Charming Ophelia Page 3

  Ophelia watched the pair leave the room, arm in arm, knowing it meant nothing but regretting it all the same.

  Chapter 2

  “Happy luncheon, my dears. I’ve brought bribes from my kitchen.” Sidney set a package wrapped in an old issue of the Times on the table. Ariel and Kate leapt forward together. Ariel carefully unfolded the newspaper to reveal two dozen savory biscuits and a dozen fruit tarts, while Kate retrieved four tea plates from the sideboard.

  “Will you still visit us with sweets when Phee is married? It would be cruel to punish us for her bad judgment.” Kate put two, then three, biscuits on her plate and retreated happily to her new sketch paper.

  “I would marry you, Sidney, if only for your cook.” Ariel took a bite from an apricot tart, then dusted off the newspaper, reading it as she ate.

  “I’m happy to see I’m treated as family.” Sidney put two apple tarts on a plate and handed them to Ophelia.

  “By that he means you are being ill-mannered,” Ophelia said.

  Sidney collapsed into a waiting chair. “Not true. If I am to be spurned as a lover, I might as well be a brother to Kate and Ariel.”

  “Why not a brother to me?” Ophelia bit into an apple tart, savoring its sharp sweetness. “I adore your cook as well.”

  “Ophelia, once you marry, there will be no room in your house for an old suitor.”

  “You aren’t a suitor. You are my very dear friend.”

  “Any husband, however neglectful, rarely likes for his wife to have very dear male friends. No, I fear, I will have to deliver sweets to your sisters until they marry, then I will play whist with your dear aunt.”

  “You forget, Ariel has foresworn marriage.” Kate took another biscuit.

  “Then it will be the three of us, all confirmed bachelors, which brings me to my purpose—marrying off your sister. Kate, might I have a bit of paper, largish if you have it?”

  “So, the sweets are a bribe to steal my paper.” Kate, laughing, reached out to take the last apple tart off of Ophelia’s plate. “If I’m to be bribed, it must be with apples.”

  “Beware.” Ophelia swatted Kate’s hand away from the tart. “Samuel Johnson says that bribes are a ‘reward given to pervert the judgment or corrupt the conduct.’”

  “If it’s tarts and biscuits, I’ll take Sidney’s bribe any day.” Ariel bit into a biscuit. “But, Sid, if you expect us to help with Phee’s dilemma, you should have brought more sweets.”

  Sidney took the large foolscap sheet Ariel handed him, folding it vertically until he made four long columns.

  “I suppose you need a pencil as well.” Ariel retrieved one from the desk.

  “Why, yes, I do.”

  “Are you this unprepared at Whitehall?” Ophelia reached for another tart.

  “I have a very nice desk at Whitehall with paper, fine Lincolnshire quills, a sturdy inkwell, some blotting paper, a pot of sand when I prefer it, and a sharp knife for scratching out my mistakes.”

  “You must use that knife a great deal,” Ophelia jibed.

  “Phee, don’t be peevish. You are always moody when you can’t make a decision,” Kate admonished. “Besides Sidney brought you tarts.”

  “Thank you, Kate.” Sidney gave a half-bow from his chair. “I rely on you to keep your sister in good humor. We will first gather all the information we have, so that we can see what we might need to know. Ophelia, remind me of the names of your suitors.”

  “You know their names,” Ophelia growled.

  “Play along, Ophelia.”

  “Reginald Bower, Lord Hatch; Captain Elias Burchby, though he’s sold his commission; and Mr. Jeremy Hambenth,” Ophelia conceded.

  Sidney wrote each man’s name at the top of a column, leaving the fourth column blank. “Let’s reduce each man into his constituent parts. Where should we start?”

  “Age.” Kate blurted out. “Lord Hatch is ancient.”

  “Lord Hatch is forty-seven,” Ophelia corrected. “That’s hardly ancient.”

  “Yes, but you are only twenty. That makes him more than twice your age.” Ariel watched Sidney write the number forty-seven under Hatch’s name. “Captain Burchby is thirty-four, and Mr. Hambenth, twenty-eight.”

