky.
“You’re shameless,” Ophelia said to Forthwith in a hot whisper.
Forthwith grinned. “Aren’t I, though?”
2
Ophelia’s conscience demanded that she call off the entire visit now. Because, well, the gall of Henrietta and Forthwith, springing those fake identities on her at the last minute! On the other hand, she didn’t have a centime to her name. Griffe would surely kick her out on her ear when he learned she was a fraud. She needed a little more time to cook up a plan.
She was led upstairs to a chamber with a canopied bed, walls painted with dark forest scenes—trees, rivers, castles, wild animals—and a carved marble fireplace. Footmen brought up the two large trunks of finery borrowed from Artemis Stunt, and then a maid arrived.
The maid, a beautiful blond woman of about thirty years with the full, sculptured figure of a Roman statue, tapped her chest and called herself Clémence. As Clémence hung the finery in the wardrobe, she furtively inspected Ophelia. Then she led Ophelia down a creaking corridor to a small bathing chamber. Marble from floor to ceiling, with a tinned copper tub and gold water spigots shaped like ducks’ heads. Clémence ran the bath, gave Ophelia a cake of soap and a parting glance of disdain, and left.
Awkward, having people tend to you. Especially when they made you feel that you ought to be waiting on them.
After her bath, Ophelia returned to her bedchamber, dried her hair before the fire, and arranged it in a frivolous braided knot. Then she squirmed and laced herself—she would not ring for Clémence—into corset, crinoline, evening slippers, and Artemis’s green velvet dinner gown.
After that, she checked on the parakeet. Griffe had sent up an unused brass birdcage from somewhere, and Ophelia had hung it near the fireplace with a saucer of water and a little bowl of breadcrumbs. The parakeet puffed up its feathers, its eyes mostly shut. “Are you all right?” Ophelia whispered.
The parakeet ignored her.
Outside the windows, snow blew sideways through blackness. The Baedeker claimed that it never snowed in the Périgord.
A rap on the door.
“Entrez,” Ophelia called. She was picking up bits and bobs of French.
Clémence had returned, carrying an envelope. She gave it to Ophelia in sullen silence and left.
Ophelia looked at the envelope—it read Mademoiselle Stonewall—and sighed. She knew that sloped, smeary handwriting. Although she hadn’t seen the Count de Griffe since the day after she’d accepted his marriage proposal, he’d written her daily rhapsodic letters from England. Luckily, she’d been spared the need to reply because he had been traveling.
She tore open the envelope and read,
Dearest Mademoiselle Stonewall,
It is with a swollen heart and fevered brow that I welcome you at last to this, my ancestral home. How ardently I dream of showing you every inch of this sacred place, the formal gardens by moonlight, the riches housed in the library, the Roman statues alongside the ornamental canal, the fruits and blooms in the orangerie. How I long, too, to show you the more intimate features of your future home.
Ophelia’s palms started sweating.
For instance, my late mother’s own wedding gown, preserved in delicate tissue in a box in her bedchamber, and the nursery and schoolroom where I once romped and studied and where, God willing, our own children will romp and study, too.
Ophelia hurried to a side table, where she’d seen a decanter of red liqueur. She poured herself a small glass and drank it down. Cherry. She coughed. She wasn’t really a tippling lady, but the image of a half-dozen hairy baby Griffes crawling around in diapers required blurring.
She turned back to the note.
We did not enjoy even one minute alone upon your arrival today. Could I beg you to join me at half past eight this evening—dinner will be served at nine o’clock—in the ballroom? There is so much in my heart I must convey, ma chérie—may I call you that?—and a pressing question I must ask.
Your most humble and obedient admirer,
Griffe
Oh, mercy.
Ophelia glanced at the clock on the mantel. Almost half past eight already. She stuffed the note in a dressing table drawer and sat down to wallow in guilt until nine o’clock. She’d rather stick her hand in a beehive than be alone with Griffe. She could tell him she’d fallen asleep.
