He looked at his wife standing in their bridal chamber and wondered how he could ensure her happiness.
He refused to allow what happened to his parents to happen to them, even if his gut tried to convince him such a thing was inevitable.
He wouldn’t give that voice credence. And so, he firmly told it to sod off. He was the master of his fate. Not some sodding memory or fear of a future that had not yet come to pass.
Besides, this was Ophelia, not some silly debutante content with diamond diadems and ballrooms.
She was more than he ever allowed himself to truly consider. She felt...safe. Like a haven where he could let his weary soul finally show itself.
Surely, if he orchestrated it carefully enough, if he tried hard enough, if he did all the right things, whatever those right things were, he could ensure that Ophelia was happy. She deserved happiness. She was such a kind person. So completely without artifice or avarice and artifice, unlike so many of the other people he knew in this town.
At present, she was looking about his chamber, her eyes studying the wallpaper as if the birds upon it might suddenly take flight. She had such an imagination about her, such an aura, that he felt himself drawn to her. Drawn to the way she saw the world.
So many people were so embedded in the day-to-day workings of society that they had no interest in imagination or fantasy. But she seemed as if she was imagining the most glorious things at every moment, as if her childhood never ended and she was still playing, as so many children did, bandits and pirates and marauders and queens and ladies fair.
That made her sound simple. She was not. It was merely that she saw promise and possibility where others saw prisons. Bloody hell, but she was a marvel.
How had he not ever taken note before? How had he not seen her sense of wonder over the years? Had he been too caught up in his own pursuits?
Yes. He’d been running from his lonely childhood for so long that he had not noticed her own joy in herself. She did not seek validation or approval from others. No, truly. She’d only tried to make him notice her with that fan due to financial necessity.
But all her life? She’d been herself without apology.
If the world was like Ophelia? What a beautiful place it would be.
He wondered if she had taken refuge in her books because it was a distraction from the banality of the world.
He couldn’t blame her if that’s what she did. Choosing wonder over woe. And he couldn’t disagree with her.
Bookswerefar better sometimes than the world at large, but there was also the fact that as an earl, he did have to live in the world. He could not live in novels alone. Could he? No. The lives of so many counted on his actions. So, he had to find his wonder in other places. Oh, he could read for hours on end, but in the end? Reality beckoned.
He was going to prove that she needn’t run away from this world either, unless she simply wished to. It was his work as her husband to make the reality of her life a pleasant one.
So he strode to her and took her hand in his. He gazed down into her eyes. “Whatever are you thinking, wife?” he asked.
She blinked, her cheeks turning pink at that. “I am thinking that this wallpaper must’ve come from very far or at least the inspiration for it was certainly not on this side of the Channel.”
He laughed, something he was going to do a great deal in her presence, and he could feel the tension that had held him in its grip for years easing. “You’re correct, of course. The inspiration for this wallpaper came from all the way around the Cape of Good Hope.”
“My goodness,” she said. “That is far indeed. Have you ever been there?” she asked, “Around the Cape?”
He shook his head and studied the turquoise silk touched with crimson and yellow birds, meant to brighten dark English winters. “No, not even I have gone so far, but perhaps one day I will.”
She beamed. “I have read tales, of course, of lands far away across distant seas, but it is hard to imagine going there.”
“Why?” he asked, longing to hear more of her contemplations. “Many people do.”
“Because I’ve been limited to such a little life,” she said honestly, her breasts pressing against her simple gown as she took in a long, wistful breath. “In my house, we have all been loved. But there have been very few doings beyond the collection of books and attendance at balls.”
He pulled her close to him then, shocked that he ached to hold her. Ached as if they were the answer to each other’s longings. He for a home that was not cold. And she? For adventures beyond quadrilles and feathers. “You don’t need to be limited by a little life anymore, Ophelia. The world is open to you to do as you please.”
“Is it?” she queried, surprised. She did not resist him as he wrapped his arms about her. In fact, she nestled into him as if she had desired his embrace, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
And as they stood together, he realized that it was.
“Am I not to be a wife now?” she asked softly against his linen-clad chest. “And potentially a mother? Is that not my life? And is that not little in its own way?”
He cocked his head to the side. He lifted his hand and stroked a lock of her hair back from her face and contemplated her.