Page 9 of Into the Sky With You (The Ladies Alpine Society #4)

O phelia woke up disoriented. Then she felt the heat of another body and looked over to see Julian lying next to her, reading.

“Good morning,” he said, as if she were in the dining room having breakfast, and not naked in his bed.

Her body felt light and... wonderful. There was a pinching feeling near her sex, but the rest of her felt elated. The sheets slid around her naked skin, a decadent sensation. “Good morning.”

“I ordered a tea tray to be delivered to the room, but I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so there will only be one cup.”

Ophelia nodded, still groggy. She’d never felt this relaxed in her life. Stretching out and flexing her toes was incredible. Julian closed his book and put it on the nightstand, sliding down in bed and capturing her around her middle. It felt strange that his bare palm could skate across her fleshy abdomen so easily, so close, so warm.

Her body flooded with another overwhelming surge of decadence and lazy desire. She tugged him closer and he obeyed. No wonder Eleanor and Tristan didn’t rise until noon. If this was how being in love while married felt, she’d never get a thing done. He fitted himself against her back, and she raised his palm to her mouth and kissed it.

His mouth scraped her shoulder, his stubble zinging along her skin. The sun flooded in the window, despite the curtains. She could feel the chill of the room outside of their blankets, and it somehow made it all the cozier. Her eyes batted shut. Bliss.

She awoke sometime later, Julian dressed but with bare feet, reclining on the bed over the comforter, reading and drinking from the lone teacup. She blinked. “How long did I sleep for?”

“Which time?” Julian asked with a smile.

“I never sleep this long.” She yawned, and noted the room was warmer than it had seemed earlier.

“Then you must need it.” Julian reached out, touching her hair, pulling a lock away from her shoulder. The expression on his face was one Ophelia had never seen before, but it was so welcome. It was close to how her father had looked at her mother. How Tristan looked at Eleanor. How Karl Vogel looked at Justine. Well, that was not quite right. Sometimes Karl looked at Justine with a perplexed sort of frown, as if he couldn’t predict what she would say or do next.

“Would you... be interested in trying that again?” he asked.

His question made her toes curl with the anticipation. “I would.”

He whipped his shirt off and dove for her, causing her no end of giggling. It was faster this time, more pointed. He figured out what made her open, and again he spilled on her thighs.

The drowsy decadence of the morning caused her eyelids to grow heavy. “I suppose this is why they keep this from unmarried women.”

“Keep what?” Julian cleaned her and then himself with a towel before slipping into bed next to her.

“This absolutely sated feeling I have. I’ve heard so many terrible stories about what to expect on my wedding night. Not one had a story that was remotely similar to this.”

“I think there are a thousand reasons for that, but mostly it is considered disrespectful to be so passionate with one’s wife. That touching you, making you cry out, watching you as you find your pleasure, that is not for wives.”

Ophelia thought her eyes might pop out of her head. “What do you mean?”

“It is what one does with a lover, or a woman of a lower class.”

“Then how did you learn?” Ophelia asked, and as the words came out of her mouth, the possibilities spiraled out in her mind. How many lovers had he already engaged with? Was she adequate in comparison? Would he regret this encounter? Was he thinking of someone else when he was with her?

He gave a tight smile. “Men talk about this sort of thing.”

A stab of insecurity pierced her. “How many lovers have you had?”

“Ophelia,” he chastised gently, drawing out the last vowel of her name.

“Please tell me,” she said. Her mind was clicking through so fast she couldn’t keep up. She was full of overwhelming emotion and it unsettled her. Under the covers, she ran her fingers in the familiar pattern, thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinkie, and back. “I’ve never been with anyone before, and I want to know if I did it right.”

“You did beautifully,” he said, cupping her head to smooth down her hair.

“Better than Lady DeMarius?” Ophelia pressed. The woman’s name caught in her throat.

He sighed. “Ophelia. I’m going to say this one time, and I mean it with all the gentleness I can muster. What I have done in my past, who I have been with, is not really anything I must tell you.”

