Rival Desires (Properly Spanked Legacy 1)

Like Elizabeth, Hazel was well-spoken and warm, and indeed eager to marry and have children. Why couldn’t Ophelia be happy with such traditions? Why had she pined for a more adventurous life, only to lose any chance of it?

Worst of all, why couldn’t she situate herself with Lord Wescott, when those around him esteemed him so greatly? In this room of his family and friends, she felt lonelier than ever. She felt like the very worst wife.

*

August nudged Wescott with a grin. “Look at your poor wife,” he said. “Hazel and Elizabeth are chattering her ears off.”

“Good, it’s been too quiet here for her.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “It’s good that they’re getting along.”

“How are you getting along?” he asked when Wescott fell silent.

He met the query with a shrug. “As well as any strangers who were recently forced to be married. Lady Wescott holds the whole situation in disdain, not that it matters at this point. You know me. I’m one to make the best of things and move on.”

“Indeed.”

They watched the women talking, as August shared news of his twin sisters Isabella and Constance, their husbands, and their ever-growing brood of chatty little girls. His sisters adored their impish “cousins,” even though they weren’t real cousins. In their circle of friends, everyone was family.

Wescott appreciated that Hazel and Elizabeth were doing their best to draw Ophelia into the familial group. He could also see his wife was not as comfortable as she pretended to be. He wondered how often she’d had time to sit about and gossip with friends at her blasted Viennese school.

“I don’t think she likes me,” he finally admitted out loud. “Not even a little. She wants to be somewhere else and lets me know it with daunting regularity. Back at home. Onstage. Traveling the world, she told me, as if her parents would have allowed it. She’s a silly ninny most of the time.”

Augustine studied Ophelia, his features creased in question. He tended to be quiet and clumsy, and was often the butt of their jokes, but he was probably, also, the most thoughtful of the four of them.

“Do you have advice?” Wescott asked.

“I can’t say I do. Haven’t been married, my friend. The most experience I have with women is jollying up the tarts at Pearl’s, and I can’t even do that now, until the madam rebuilds from the fire.”

“Wives are nothing like the tarts at Pearl’s,” he said drily. “They’re far more sensitive, in all the worst ways.”

“Sorry to hear it, Wes. You know, we would have waited longer to intrude upon your solitude, but Elizabeth was bound and determined we must come at once.” August turned his thoughtful gaze to Wescott’s sister. “We told her you needed more time alone together, but you know how she is with her…” He gestured into the air. “Her mysterious intuitions.”

“My parents should not indulge her intuitions. If she doesn’t take care, she’ll get a reputation as some sort of spiritualist.”

“You must admit, her instincts are often true.”

Wescott shrugged again. From an early age, Elizabeth had exhibited the strangest talent at reading people’s faces, and often, eerily, their unspoken thoughts. He’d flattened a man once for calling his sister the “Arlington witch.”

“She must learn to keep her instincts to herself,” Wescott said, as Marlow joined them. “Although I’m grateful for my family’s company, and yours. How was the game?” he asked Marlow.

“Convivial as always. Your father trounced us soundly, and Hazel came dead last. She has no talent for cards.”

“Or very much interest,” Wescott said with a laugh. “She’d rather be dancing or playing the piano, or buying new gowns.”

“She’ll be breaking hearts next year on the marriage mart,” said August. “I know at least fifteen men who want to court her, and only five or six are in it for the family connections. She’ll have her choice of the best.”

“I hope neither of you are on that list.”

Marlow huffed out a laugh. “I’d just as well court my sister. I’m afraid our families are too close. I played with Hazel when she was in diapers, and Elizabeth too.”

August made a lackluster sound of agreement, and Wescott wished he hadn’t made the thoughtless joke. They all sometimes forgot how much the young Lord Augustine had pined for Townsend’s oldest sister, Felicity. August had worshipped the ground she walked on, even as she kindly pushed him away, wanting nothing to do with such a young, awkward boy. She was long wed now, to a dashing Italian prince who’d swept her off her feet as August looked on helplessly.

“My advice to both of you is not to marry at all, for as long as you can hold out,” he said, to change the subject. “It’s a terrible disruption to the bachelor life.”