Theo then let out a despondent sigh as she shook her head.
“It is Tristan that is causing me to worry.”
Ophelia felt a jolt move through her broken heart, so intensely she flinched.
“Why would you worry for Lord Perfect?” She asked, trying to sound as nonchalant and condescending as possible. As she used to before they’d kissed…before they touched…before something other than hatred started to form between them.
“You know Tristan,” Theo said wearily, “He has always been a little…tightly wound. He is not what one would call a man of leisure, even when he was still a boy.”
Ophelia nodded, a little too readily.
“However, lately he is even more so. His temper is on edge. He will not confess it but I know he is barely sleeping. I can see it in his eyes,” Theo went on. “He looks…haunted? Tortured? I do not quite know, but I do knowsomethingis amiss. And he will not talk to me or even Alistair.”
Ophelia shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the pieces of her broken heart all filling with worry with the man that had scornedher. She thought back to their last meeting at the masquerade last week and how profoundly confusing the entire night had been. They had went from barely speaking, to Tristan twisting an innocent man’s arm, to nearly making love-
She paused on that particular memory, sensations of ecstasy, happiness, and desire briefly relieving the constant, nagging pain in her chest. No one had ever made her feel as good, as beautiful, as seen, as Tristan had. Yet when he had spoken of losing his dignity, it had torn all of those lovely feelings away.
They had fought, worse than ever before, and then before she’d left, the man that just snubbed her asked her not to marry the only man that was currently interested in taking her hand.
All such emotions she’d felt that night had ended up coming out in her final painting. Lust and pain clashed violently with one another on the canvas in bright splashes of red and gold. A blue shard of lightning- a hue that matched Tristan’s eyes- snaked through the center of the painting.
It speared through a woman facing away and shackled; going through her shoulder blades and making her arch against her chains. She’d painted the naked woman with her arms spread wide in her bonds, her head thrown back in a scream that only the viewer could decide was one of ecstasy or pain. Then to the side stood the man, barely visible through the golden-red mist. Masked and naked from the waist down with his arms folded across his chest. She had made his stance brooding and dark.
The key to the woman’s shackles- to her freedom- dangled between the man’s fingertips as he stared intensely at her from afar.
As she’d promised she’d sent the painting to Tristan’s residence in disguise. She’d wrapped the rolled canvas in another painting she’d done; a still life of white and purple water lilies on the surface of a lake. Then wrapped that in several layers of fabric. She’d then sent Mr. Potter, her most trusted of staff, to deliver it to Tristan personally, and he had promised that the package had made it directly to Tristan’s hands.
Two days later, she’d found another black box and a red envelope in her room. In the box laid an astounding two-thousand pounds. Double what she had been owed. On the card in the envelope there had only been one sentence written, and as usual was not signed.
We are finished.
Ophelia had burned all of the other red cards and envelopes Tristan had sent as a precautionary measure. Yet when it came to the final one- the one that hurt her most of all, she had not been able to do so. It currently laid in her pillow case, where she would pull it from each night. She did not understand why. To read it only hurt her all over again. Yet she did so, over and over again, as if she were a glutton for punishment.
The tap of something against Ophelia’s shoe stirred her from her thoughts, and she slowly came back to the present. She looked around at her friends, trying her best to focus on them.The subject had been changed again. Amelia and Dominic were throwing some sort of evening garden party with an All-Hallows-Eve twist.
“It is going to be so wonderful,” Amelia explained excitedly, “We are going to place large fires throughout the garden, require our guests to wear extravagant costumes- of and of course,masks.”
Ophelia felt the urge to shoot up from her chair, her chest feeling tight as she heard the word and was once again reminded of Tristan, but again, she felt another tap at her foot. She turned toward the sensation, and found Rose staring at her with a concerned look.
“You seem very distracted today, are you sure are well, my darling?” Rose asked kindly as she moved her chair closer to Ophelia.
“I am,” Ophelia forced out the lie, “I just…have a lot on my mind. With my tutoring.”
Rose pressed her lips together as her brows furrowed slightly.
“Your tutoring,” Rose replied slowly, “With the Starlington children, correct?”
Ophelia’s skin prickled with alarm.
“Yes,” Ophelia, her tone curt. “Wonderful children. Horrid scholars. They make the work quite troublesome.”
“Mhm. I see,” Rose mused, leaning a little closer to Ophelia.
“Rose, what are you doing?” Ophelia asked, in no mood to play whatever game her friend was heading toward.
“I know you are not tutoring the Starlington children, Ophelia,” Rose whispered. “I bumped into Lady Starlington at Promenade just a day ago and inquired on how she found your services. She had no idea what I was talking about.”
As if she was not feeling lowly enough, Ophelia’s ruined heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. Keeping her secrets from her father was easy enough; he never really went out and about anymore. She should had have known, though, that it would not be long until one of her friends would find out the truth.