She pulled herself up, sitting against the pillows and the headboard. “So you’re telling me it’s none of my business.”

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 at the 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.

“Looking a bit down there, mate,” Tristan said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Too much wine?”

If only it was a hangover making him feel this way. “Must be.”

“We are going out for a walk before meeting up with everyone for dinner.” Mrs. Bridewell said, pulling on her gloves.

Julian grimaced, trying to think of an excuse he might give that he wouldn’t be invited on a walk, but nothing came. “As am I.”

“You should join us!” Tristan put his arm around Julian and steered him towards the door.

There was no resisting the man without seeming unpleasant, so he acquiesced, knowing that it would give him no opportunity to think. Would he accidentally blurt out his problem to Ophelia’s brother? He didn’t think so, as long as he could keep himself partitioned. To keep himself to the man he was two days ago, and not the man he’d become when Ophelia announced her desire for him. Which had changed him completely.

*

There was a knock at the door. Or rather, a rhythm that Justine pounded on every surface and this was no exception. Ophelia lay in her bed, clean but clad only in her underthings. She didn’t want to get up and go anywhere. The world was too much, and she was too little.

“Come in,” Ophelia called, muffled by an over-stuffed pillow, because moving was impossible.

Justine popped in, and Ophelia could feel her happiness emanate from her. Good for her, but Ophelia couldn’t stand it. Not right now.

“Oh. It’s this, then.” Justine kicked off her slippers and crawled into bed next to Ophelia. Her wide brown eyes stared down the pillow until Ophelia clapped it down to peer at her. How was it that Justine could see through the pillow and Ophelia could still feel her eyes on her?

“It’s nothing,” Ophelia said into the pillow, letting the fluff rise back up.

“What did he say?”

“Who?”

Justine pushed the pillow down so she could look Ophelia in the face. Justine already knew, so why did Ophelia have to say it aloud? “If this isn’t about Sir Julian, you are a terrible best friend and you need to update me right now.”

Ophelia sighed. “It is.” If she thought about it more, she might start crying, and that was unacceptable. She was angry, wasn’t she?

“What happened last night after we all went to bed?” Justine asked, but as soon as she finished speaking her eyes went wide and she gasped. “You hussy! Tell me everything.”

Ophelia flipped over onto her back, and gave a pleading look to Justine. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who am I going to tell?”

“Eleanor, Prudence, Karl, and then they’ll tell their husbands, which includes my brother—”

Justine shrugged. “Fine. I won’t tell. So. What happened? Did you go to him? Oh, I bet you did.”

Ophelia groaned. She was so foolish. And Justine knew her too well. “Yes. And he tried to turn me away.”

“Good man, he has manners.” Justine clucked and rearranged the folds of the blanket around her.

“But then I told him that I wanted him to kiss me, and so he did.”

“Good man, he has eyeballs.”

“Why does that make him a good man?” Ophelia demanded.

“Because if he hadn’t kissed you, you would have been exactly like this but with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

“What do I have to show for it now?” Ophelia asked.

Justine waved her hand all around, as if there were an entire swarm of bees on her. “You’re different now, are you not?”

“I don’t know. I just feel miserable, so I suppose that’s different.” Ophelia covered her eyes with her hand. “I am so stupid.”

“But Sir Julian is, well... he’s in love with you, isn’t he? That’s what all the hinting about a marriage proposal was about?”

Ophelia frowned. “What marriage proposal?”

“In your letters! You kept talking about possibly finally receiving a marriage proposal. You never said who, so I assumed it was Sir Julian! He followed you to Paris, after all. And the way he looks at you, it’s as if daisies were springing out of your head.”

“I wish daisies were springing out of my head,” Ophelia grumbled. “Far more interesting than being jilted.”

Justine gasped again. “Who could jilt you? Honestly! First, though. Marriage proposal. Who is it if it isn’t Sir Julian?”

Ophelia tried very hard to keep a neutral face. “Lord Fairport.”