  Sidney wrote in the numbers. “Now education, family, income.”

  “Lord Hatch is rich. Ophelia would live handsomely on his estate, but it’s far from London, and he resists coming to town, even when Parliament’s in session,” Kate declared.

  “Yes, he’s only here now to look for a wife. He’s had two already.” Ariel grimaced.

  “Three,” Kate corrected.

  “Three! Could he be a modern bluebeard, marrying young women, only to murder them, and hide their corpses in his house?” Ariel’s face lit up with excitement.

  “Ariel, life is not a Minerva Press novel. Hatch’s story is quite tragic: three wives, all dead before his fortieth birthday. At eighteen, he married his childhood sweetheart, but at twenty-nine, he lost her and two of his three sons to smallpox. At thirty-one, he married his son’s governess, but she died shortly after their first anniversary.”

  “Where was he at the time?” Ariel pursued the question.

  “He was in London. She was in the country, visiting her brother. Apparently, she fell from her horse while racing.”

  “Oh.” Ariel looked deflated. “What about the third wife? Hunting accident? Arsenic in her soup?”

  “Rabies,” Ophelia said.

  “Rabies?!” the younger sisters howled in unison.

  “She was bitten by a lapdog brought by a guest to a house party. They had been married nine years. He has been a widow since then.”

  “And you are still considering a man with such terrible luck?” Sidney looked up from his paper.

  “I refuse to reject him because his life has been afflicted with tragedy. He’s a kind man.”

  “He’s gloomy,” Ariel muttered.

  “Well, given his history, he has every right to be.” In Hatch’s column, Sidney recorded three previous marriages. “It’s evidence of your sister’s good heart that she can imagine a future with him. Have the others also suffered the loss of a beloved spouse?”

  “Burchby. His wife died—a weak heart—two years ago while he was at sea, leaving him with a son, now five. Hambeth has never been married,” Ophelia answered quickly.

  Sidney wrote in a one and a zero for marriages, then underneath included the number of living children. “What now?”

  “We need estate and income for the other two,” Kate insisted. “We must know where Ophelia will live and how well she will be cared for.”

  “Right. What about Burchby?”

  “Burchby has a London house, quite nice, and a cottage near Kensington. His family income is from spirits,” Ariel said. “Aunt Millicent thinks Ophelia could expect pin money of around thirty pounds a year. But he’ll offer less.”

  “Why?” Sidney listened patiently. Ophelia liked that he never dismissed her sisters’ opinions.

  “Because he is perfectly sanguine wearing clothes a decade old. A man who doesn’t buy new clothes when courting will not provide his wife with a wardrobe of much variety.”

  “I’m not so vain as to require a new set of dresses every season,” Ophelia objected, but at the same time she was surprised she hadn’t noticed Burchby’s clothes.

  “With Burchby, you’ll be lucky to get a new set every decade,” Ariel said as she shook her head dismissively.

  “Let’s move on to our last suitor, Hambenth,” Sidney redirected the conversation.

  Kate answered, “Hambenth’s family’s money is in trade, so he doesn’t have an estate or property to speak of. He plans to purchase a house when he marries, but for now he lives at his club. He’s the most pleasant of the three and the closest to Ophelia’s age, but somehow I distrust him. I woul
d pick Burchby.”

  “At the same time, Hambenth is the heir to his father’s business, and Ophelia’s settlement is likely to be more substantial: fifty pounds a year and a new wardrobe every season,” Ariel said. “I would pick Hambenth.”

  “Aunt Millicent is leaning toward Lord Hatch,” Ophelia said. “A member of the aristocracy, he wants a wife to manage his household, provide children, and be a proper hostess to his guests. He can contribute a hundred pounds for pin money and new clothes.”

  “Now for a different sort of question. Tell me one disagreeable thing about each of them.” Sidney held his pen poised to write Ophelia’s observations.

