Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
She turned back around to face him. “I suppose you think something’s wrong with me. Maybe there is.”
He stared back at her with an unfathomable expression. She wasn’t sure if he wanted to embrace her or throw her from the battlements.
“I’m not giving up on this marriage,” he finally said. “And there’s nothing wrong with you except for your penchant for emotional tirades. You ought to be spanked for dragging me up here, with both of us in our damned night clothes. It’s too late tonight, but at some point in the future, a reckoning shall be made.”
She lifted her chin. “I’ll run away, then.”
“Yes, Lady Drama, I don’t doubt you will, but as I said, it is too late tonight. Let’s go down and go to bed.”
She hugged herself against a sudden breeze. “I’d rather not. I want to sleep up here.”
“Of course you do, but it’s not possible.”
She sank down against the wall, finding a smooth expanse of rock to support her back. She pulled her feet beneath her and held her robe closed. “Perhaps the fresh air will be good for my emotional tirades,” she said with a sniff.
“Such a spanking,” he replied, so quietly she could hardly hear.
She wouldn’t go down with him now, not with that hanging over her head, even though she probably deserved to be punished. “I wish to sleep up here,” she said again. “You may go down.”
“Oh, may I?” His voice dripped with forbearance. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you in my life. Fine, I’ll go for some blankets and pillows.”
She hugged her knees and waited for him to return, looking forward to getting her cold toes warm again. When he came back, he had armfuls of blankets. A baffled footman followed behind with pillows.
“You can’t sleep so close to the edge,” he said, putting the blankets down near the stairwell door. “Come over here.”
She was too drained to argue with him any longer. She went where he pointed and curled up in the blankets. Now she could look up at the sky all night, at the twinkling, bright stars. “You don’t have to stay,” she said, when he laid down next to her.
“I plan to stay.”
She wondered if the sky over Wescott Abbey always looked so clear and cloudless, or if tonight was a special case. When her eyes started to close, she wrenched them open again. She wanted to stay up in the bracing night air, but the blankets were warming her tense muscles, and her husband had gone silent and still beside her. She stole a glance at him, to find him staring back at her, his expression pensive.
“Go to sleep,” he said, his head propped on his hand. “You wanted to sleep up here, so sleep.”
*
Ophelia woke in her bed, and for a moment, she thought the previous night’s events might have been an especially vivid dream. She hadn’t shouted at Wescott, had she? And run up to the roof, and demanded to sleep there? Because she was here now, under her own covers.
No, not her own covers. She was still wrapped in the thick down blankets Wescott had carried up to the roof. He must have carried her back down and deposited her here once she slept, or worse, asked a footman to do it. How embarrassing.
Well, it was her fault. She threw off the heavy blankets and found she was still in her night robe also. So yes, all of it had happened. The memories came back to her, the fighting and accusing and running away. Why, she’d gone so far beyond the pale of proper wifely behavior that Wescott hadn’t even stayed after he brought her here.
Not that she was disappointed. It just wasn’t like him.
She turned toward the sun streaming in the window, and noticed a note propped against her pillow. She dreaded to reach for it. Was it a lecture by pen? A summons for a punishment as soon as she awakened? She picked it up and angled it toward the light.
Dear Ophelia,
I’m sorry, but it was too cold to let you stay the entire night on the roof. I brought you down just after you fell asleep.
By the time you awaken, I will have left for London with Augustine and Marlow, as I have some business to attend to there. My parents and sisters will stay with you until I return. My mother will listen for any nightmares, so you needn’t suffer your fiery terrors without help.
I’ve left word with the staff that you’re forbidden from sleeping on the roof while I’m away. I advise you to obey me in this, as I still haven’t decided on a consequence for your behavior last night.
Regards,
Wescott
She read it again, then again. That was that, then. He’d left her to run off to London with his friends, leaving her under his family’s care for added humiliation. He claimed to have some business to attend to there. She’d heard nothing about such business until now. She imagined instead he would do whatever his bachelor friends did—drinking, gambling, and socializing with immoral women.