Justine screwed up her face, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she reached back into the memories of the ballrooms. “Ugh. Really? Didn’t he try to marry your sister?”

“And now me,” Ophelia said, raising her arms, and then letting them fall down and hit herself. “Ow.”

“I’d prefer Sir Julian,” Justine said.

“So would I, but it isn’t up to me, is it?” Ophelia said.

Justine poked her in the ribs.

“Ow, what was that for?”

“I wanted to see if you were real. Because Ophelia, when was the last time something you wanted didn’t happen?”

“You make me sound like a spoiled child.”

“I don’t mean it like that and you know it. I mean that you work for what you want. You see it, you want it, you get it, whatever it takes.”

“And what you don’t understand is that I’m not good enough. Example, I didn’t summit the Matterhorn.”

“If another woman tells me that she is past her prime after twenty-five, I’m going to scream.” Justine threw a pillow across the room. “And being intimate with a man and climbing the most dangerous mountain in Europe are not the same.”

Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I’m saying that I can’t do what I set out to do. That these challenges are too big, whether it’s the Matterhorn or pursuing Sir Julian. He was absolutely clear about that.”

Justine put her hands together had took a steadying breath. “Darling. You are literally perfect. There is no one in the world more perfect than you, and I know that because I’ve met you and I’ve met them. And they are terrible.”

“That’s a very limited sample, Justine.” Her friend’s loyalty was zealous and biased, but it still made Ophelia feel better.

Justine held her finger up, as if she were making an academic point. “But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“I don’t know what happened, really. Everything seemed fine. I thought he really liked me, and then when I asked him deeper questions, he wouldn’t answer me.”

Justine’s mouth twisted off to the side and she frowned. “Firstly, I’m absolutely on your side no matter what. I will burn his house down for you if you like.”

“Please don’t.”

“Well, the offer stands. But what did you ask him, exactly?”

The question made Ophelia feel very small. “I don’t wish to say,” she whispered.

Justine looked at her with pity. “Oh, my darling. Is this your fault?”

“I don’t know.” Ophelia threw her hands up in the air and sat up, suddenly agitated where she’d been completely lethargic. “He had said I was special, and I believed him. He said he’d never felt this way before. And I wanted to believe him, but you know how I prefer numbers to feelings.”

Justine lifted her eyebrows and nodded. “Very aware.”

“I wanted a number, so I could make a statistic. Am I special in terms of one in fifty?”

“Fifty?” Justine asked. “Wait, did you ask him how many lovers he’d had? Ophelia. You can’t just ask someone something like that. It’s private.”

“How could it be private, when what we did, what he saw of me is the least private thing one can do?”

Justine sighed and frowned. “It is very private between you, yes. But is that not why he should keep his acts with others also private?”

Ophelia wiped her cheek with the flat of her palm, unsure if there was moisture there or not. “But if I’m the special one, then—”

Justine shook her head and put her hand on Ophelia’s arm. “Jealousy is a terrible emotion, Fee. But Julian has a right to keep this to himself. And, I must remind you, he is not your husband. He is nothing to you.”

“He’s my climbing partner to-be.” Ophelia defended.

“That’s not enough. You should talk to him if you want to keep him in your life.”

“Is it wise to, though? He might force me to marry him. Or Arthur might.” Ophelia made a face. Her older brother was quite the stickler for appearances, and if Ophelia had been compromised, it was only right for Julian to marry her. But what if Lord Fairport proposed? Would that not solve the issue as well? But then she’d be married to Lord Fairport. “What if I do not wish to marry?”

Justine shrugged. “Then don’t. But you told me that you were open to it, which is why when your mother suggested going back to the Season, you said yes.”

“I did, but I didn’t think anything would come of it. I’m so old.”

“Positively decrepit, yes, but I love you anyway.”

Ophelia gripped her hand, feeling better. “So I should speak with him.”

“I think that would help.” Justine scooched off the bed and began searching through the clothes on the floor. “Now let’s get you dressed.”