At two minutes till nine o’clock, Ophelia slid Griffe’s ruby ring on, over her satin elbow glove. The ring was heavy, and too tight. Probably served her right. She trudged downstairs for dinner.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned left and found herself in a long, dim gallery with a checkerboard marble floor and tall windows. Snow piled up in the corners of rattling windowpanes. Gleaming suits of armor lined the gallery, along with a couple of cannons and glass cases displaying swords, bows, and arrows.
Ophelia hugged her elbows and picked up her pace. Griffe’s voice boomed from beyond the far doorway. Drat. She didn’t relish the notion of meeting Griffe in here. Too dark.
His voice again. Closer.
Ophelia dodged behind a suit of armor, one of four standing close together. She was hidden in shadow.
Griffe speaking. She caught the words perhaps and dinner . . . wait. Ophelia held her breath. Her eyes slid sideways.
Someone else was hiding behind the suits of armor, not three feet away. A tall, shadowy male form—
The man cleared his throat.
Hold it. She’d know that ahem anywhere. Yet how could it—? Why—? What was he doing here?
“Professor?” Ophelia whispered. “Professor Penrose?”
“Ah, it is you, Miss Flax,” Penrose murmured. “How good to see you.”
“What are you doing, hiding back here?” Ophelia’s eyes had adjusted to the faint light. Penrose held a wineglass and wore evening clothes. She saw the glow of his spectacles, his square shoulders, the line of his clean-shaven jaw. Her heart skittered.
“I thought I’d never—”
“I merely wished to inspect the mechanism at the back of this helmet.” Penrose tapped one of the knight’s helmets. It clanged softly. “Fascinating sort of hinge.”
“In the dark? Stop fibbing. Who are you hiding from?”
“Who are you hiding from?”
“Griffe said nothing of you being here.” If Griffe had said something, Ophelia would never have come. Penrose had told her I love you three weeks ago, right after she’d impulsively promised her hand to Griffe. She fancied she’d broken the professor’s heart. She’d broken her own heart, too, and since broken hearts must be let alone to mend, she’d banished Penrose from her thoughts.
Another disaster.
“It was a last-minute invitation,” Penrose whispered.
“Professor, if you happen to notice . . . anything odd. I mean to say, well, I still haven’t gotten the chance to tell Griffe that I—”
“That you aren’t Miss Stonewall, the Cleveland soap heiress?”
Ophelia swallowed. “Well, yes. And Henrietta is here, too—”
“Henrietta Bright? On the husband hunt, I suppose? Not to worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”
Griffe said loudly, “He cannot be far, my dear.” He was inside the gallery now. “Shall we seek for him in the gaming room? It is just through the armor gallery here.”
“I suppose so,” a woman’s voice said in a crisp British accent. “I can’t think why he would simply disappear like this just before dinner.”
“Penrose is a scholar, Mademoiselle Banks,” Griffe said. “Scholars become engrossed in their studies, I understand, to the point of sheer distraction and forgetfulness. Perhaps he has gone, not to the gaming room, but to the library? Come along. We will find your mislaid fiancé.”
Fiancé?
Oh.
Griffe and Miss Banks passed by in a breeze of eau de cologne and silken rustles. Penrose didn’t move a muscle.
“Dreadfully rude of him.” The woman’s voice was sulky. “Once we are married, I’ll insist that he remedy his ways.”
“You may insist,” Griffe said, “but gentlemen rarely undergo change. Particularly after matrimony.”
Their footsteps receded.
Ophelia whispered to Penrose, “I recall you speaking of Miss Banks with great enthusiasm last month in Paris. Congratulations on your engagement. Your swift engagement.”
“Miss Flax. What I told you three weeks ago . . . I beg your pardon about all that.” Penrose adjusted his spectacles. “I was rash and, indeed, mistaken. Paris had gone to my head, I suppose.”
Ophelia swallowed. “I see.” He’d taken that I love you back. Well. What an absolute relief.
“I do hope I did not cause you a moment of unease,” he said.
“Unease? No. Certainly not. I will see you at dinner, I reckon.” Ophelia stepped out from behind the suits of armor and hurried out of the gallery, in the opposite direction that Griffe and Miss Banks had gone.
And this lump in her throat? Well, it must be that she was thirsty from traveling all day.
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