  “I’ve eliminated all the openly disagreeable suitors already. Each of these has been a pleasant, easy companion, intelligent, witty. But even so, what can I know from one afternoon—or fifty—in a drawing room, surrounded by my family, or even from a dance or two at a ball? That’s why I asked for help. I need to know if these men act differently in contexts where I cannot observe them.” Ophelia’s stomach twisted as she spoke. The greater problem, though she could not admit it to her sisters, was not the characters of the men but the fact that she had no clear sense of her own mind. How could she choose when she wanted one thing from the three remaining suitors and something entirely different from Sidney?

  Ophelia forced herself to smile, to lighten the mood. “I merely need to fill in the comparisons more fully. Thank you. This is more than I was able to do on my own.”

  “You said you wanted a means to decide.” Sidney looked at his pocket watch. “But I must be going. I’m expected at Whitehall. There’s talk of revising the poor laws, and if I don’t hurry, I might miss all the best gossip.” He rose, and Ophelia escorted him to the door.

  Sidney leaned in to speak softly. “Tonight we’ll discuss next steps.”

  “Next steps?”

  “Listening to you just now has given me some other ideas for how to help you.” Sidney placed a reassuring hand on her elbow. “And we’ll discuss them after the play.”

  * * * *

  At the theater that night, Ophelia sat in the center of the front row of the box, Sidney and Tom on one side, her sisters on the other. Her aunt sat behind with two dear friends.

  “I’m surprised you were willing to see a tragedy on your birthday,” Sidney said.

  “Ariel and I have wanted to see William Betty act for some time. Ariel read that in only two years, he has already earned the staggering sum of twelve thousand pounds for his performances. Unfortunately, he plays only tragic roles.” Ophelia shrugged. “I suppose he must die well.”

  “Let me predict: Ariel wished to see Betty act, and you wished to see why—on the nights he performs—troops are often called to keep order in the streets.”

  “I must admit that I was looking forward to Aunt Millicent staving off the mob with only a walking stick, as she said she did in Paris before the storming of the Bastille. It’s somewhat of a disappointment that we arrived without incident tonight. As for the play, at least it’s not Hamlet. If it had been, I would have had to refuse your gift.”

  “It wasn’t too hard to convince the managers to schedule Douglas for tonight. The trick is in knowing when to ask.”

  “Oh, fie, Sidney.” Ophelia held back a laugh. “You would take credit for the moon shining, if you thought you could.”

  “I did pay a lively fee for just that thing. I’m promised a delightful full moon Friday next, so that I might serenade your window at midnight without falling over my enormous feet.”

  At that moment, the opening performances began. Their box fell silent, leaving Ophelia to her own thoughts. Having Sidney near was always soothing, even though she knew it was a false comfort. But for a moment, she allowed herself to enjoy the closeness of him in the narrow confines of the box. Tonight, instead of chocolate, he smelled of oak and pine, smoky but crisp. She breathed in the scent of him, so variable, but always Sidney.

  Tom was right: of all her suitors, Sidney was the best. Good-tempered and generous, he was the most naturally amiable man of her acquaintance, with a ready smile and an open hand for everyone, whether a footman or a duke. Marrying him would be the most practical choice, and she prided herself on being a most practical young woman.

  But when she considered marrying Sidney, she became moody. The best marriages, she believed, joined two like-minded individuals; she’d seen the comfort that came from such a union in her parent’s marriage. She could be certain of a marriage of like minds with Sidney, but the thought that being all they’d have between them left her cold, even angry. Why did she want more from a marriage with Sidney than she did from her other suitors? It made no sense. Would a one-sided perfect match be torture compared to a mutually indifferent one?

  And it wasn’t jealousy she felt when he paid attention to other young women, their mothers and grandmothers, and their aunts and sisters. He treated everyone with the same solicitude that he extended to her. But sometimes, every once in a while, she wanted him to treat her differently. Or rather, perhaps she wanted him to treat everyone else differently and save all his generous good humor for her. Even worse, when Sidney left her side to talk with other women, or even other men, she felt his absence like the loss of a hand or foot. She hated such dependency.

  If only she’d met Sidney when she still believed that courtship led to love. Instead, she had met Sidney on the most mortifying day of her life.

