The Misadventures of Lady Ophelia (The Undaunted Debutantes Book 3)

by Christina McKnight

  “No, me lad, it is simply another bit of me beloved that will remain out of reach—much like this wasteful pendant he be give’n me when we journeyed ta Eton the first time ta secure your father a place at University.” She flipped the jewel-encrusted necklace over in her hand to show Colin the back engraving, though they both had committed the inscription to memory long ago.

  If’n it be answers ye seek, look ta where it all began, and ye shall be rewarded.

  “I will keep Sheerness and our time there in me heart forever,” she sighed, a rattle in her chest making it hard for her to inhale again. “Just as ye cannot allow your father’s wicked thoughts ta invade and take root in your mind. Never will ye forget the work’n men who gave their all for ye ta live in this fancy house.”

  “Yes, yes,” he reassured her. “I will never allow Ramsey’s beliefs to corrupt my sensible mind.”

  “He was such a nob, your father. Still is.” She lowered herself to the lounge once more. “Always go’n on and on about his da, the unscrupulous smuggler who sailed the seas, all while pose’n as a right fancy bloke and use’n my Porter’s hard-earned coin to pay for everythin’.”

  “What…when did Grandpapa give you the necklace?”

  Her brow furrowed at his question as she thought, rubbing the pendant between her fingers as she did. “Well, it be that time we sent Ramsey off ta school. He’d become a rebellious lad who sought ta lash out with harsh words at every turn. Porter and I came ta London for our first—and only—proper town stay—think’n it be benefit’n Ramsey when he graduated if we be accustomed ta town life and could introduce him ta society all proper like. Your grandpapa went out after, deposit’n me in this monstrosity of a house, and was gone for what seemed like days but was only mere hours. When he returned, he gave me this. Said for me ta hold it when all hope seemed lost.”

  But all hope was not gone, Colin would not allow it.

  “Mayhap we should do exactly as Fair Wind bid?” he suggested.

  “Whatever do ye mean, lad?” Molly sat forward on the lounge, her brow rising.

  “We are looking for answers, and it only seems reasonable that we must go back to ‘where it all began’.” The thought was clear despite its impulsiveness. It was a wonder neither of them had thought of it before this moment; however, until a short while ago, they’d been convinced the proof lay in London, not along the rocky coast of Kent. “Grandpapa must have left some evidence of his work for the king in Sheerness. That is what this is all about, reminding not only us but also Father of our family’s past.”

  She tapped her chin. “And that be in Sheerness,” Molly said with agonizing slowness.

  “Exactly, though I am uncertain if it is his writings on the travels for the king he wants us to find. Or something else.” Colin’s heart lifted, and then soared when he saw the light return to his grandmama’s gaze. “We should leave today. Now, even. I will have the carriage summoned, and our bags readied.” He paced toward the hearth and flipped around, moving back in Molly’s direction. His sure, solid steps were muffled by the rug underfoot. “We will arrive after supper, but I am certain we can find lodging. They would never turn away the famed widow of Fair Wind Parnell. Oh, but you worked as a barkeep in your youth. They will know you as surely as they knew Grandpapa.”

  Molly stared at the head of her cane as Colin rambled. She seemed as overwhelmed by it all as he. Which meant, there was still hope.

  Colin chuckled and started for the door. “You wait here while I make the arrangements.”

  “Me lad, ye know I can’t be go’n with ye.”

  Nothing could have halted him in his tracks faster than those words. “What?”

  “I am old, Colin…and sick.”

  “But the journey is only six hours, at most, and I will have Father’s well-sprung traveling coach prepared. It will be as if you are here or in your private chambers.” This was a task they’d begun together, and bloody hell, Colin was determined to finish it with Molly by his side. “We will be away from London for only a short time, and your next appointment with the physician isn’t for several days.”

  Molly only shook her head. “I can’t be travel’n ta Sheerness, lad, though I’d much enjoy see’n me old home—the first Porter and I shared after wed’n. Or that old tavern I earned me keep at before meet’n your grandpapa.” Her gaze darted out the windows to the garden below, but Colin sensed she saw none of it. “If’n I ever make it back home, it not be today. Take the fiery-haired devil with ye.”

  “What?” Colin’s entire body tensed as he attempted to hide his shock at her declaration. “Absolutely not. That is an absurd notion.”

  The time had come…Molly had lost all common sense.

  “She possesses the book.” Molly glared across the room at him from her seat on the lounge.

  “We no longer need the book,” he retorted.

  “Well, the people of Sheerness are a loyal bunch.” Molly nodded with pride. “They’ll not be help’n ye, if’n ye trample into their town ask’n pointed questions. You will learn noth’n. But with the book and the woman at your side, the townsfolk might be more forthright with their information.”

