“Food?” Ophelia suggested.
“Odors.” Arthur winced.
Lady Rascomb chuckled.
“Is this normal, mama?” Ophelia asked.
“Oh yes, for a woman who is with child, the first few months are unpredictable and fraught. Odors, in particular, can be a challenge.”
“Would it be an imposition to wait a week or so, in order to allow Lady Emily to recover herself?” Ophelia asked. “I wouldn’t mind a postponement either.”
Arthur looked at her with concern. “Why?”
Ophelia squirmed. She had the answer—this whole Lucy Walker situation—but it didn’t feel like the truth. What the truth was, she wasn’t sure, and therefore couldn’t say. “I’m afraid that having my dreams dashed makes me not want company.”
Arthur slapped his knees. “Then we shall wait until a more fortuitous time. Lord Fairport waited this long to pay his attentions to you. He can wait a bit longer.”
“Thank you, Arthur, er—I mean—” Ophelia still couldn’t manage to address him by his title.
Arthur put his hand on her shoulder. “Quite all right. You can always call me Arthur. I know it doesn’t seem right the other way.”
Ophelia swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and nodded, giving a faint, pained smile as recognition of his generosity. The shades of her father were everywhere.
*
“I must admit,I do not know who that is,” Julian said, not daring to rest his teacup on the table, for fear that Ophelia’s wild gesticulations might upend it. He’d never seen her like this, and it was amusing.
“Melchior Anderegg?” she repeated, looking at him with such huge blue eyes that he wondered if they were smaller or bigger than the circumference of a chicken egg.
He shook his head again, trying very hard to hide the smile that was about to break out upon his face.
“Not only is he a vastly experienced guide, he has done first ascents on a number of the more treacherous peaks—” She held up a finger, as if he might dare interrupt her. “—Which are not necessarily the famous ones.”
“He sounds like an excellent man to know,” Julian said.
Ophelia leafed through a notebook that was stuffed with copious notes in her precise handwriting. There were illustrations for ideas on how to improve gear, instructions on challenging knots, notes on certain snow conditions, all things she had noted during both the Ben Nevis and the Matterhorn expeditions. All notes she had shown and discussed with her father, no doubt. He wondered if she could separate her father from her ambition.
“There are a few other men I might consider, but Anderegg is typically in the Alps for the summer climbing season.”
“Would you consider a woman guide?” Julian asked, just to see what she would say.
She dropped her book. “You know of one?”
“You sound so hopeful.”
“Of course I do! An all-woman expedition?” She sighed and leaned back on the sofa, as another woman might do when describing her wedding day or perfect husband.
“I thought you might be too jealous to entertain the thought,” he said, looking at her sideways, so they both faced the same way.
“Julian,” she said, dropping the formal honorific. What a relief to not have that hang between them. He hated the sound of thatsiron her lips. “I wantallwomen to be able to climb a mountain. To have access to the kind of physical freedom my parents have encouraged me to have. We are restricted in so many ways, this gilded cage of frippery, when the feeling of running in cool air, sliding down a snowy hill, jumping to climb a tree, all bring a visceral joy. Why should that be beaten out of us? Do we not deserve a happiness that does not come with the price of pain?”
Julian frowned, not following. “What joy carries the price of pain?”
“Childbirth,” she said simply.
Her answer threw him. It was not an answer he expected from a young lady, but then again, Ophelia Bridewell surprised him at every turn. “There are other happinesses in the world besides a child. I know, for I have had many.”
“Name one,” she said, smoothing out the map of the Matterhorn. There were four sides of the mountain, and she’d already attempted one. Would it be more logical to try a different route? He could suggest it, but knowing her, she’d already thought through the idea and discarded it.