  It had been her first season, and she had been giddy with the pleasures of being out. For years, she had been obliged to sit, demure and silent, while her aunt entertained guests in the drawing room. As an observer, she had learned the conventions of visits and visiting. With her debut, all that changed. Certainly, she observed all the rules and conventions, and all her interactions with eligible young men were carefully monitored by her aunt or the other chaperones. But within those conventions, she felt free. She could make her own conversations, laugh when she was amused, and make others laugh in return. When she wanted to dance, she never lacked a partner, and when she wanted to engage in conversations, she was never without pleasing company.

  Within weeks, she’d attracted the eye—and she’d thought the heart—of a dashing young lord, Philip Largent, a viscount waiting to be an earl. He’d been solicitous and charming. Their courtship, conducted over tea and whist and hearty country dances, lasted for almost the whole season. He visited her every day, promptly at two o’clock. With each visit, he’d brought her presents: a bouquet of flowers (that made her sneeze), a book of poems (dreadful ones, on housework and piety), a bit of ribbon to match her hair (which matched neither her hair nor anyone else’s). But they were presents nonetheless, and she delighted in each one.

  He wrote her sweet letters each evening after his visit and had them delivered the morning before they next met. She’d kept the letters next to her bedside, tied into a packet with the ungodly ribbon. Other suitors fell away. Other debutantes speculated when he might propose.

  One night, when the heat of the crowd grew too stifling, he’d held her hand on the terrace. When no one was about, he’d stolen a kiss. The kiss had been unremarkable, compared to what she’d imagined a kiss might be, but she was still elated. He squeezed her hand, promising that the next day would be momentous, the start of a new life. She dressed with special care that next morning, but two o’clock came and went without Philip. Friday, the same. On Monday, her aunt had handed her the London Times, pointing at a single paragraph: “Married last Thursday in Gretna Green, Sir Philip Largent and Miss Molly Partwindle.” She realized that when he’d said the morrow would bring the start of a new life, he never said with her.

  Betrayed and furious, she retrieved his letters from her room, then ran through the garden and the alley behind, into the yard of the house next door. The house had been empty and abandoned for months, and she and her sisters had often stolen into the unlocked garden to pick flowers. Some
previous owner had been a devotee of Capability Brown and had dug a large deep pond in the middle of the lawn.

  She didn’t intended to drown herself. She stepped through the rushes, wanting only to get close enough to the water to throw the letters firmly into the middle. But the ground collapsed under her weight. She went under once, the rushes tangling around her, then twice. But she was about to right herself, when a young man, perfectly dressed, with unruly hair and a serious face, appeared at her side.

  Sidney Mason: the new tenant of the house.

  He had lifted her from the rushes, pulled her into his side, and helped her to solid ground. The feel of his arms, strong, yet tender, comforted her. He took one look at her—face streaked with tears and mud, hands still clinging to a packet of letters tied in a miserable ribbon—and said, “Sweet Ophelia, Hamlet was never worth it.” When she replied that her name was in fact Ophelia, he began to laugh, a hearty genuine laugh, and soon she found herself laughing too. They sat on the bank of the pond and laughed until their sides ached.

  Sidney had confessed that he had his own batch of letters to destroy, so they rummaged through the house’s unused kitchen until they found matches. They set a fire at the water’s edge, feeding the two sets of letters into the flames, until each transformed into a crisp pile of ash.

  It had been the start of their friendship, even before they discovered that her aunt and Sidney’s mother had been friends from childhood. The close ties between their families made rejecting him even more difficult.

  If only she could believe his proposals weren’t motivated by pity,

  If only she could believe he wanted her, and not just an agreeable wife,

  If only he could offer her more than a companionable marriage,

  But ‘if onlys’ were for fools and children.

  A rush of loud applause brought Ophelia back to the present. The curtain was closing for intermission.

  “Oh, Ophelia, wasn’t Betty’s performance thrilling? His gestures are so natural, his diction so fluid.” Ariel applauded excitedly.