  “One moment, you think the woman possessed by the devil—“

  “I did not say I do not still think she—”

  “And the next, you tell me to take the woman to Sheerness.” He groaned at the severe consequences of such a thing. “How do you expect me to travel out of London with an innocent, unmarried woman and not find myself either shackled to her or at the end of her father’s dueling pistol?”

  Molly only shrugged in response.

  His grandmama shrugged. The beat of his heart thrashed in his ears as his mind swirled around the possibilities…

  No, there was no chance in hell that he would take Lady Ophelia with him.

  “The book belongs ta her.”

  “It belongs to her father,” Colin huffed. “I will simply call on her and say we have changed our minds. That we wish to keep the book. If I am in possession of the volume—and with my striking resemblance to Fair Wind—I should have no issues gaining the townspeople’s cooperation.”

  “It seems ye have everythin’ figured out,” Molly sighed. It was the same sound she’d made when Colin had built his own boat to sail across the pond at his family’s country estate. She’d said it would not hold for the time it would take him to paddle across, but in Colin’s ten-year-old mind it was sturdy enough to cross the English Channel. Of course, he’d been only twenty feet out when the raft began taking on water. He’d ended up swimming to shore—and there Molly was, a feline-like grin upon her face. “Ye are a wise lad.”

  In other words, Molly was sure he had nothing figured out and that he was as unwise as he’d been in his youth.

  “I am certain you know more than an old wench like me,” Molly mumbled. “I am noth’n but a weak, frail woman with a mind not as solid as it was.”

  Frail? Weak?

  Two words Colin would never dream of using when talking about or to his grandmama. Proof of her strength had been witnessed by his coachman, footman, and the duke’s butler as Molly had swung her cane at Lady Ophelia in the Atholl drive.

  “You are positive it is Lady Ophelia I should take with me?”

  “I see no other choice, me lad.”

  Bloody hell. It seemed he was taking Lady Ophelia to Sheerness with him, he only need convince the auburn-haired beauty to make the journey.

  But hadn’t she already offered to help him continue his search for the truth?

  Chapter 11

  Ophelia tilted her head back against the wicker chair, allowing the midday breeze to push her long tresses from her face, and the warm sun to kiss her lips. Pulling the blanket tighter about her shoulders, she sighed. The day had grown breezy after she left Lord Hawke’s townhouse and returned to Mayfair—to an empty home.

  Normally, especially since Lucianna had taken up residence with her family, Ophelia would enjoy the blissful silence
of a deserted townhouse; her father meeting with his man of business, her mother paying social calls with Sarah, Elizabeth, and Jennifer in tow, and her brother, Jacob, at his weekly fencing lesson. Today, however, the silence only carried the weight of loneliness.

  Luci and Edith were safely on their way to Gretna Green with the fine men they loved.

  And she was left in London, alone.

  Perhaps that was why Ophelia hadn’t returned the book to her father’s cabinet as planned but instead retired to the garden outside her mother’s salon to read it.

  At first, she’d hesitated, thinking she was crossing the line of propriety in some fashion, reading the private writings of Lord Hawke’s grandpapa. When she’d stared at the book in her lap, her resistance hadn’t lasted long as her interest grew and anticipation built.

  Without a doubt, Ophelia knew the book held an adventure, even with the missing pages.

  And so, she’d nestled herself in a wool blanket, perched on her mother’s favored wicker chair, and read.

  Page after handwritten page was filled with harrowing days at sea, stops at foreign and exotic ports, and logs of exports loaded upon the ship. And in between all that—a rare, shining light—were tales of Molly, written by the man who’d loved her above all else.

  It was these brief asides that captured Ophelia’s attention and kept her reading. Much like the one she’d just finished:

  M’love, m’life, m’lady

  It is for she and she alone I be at sea.

  It is ta prove me love and devotion ta she that I continue.

  Me Molly girl, ye be all I need.

  Yur pretty curling hair, yer cunning, yer kind eyes.

  They all bring me ta heel, but it be the way ye

  smile that keeps me head above water.

  These passages were utterly enchanting, powerfully moving, and made Ophelia long to find a man who would feel such immense feelings of love for her.

  She’d read such novels for years—possibly longer—but they’d never affected her, reached to her very core, and left her wanting for things she’d never thought to be hers as this did. A love similar to that which Edith shared with Torrington and Luci had found with Montrose.

  But that love had been denied, or rather cut short, for Tilda. How was Ophelia more deserving of a happy, content future filled with love and companionship than her dear friend?

