Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“There was a fire, remember? I tried to do the right thing by saving her.”
“And then you did the wrong thing and seduced her.”
“I didn’t realize who she was, or that you idolized her so. None of us knew you loved her! You didn’t tell anyone, least of all the lady in question. Ophelia had no idea who you were.”
He knew he’d conducted himself like a lovesick madman, and it stung to be reminded of it. “I would have told her eventually, when the time was right. I might have married her if I’d had time to be introduced, to get to know her. You destroyed those opportunities.”
“Not intentionally.” Wescott pursed his lips and looked away. “You must try to be happy for me now. Happy for us. I’ve fallen deeply in love with her. She’s such a wonderful woman, as you know, and while we haven’t told many people yet…she is soon to be the mother of my child.”
“Is she?” Townsend took this felicitous news like a dull blow. “Congratulations.”
“In fact, everything is going so well, and so happily. The only dark spot in all of this is our lost friendship.” He looked back at him. “It was hard for Ophelia and me in the beginning. I could have used your steady head and your support with all of it.”
“Forgive me if I didn’t feel up to helping with your godforsaken marriage.”
“Don’t call it that.”
His raised voice doubtless carried to the eavesdroppers around them. Both of them fell silent and walked faster, as if they could outpace this uncomfortable discussion they must have.
“All I can do now is ask you to forgive me for impeding your way with Ophelia. I never meant to. It was my ignorance and weakness, and yes, poor behavior that disrupted your dreams. But Towns, honestly, what love did she ever show you? She didn’t know you from any of the dozen men who mooned at her during concerts and balls. Now you have Jane, your Lady Townsend, who gazes at you like a God who walks among us. Can’t you be content?”
“Content?” He stopped and turned on his friend. “I proposed to Jane to get back at you, because I thought June was Jane, or Jane was June.” He waved a hand and narrowed his eyes. “I proposed to her as revenge.”
“So I understand. It was awful of you, at least as awful as what I did.”
They scowled at one another, then Wescott cut his eyes away, to look at Jane in the distance. “The gossips say what a lark it is, that your wife gazes at you with such adulation. It disgusts me, how they mock her when you’re to blame. She’s paying the price for our disagreement, for our misbehavior and your insincere offer for her hand.”
“She does not know they talk about her.”
“If you keep taking her out in society, she’ll realize they’re discussing her business.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean she doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand that I proposed to her by accident, in a fit of anger. She doesn’t know about Ophelia’s part in all of it, either.”
Now Wescott was the one narrowing his eyes. “You never told her the truth?”
“What? That I was so in love with Ophelia I entirely lost my scruples and proposed to her as retribution? No, I haven’t told her. I don’t want her to know. It belittles her.”
“But she ought to know, don’t you think? It will break her heart if she discovers it by mistake.”
“Her heart was already broken by damned Hobart, who scuttled their betrothal just before I came along. I let her believe his perfidy was my reason for proposing.”
“You lying pair of bollocks.”
“Shut up, Wescott. You’ve no moral high ground to lecture from.”
“It seems neither of us have.”
It was true. They’d both behaved so badly. Wescott had endangered Ophelia’s reputation to the point he had to marry her. Townsend had let a vulnerable woman believe he’d married her for caring reasons, when really he’d been out to get back at a friend. Worse, he’d bragged about the attempt in a public dining room, so everyone knew why their unsuited marriage had taken place.
“I’m not happy with any of it,” said Townsend miserably. “I hate how all of this turned out.”
“Is your marriage so bad?” Wescott sounded genuinely concerned. “Are you too different for things to work?”
“We’re very different. I suppose things work well enough day to day, but she is so…” He did not know how to describe how she addled him. She was just so open to him, so pure, so needful, so deserving of love, and he was so conflicted and ashamed.
“I had a vision of who I would marry,” he continued, “and Jane is so outside that vision. Sometimes I look at her and think, how can this be? She is sweet and endearing, and tries hard to be what she imagines I want, and I think I ought to consider myself the most fortunate of husbands, but there is this lingering feeling that… Forgive me. That I’d rather have married Ophelia.”