He nodded. “I wouldn’t say it in that harsh of terms, but essentially, yes.”
“So you get to know who I’ve been with, but I don’t get to know yours?”
He shook his head. “If you’d had a partner before me, I would not ask his name. I don’t care, and I’d prefer not to know.”
“But I haven’t, though.” Ophelia said, her mind spinning and calculating at an alarming speed. “I volunteered my past. Shouldn’t you, as well?”
“I don’t want to think of any other woman but you right now. Why is that a bad thing?”
“Because you said you’d never felt this way before,” she insisted.
“I haven’t,” he said, still lying on his side, head propped up by his hand.
“But how do I know that it is true, since you won’t tell me about the others?”
He put his free hand on her lap, grasping for one of hers, but she moved them away. She didn’t want to hold hands anymore.
“I don’t see how what I feel now has anything to do with my past. They are separate. I am not the man I was yesterday, and he is not the man I am today.”
“And obviously I am not the woman I was yesterday either. Yesterday I was an odd but eligible young lady. Now I am ruined, even though I don’t feel it.”
A frown burrowed its way into Julian’s forehead. “Your mind hops about so quickly, I’m afraid I’m having trouble keeping up.”
Ophelia waved her hand, perturbed now. She’d lost that dreamy, sleepy, sated feeling from earlier. Now she felt troubled. Julian somehow had managed to make her feel alone, even though they were together. For the first time since her father died, tears began welling up in her eyes.
“Oh,” Julian sat up, surprised, when he noticed. “Er—”
“I shouldn’t have come,” Ophelia said, doing her best to keep her tone even and polite. “I do apologize for being so forward.” She slipped out of bed, collecting her discarded things. She pulled on her shift and then her corset, pulling it loosely around herself. Oh, she could smell herself, with Julian’s scent on her layered on top. She found her stockings, and then her underskirt.
“I thought I was somehow different. Special. The way you looked at me,” Ophelia said, ashamed that tears fell out of her eyes as she bent over. Dark circles bloomed on the lush red carpet.
“You are special, Ophelia,” Julian said, but he remained in bed. He didn’t try to talk her out of it, nor did he stand to beg her to stay.
It was only logical to conclude he didn’t care if she stayed or went. So she would go and bathe and rid herself of all these reminders. No longer could she claim a virginal status. No longer eligible. But at twenty-eight, what did people expect from her?
She longed to shed this skin. The skin of expectations, of dashed hopes, of defeat and disappointment.
“Ophelia, I don’t want—”
She pulled her dress on over her head, muffling whatever it was that he’d said. She was done listening, because he wasn’t willing to tell her what she wanted to know. Why wouldn’t he just give her a number? Five? Ten? Fifty? How many women had he purred his loving words to? Exactly how not special was she? One in ten was certainly a different level than one in fifty. That was just mathematics. Slippers on, she swiped her key from the table nearest the door.
“Forget this ever happened,” she said. “I will.”
And she was glad to make it down the hall without running into anyone else. She fumbled with her key, but finally got it unlocked. She threw herself on the bed and cried.
*
Julian stared atthe closed door in shock. Then he fell back against the pillows. It smelled of Ophelia everywhere. A heady aroma of sex and jasmine. He rubbed his hands against his face. He’d thought he was doing the right thing. How often had it been drilled into him to not kiss and tell? That it was disrespectful, rude, and potentially life-endangering for the woman?
But Ophelia wanted him to disgorge his past like it was a tidy memory, wrapped up in a bow. It was impossible. And there were some nights he’d purposefully forgotten. Times that made him feel the way Ophelia now felt.
What did he expect when he seduced his friend’s daughter? “Oh, that was stupid.” He squeezed his eyes shut. In being respectful, he had disrespected her. In being disrespectful to his mentor, he’d respected his own heart. And now, the stupid git he was, he’d ruined a friendship with not just Ophelia, but with Tristan and Rascomb and Lady Rascomb.
He’d blown everything to pieces because Ophelia had come to him. It was a test, and he’d failed. What would his friend say to him if he were still alive? Julian sighed and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t know anymore. If it were any other woman, Rascomb would have advised marrying the girl because she was a virgin and high-born and he’d ruined her. But if she weren’t, then Rascomb would advise an apology, a gesture, and then to move on and try to never see her again to avoid the embarrassment on both their parts.
But his own daughter? Rascomb would have raged at him. Julian didn’t know what the right thing to do would be. Should he ask her to marry him? Him—a broke, wandering baronet without a family or a home. Or should he keep quiet and let Lord Fairport propose and solve everything for him? But the idea of that man’s soft hands on her hips, the idea of him kissing her with his dry lips—it was going to make him vomit.
He dressed, bathing so as not to smell like he’d done what he had done. He went out to walk Paris—the salve to any problem. In the lobby he encountered Tristan and his wife, people he really did not want to chat with as he mulled over what to do with Ophelia.
