“Of course,” Julian said, following her lead. The tension between them was full of ache and sodden hopes. Julian didn’t know where to even start. What could he say to her to make up for what had happened in the last months? When he was able to finally pull himself together enough to speak, she spoke at the same time.
“I apologize, go ahead,” she said.
“No, please, I don’t intend to talk over you.”
She gave him a devastating look and asked lightly, “Don’t you?”
It landed like buckshot, humiliation scattering inside him. “I don’t. I’m here to apologize to you at the very least.”
She considered it, and he was desperate to hear her next words. “And at the very most?”
He swallowed hard, not wanting to open his entire chest for her evisceration. “To summit the Matterhorn with you.”
She nodded, and it was obvious that this was an inadequate answer, but he didn’t know why. His brain shook like a gold panner.
“I know I have several things to apologize for,” Julian said, not sure where to start. “And the first is for leaving you in Paris, without saying goodbye.”
“Is that the first chronologically, or the first you’re saying?” Her tone was light and delicate, and it panicked him.
Whatever his answer was, he knew it was wrong. “The first I’m listing. In a long list.”
She stared at him, unblinking and expressionless.
“Very long list,” he assured her. He cleared his throat. “Ophelia. I want to tell you—er, if you want to know, that is. I want to answer the question you asked me, back in Paris. The question that I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know that you were really asking to share myself. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a question rooted in jealousy, but rooted in a desire to know me. I pushed you away, and that hurt you. I see that now.”
“Then why did you leave Paris?” Ophelia asked.
“Because I knew I had disappointed you. Your coldness unnerved me. And I knew that I had done something wrong, but I thought that I had dishonored your father’s memory by going to bed with you. It was silly to think more about a dead man than you, who were right beside me. It didn’t occur to me that in fact, the connection betweenusshould have been honored. And I didn’t do that.”
Ophelia eyed him, and he could see her skepticism floating between them, despite the fact that moonlight was the only illumination. Finally, she looked down, as if she had taken his measure completely. “What would you say now if I asked that question again? If I asked you about your past lovers?”
Julian cleared his throat. “I would remind you that I am a decade your senior. That the ten years in which I lived outside of Europe were spent as young men are wont to spend their unattached times.”
“Which means you cavorted with actresses?”
Julian cringed. Even hearing the words out of her mouth felt awful. “No, because those kinds of women were... unhappy?” He finished. How to explain to a lady the state of some of these women? Taken from their people, or their lands already flattened from disease and clear-cutting? He shook his head. “No, I took a lover. A woman I thought I would marry.”
“Oh,” Ophelia whisper, the surprise evident in her voice.
“I realize now how naïve I was. She was the daughter of an indigenous woman and a Spanish man and spent time in the village where I based many of my surveys. I kept rooms there, and offered her a place to live while I was away. Which was frequent. And when I would return, we would live together. She’d made the place her own in my absence, and it made my scant rooms feel like a home. I was foolish enough to believe she felt something bigger about me, and not that she had a very nice place to stay where I was rarely there to bother her.”
“What happened next?” Ophelia’s voice was soft. She clasped her hands together, letting them bounce off her legs as she walked.
“She left.”
“I bet it still hurt.”
“It hurt my pride, yes,” Julian admitted. “And I thought I loved her. It took falling in love with you to understand that it was different.” The words were out of his mouth,falling in love with you, but she didn’t seem to notice. Did she understand how difficult it was for him to offer up his past like this? To be open and vulnerable to her derision or worse: disinterest.
Ophelia looked at him, her expression serious and thoughtful. “You wanted a home.”
Julian nodded. “My parents died when I was young, and I kept on living at school. I didn’t really have a home.”
“Is that still the same now? You want a home?”
Her question was like a rock thrown into a pond. His mind had his immediate answer, but then everything fell into place as the ripples cast outward. “No.”
She frowned. “Then what do you want?”
Julian smiled because he felt his chest expanding, as if he’d been wearing a too-tight waistcoat for a decade, not knowing how to take a full breath. “I want you, Ophelia. I want your friendship, I want your respect. It may be too much to ask, but I also want your love. I haven’t loved since my parents died. I’ve been alone. And I’d forgotten how big a person can feel when one loves someone.”
Ophelia caught her breath and stopped walking, so he did as well. “Those are quite the demands.”
“They aren’t demands. They are offers. Ones you aren’t obligated to take.” Julian held out his hands, hoping she might put hers into them. She didn’t, but he kept his outstretched, just in case. “I wronged you, Ophelia. I hurt you, yes, by the way I treated you in Paris, and by leaving. But I also wronged you professionally. You know that I would never purposefully take credit for someone else’s work.”
Ophelia’s features smoothed into cool detachment.
“So I have, in my room, the reprinted edition of the latest RGS journal. They retracted my name, and credited your last name, Bridewell. Someday, perhaps you can take full ownership of that work. If not, everyone will think it was Tristan. But people who know you, even a little bit, will understand that you wrote that article. Your achievements are wondrous, and belong to you.”
She slid her hands into his, but didn’t meet his eye. But that was fine—he could wait. He would wait until eternity dawned for Ophelia Bridewell.
