Her face softened and she looked at him almost like a teacher looked at a favorite pupil who’d gotten the answer wrong. “You are gentler than what I am accustomed to. It was very nice.”
He whistled. “Nice, is it?” The top button of his shirt felt too tight and he pulled at it. “Nice is a good roast or a dry wine.”
She laughed again, cutting off his soliloquy. “I stand by what I said. But I’m afraid I won’t stroke your ego.”
“Stroke other things, though.” He shouldn’t have said such a thing to a countess, but well, she wasn’t the sort of countess that was countess-y about physical intimacy. At least, not now. They’d spent themselves in play, joking and kissing, stroking and licking, but Julian was glad that she had not wanted to let him inside her. Oddly, he didn’t feel ready for that. It didn’t feel right to go that far, whether it was the risk involved, or the lingering echo of betrayal to be with another woman in that way.
Delphine ignored his comment and sighed, lounging back on her satin pillows. He honestly wondered how she didn’t slide right off her bed. “When shall I see you again?”
He finished dressing before answering. When he was finally ready, with the scent of her still all over his face, he said, “Are you sure you want to see me again? After all, I’m merelynice.”
She rolled her eyes, and Julian wondered if Shakespeare’s raven-haired beauty ever rolled her eyes at him.
“For a man who spent a decade in the jungle, I’m astonished your ego is so robust.”
Julian frowned. “For one, I spent my time in the mountains, which are not jungles, and two, what does that have to do with my ego?”
“Certainly you haven’t been with a woman during that time,” she countered, and while her voice was smooth, he could sense her insecurity.
Ungentlemanly behavior, but he let out a burst of laughter to match hers. He did not wish to tell her of Maria, of the life he had thought he was starting there. The home that he’d dreamt of, the children he’d assumed he would have had with her. But that wasn’t hers to know, and it was sacred. “Your hubris outstrips mine, Delphine.”
A sparkling and toothsome smile appeared on her face, and he could see it as false ease. “Then we are quite the pair, aren’t we?”
“Send me a note when you wish to see me,” he said, not knowing how to proceed. He was not a man of means that had an opera box or whatever it was that Londoners went to anymore. Besides, he was certain that whatever he chose, she would dismiss it as beneath her. “I’ll make myself available.”
He left without hearing a response, which felt like he somehow had an upper hand. He didn’t like that being with Delphine felt like a competition between them. Who would win? What could they possibly win? He supposed he could feel cheap, for being used like a rent boy, but he had wanted to be with her, and hers was an eager invitation. Still, he was anxious to bathe and remove her scent.
*
Ophelia was onher way to Tristan’s mountaineering shop—imagine, Tristan as a shopkeeper! It was ridiculous enough to imagine him working, but the idea of him at a shop? With bookkeeping to be done? But Eleanor was insistent they go visit. Ophelia wanted to go in a carriage, but her mother wanted to walk.
It was one of Lady Rascomb’s rare ventures out of the house, and Ophelia would do anything to help her mother emerge from the overwhelming grief. Their progress was slow, but the day was warm and sunny. The summer would be at an end soon, which would give way to more rain and more of her mother’s complaints about pain in her injured leg.
Ophelia sometimes wondered that perhaps her mother’s leg hurt more now than before because her father was not around to pull her outside in the garden, or take her out to the opera. To make her move. Perhaps this fledgling idea of a Paris trip would be good for her mother. She said she didn’t want to go, but perhaps she should?
They were resting for a moment at a café, and Eleanor had gone inside to retrieve a bolstering pot of tea.
“Is that Sir Julian?” Lady Rascomb asked, peering across the street.
“It certainly looks that way,” Ophelia said, standing. She waved her hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t very well scream over traffic for him.
But the table next to them chose that moment to leave, screeching chairs and clattering dishes, a commotion which made Sir Julian glance over. Once he spied her, he gave a small, tight smile, and faltered. He clearly had somewhere to be, but good manners dictated he come to greet them.
Eleanor exited the building and stopped suddenly as she saw Sir Julian approaching. Ophelia glanced at her, wondering what made her pause. “Tea shall be out shortly,” Eleanor said, taking her seat.
Ophelia was surprised at Eleanor’s choice to sit before greeting Sir Julian. Surely she had forgiven him for the faux pas of his friend, Lady DeMarius.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said, bowing to them all, even if only her mother deserved the courtesy.
Ophelia bobbed a curtsy back and invited him to sit, not that she expected him to.
He deflected all invitations, and there were murmured responses flying back and forth in a way that Ophelia couldn’t quite catch. She listened, marking conversations that were clearly direct quotes from deportment manuals, but there was a current she didn’t understand. It was like a secret code she couldn’t crack. She knew it was there, knew it existed, but no amount of study ever allowed her to decipher it.
Finally, as a way to send Sir Julian on his way, her mother invited him to dinner. And then through the maneuverings of politeness, invited the countess as well. Ophelia blinked rapidly. None of this made sense. She tapped her fingers together, thumb, pointer, middle, ring finger, pinky, and back again. It calmed her enough that she repeated the gesture.
A waiter brought out their tea and it was yet another cue for Sir Julian to be on his way. Not once did Julian meet her eye, despite the fact that she’d called to him.
She sat back down at the table, and watched as Eleanor and her mother exchanged pointed looks. Ophelia felt very perplexed. But if she couldn’t ask the question of these two women, her sister-in-law and her mother, who could she ask?
