“And where is the stomacher now?”
“Foucher confiscated it. It will be returned to the marquis.” Penrose paused. He adjusted his spectacles. “Miss Flax, would you come out onto the terrace with me? I have something else, of a rather different nature, that I would like to say to you.”
33
Ophelia and Professor Penrose walked outside in silence, stopping at the marble balustrade overlooking the dark gardens and park.
“Miss Flax, you did not allow me to finish earlier,” Penrose said, “and I insist that you hear me out before I—before I go. My students, my studies, await me in Oxford.”
“I’ve heard quite enough of the charming Miss Banks, if you don’t mind awfully. So you just go on back to your ivory tower and—”
“That’s just it. Miss Banks is not charming. She is, in point of fact, somewhat horrid.”
Ophelia frowned. “That’s not very charitable, Professor.” A wisp of hope arose.
“I oughtn’t have spoken of her at all. She is really—well, it does not matter what I think of her. She will have her pick of suitors.”
“Plucks them from the orchard, does she?”
“Miss Flax, I may not have been entirely accurate when I said that Miss Banks and I have an understanding.”
“What?”
“I have never asked her to marry me.”
“You scalawag! I’ve been tied up in knots on account of that I—that we . . .”
“I am very sorry. Please. There is something I must tell you.”
Ophelia couldn’t meet his gaze. She simply waited for him to continue.
“I cannot say why, or how, this happened,” Penrose said. “How this has occurred. The revolution that has taken place in my mind—or, really, it is not my mind, for I find that the greater part of my mind rebels against the very idea of you. No, the change has occurred in my soul.” He paused. “In my heart.”
She felt his gaze upon her cheek. She couldn’t move. She stared out into the star-studded horizon.
He continued. “I never could comprehend what people were going on about, speaking of their hearts in circumstances of sentiment. But I comprehend it fully, now. When I see you, Miss Flax—God, even in one of your preposterous disguises, that is how far this has gone—my very heart gives a wrench. When I attempt to sleep at night, haunted by fragments of your voice, the gestures of your hands, the singular gleam of your lovely dark eyes—my heart goes out of me, trying, I suppose, to find you. To bring you close. And when I try to think how I will live without you when I return home to England, well then, it is my heart that aches.”
Ophelia noted, with great sensitivity, the way a breeze fluttered a tendril of hair across her forehead. Still more acutely, she felt the ruby ring on her hand. Cold. Heavy.
“I love you, Miss Flax. That is what I wished to tell you earlier, bumbling like a fool. It is really quite simple. But I see that you have nothing to say. That you cannot look at me—well, I daresay that speaks volumes, does it not? So. Good evening.”
“Wait!” Her lungs were tight. “Wait.”
He stood over her, looking, for the first time in her memory, vulnerable.
Why, oh why, did it have to unfold, to unravel, like this?
She brought out her ruby-ringed hand, stretching her fingers along the balustrade. “I might have made a mistake. But I must behave honorably.”
Penrose stared down at the bloodred glitter in disbelief. “Griffe.” His voice was ragged. “You will be a countess.” He made a stiff bow. “I wish you and the count all the best.”
Ophelia watched Penrose stalk away down the long, long terrace, pulling fragile threads of her behind him. His tall shape melded into the black night, leaving her alone, shivering, with her icebox of a heart.