“You do,” said Elizabeth, relentless. “You kept making suggestions and vying for Ophelia’s attention until she sent you away.”
“A breeding woman is a sensitive woman,” he told Townsend. “She says I hover too much. I’m beginning to think you’re hovering too much,” he told his sister. “Why don’t you go check how the wedding plans are going, so Townsend and I can have some private talk?”
Elizabeth pouted to be dismissed, but Wescott’s expression brooked no argument so she excused herself and left them alone.
“When did Elizabeth get so old?” asked Townsend once she’d left. “She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“No, she’s a royal pain in the—Well. She is Elizabeth. Age hasn’t tempered her moodiness.”
“She admitted some jealousy of Hazel when we spoke in the hallway. I suppose she’s found her perfect match.”
Wescott shot him a rueful grin. “How lucky Hazel is to marry for love, rather than searching for it after the fact.”
“But you found it,” Townsend said. “You and Ophelia are happy.” He accepted a steaming plate of roast beef, potatoes, and asparagus from a footman and wasted no time digging in. “I never thought much about love before now,” he said between bites. “It didn’t seem important or interesting. Marriage, relationships, any of that. Now it’s grown upon me like an ivy vine, tangling me up. Tripping me up so I’ve fallen flat on my face.”
“You must hang in there, friend. You’ll find it worth the trouble. I’d all but written off Ophelia early in our marriage. She despised me, you know. You missed all the drama following our wedding, but I’ll tell you, she gave me a run for it in the beginning of things. I’d nearly given up winning her over because, well, I thought love and affection would happen more easily. I was such an idiot.”
It surprised Townsend to hear his friend had struggled in marriage. He’d never seemed an idiot with women, not in all the years he’d known him. “What changed?”
“What changed? I changed. I realized I didn’t know her at all, hadn’t made an effort to know her because I was so caught up in my own head. It’s hard to love someone you don’t know.”
Those words cut straight to his heart. Jane must feel that way, that she didn’t really know him. He’d lied to her so blatantly about the reason he’d married her.
“But once I started to know Ophelia, I realized how lovely and fascinating she was. There were parts of her I never expected, and parts that drove me absolutely wild. In a good way,” he clarified. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”
As his friend’s expression turned dreamy thinking about Ophelia, Townsend waited for feelings of anger or envy to develop, but there was none of that, just pleasure on their behalf. Pleasure, and a wish to mend his own marriage.
“What is the real problem between you and Jane?” asked Wescott.
He didn’t need to think very long. “She doesn’t trust me. I had come to know her, come to love her quite easily over the early days of our marriage, and she felt the same, but now she…she has lost faith in me.”
“That’s a shame. And you are here for dinner, rather than with her.”
“She prefers that I’m not there. I know I wronged her, that I behaved awfully to her, to you, to Ophelia, to everyone for those few ridiculous months… But her coldness now is so unsettling. She is not usually a cold-natured person.”
It was hard to explain how bad things had turned between them; he was ashamed to reveal the mess his marriage had turned into. Wasn’t a man supposed to be able to control his wife?
“Ever since she learned that I proposed to her in error, she’s been avoiding me. I suppose I deserve it.”
“Have you apologized?”
“Of course, very sincerely. I have explained. I have apologized. I have told her I love her in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, she remains unmoved.”
“These wives.” Wescott shook his head. “They hold you to an impossible standard when you’re barely capable of acting civilized.”
“I am civilized,” said Townsend. “I’ve come to my senses. I’m perfectly happy to be married to Jane now and I’m no longer enamored of Ophelia. I’ve told Jane so, but she won’t believe me.”
“Perhaps you haven’t groveled enough yet?”
“I’m not a good groveler.”
“You’ll grow better at it,” said his friend, with the weary jadedness of someone who’d been married years rather than months. “Sadly, it’s necessary when you’re in the wrong, which I frequently am. It is worth it, though, to fight for your relationship.” He pushed his plate away and poured himself an after-dinner glass of port. “I never thought I’d enjoy marriage, especially the quieter things. Intimate meals together, secret smiles, fireside chats about what the future may bring. A warm body in your bed, a gentle head rested upon your shoulder. A woman who is happy to be at your side without demanding money for it.”