  Her eyes drifted shut, and she allowed her mind to wander to things they had no business envisioning; a small cottage in the middle of a meadow, the bright, warm sun blazing above, the slight wind carrying the scent of lavender from the flowers that had been planted with love along the a small, fenced-in yard. And a small child, a boy with fair hair and tanned skin, playing with a set of brightly painted blocks. He stacked them high, toddled back to admire his handiwork, and then giggled as he knocked his tower down and began anew. In her mind, Ophelia laughed along with the boy, not at his purposeful action of destroying what he’d so painstakingly built, but at the merriment in the child’s blue eyes when he waved her over to help.

  Blue eyes…

  They were mirror images of Ophelia’s, but no other trace of her existed in the child, yet the boy was familiar to her in every way. From the fall of his tawny hair that covered his brow to the determined glint in his eyes when he set about constructing a tower taller than the last.

  Yes, in her daydream, she was content and happy, wanting for nothing.

  A chuckle sounded behind her, and Ophelia took her careful watch off the boy to see where the sound had come from. It was also particularly familiar and comforting; however, the laugh must have reached her on the breeze because no one stood there.

  A deep hollowness filled her, taking over her lovely dream and causing the clouds overhead to roll in, threatening rain.

  Ophelia glanced about, but the boy had also disappeared.

  She was utterly, terrifyingly, unmistakably alone.

  Her chest felt empty, a great hollow void.

  She inhaled air, but nothing seemed to appease her lungs as they burned, demanding but never satisfied by the warm, lavender-scented air she drew in.

  Her body weakened and crumbled as she suffocated.

  “Lady Ophelia?”

  That voice…

  Swiftly, she drew in a deep breath, and the emptiness grew less daunting. The panic of a moment before subsided as the clouds overhead drifted to the horizon to reveal the welcoming sun once more.

  A hand brushed her cheek, and her eyes snapped open.

  The blanket had fallen from her shoulder to rest on the arm of chair. A quick glance up told Ophelia no more than an hour had passed since she’d allowed her eyes to close and her mind to wander.

  Squinting, Ophelia sat up straight and glanced around her. Someone had said her name—touched her cheek?—but the bright sun kept her momentarily blinded. Her panic returned, and Ophelia leapt up, the book sliding from her lap to the dirt at her feet.

  “My lady,” Lord Hawke said, as if mere inches from her ear. “It is only I.”

  “How, I mean, when…” she stammered, her stare finally coming into focus to see Lord Hawke leaning unflappably against the garden gate, his boots crossed at the ankles, and not close to her at all.

  “My apologies for frightening you.” He pushed away and strode toward her, a lock of hair falling to cover one eye…so familiar. “I arrived in the drive”—he gestured behind him to his waiting coach—“and saw you sitting here, so peaceful I almost didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

  “I—well—” She shook her head, attempting to collect her thoughts and banish her daydream. Her cheeks heated at the thought, and Ophelia ducked to collect the book to hide her embarrassment. “I was reading, and I must have closed my eyes for a brief moment.”

  “I’ve been watching you in slumber for nearly an hour.”

  “You have?” The shrill edge to her voice was nearly as mortifying as her blush from being caught in her silly daydream.

  He nodded solemnly, and his brow pulled low. “I must say, you have a snore men three times your size would envy.” Her mouth gaped open, and he chuckled, just as he’d laughed in her dream. “Come, Lady Ophelia, I am a man most noble.”

  “Certainly,” she sighed. “You would never do something so wicked as watch a woman sleep without alerting her to your presence.”

  “Errr, no,” he said. “I would never be so dense as to mention a woman’s snoring in polite company.”

  Lord Hawke was utterly perplexing. Had he been watching her but didn’t witness her snore, or had he just walked up and did?

  He laughed again, the sound breaking through her unease. “I arrived only a moment ago, and you were completely silent—so quiet I stilled myself from checking for your breath.”

  Quiet was good. That meant she hadn’t spoken aloud in her dream.

  “Well, thank you for waking me.” She smiled, hoping to change the topic. “If you hadn’t, I fear to think how I might have become burnt by the noonday sun…my complexion ruined and my freckles spreading from my nose to my cheeks and forehead.”

  “What are you reading—“

  “Why are you here—“

  Ophelia dipped her chin and grinned as they both spoke at the same time.

  He cleared his throat. “I came because Molly and I had an idea for finding confirmation of my grandpapa’s true intentions at sea.”

  “And I was reading your grandpapa’s book.” She held it out to him.

  His brow rose. “I do hope it is a compelling read.”

  “You haven’t read it?” she asked.

  “I saw it for the first—and only—time when you arrived with it earlier.”

  “Well, while I highly recommend you at least skim the book, it is a lot about daily life at sea and more than a dozen logs and lists of imports he brought back to England—oh, and the occasional verse about Molly.” The blasted shiver traveled down her back once more, and Ophelia adjusted the blanket she held around her shoulders.
“He also wrote of Sheerness. It sounds like a lovely town. It’s a shame the book lacked the adventure I normally favor in a read.”

  “Real life is rarely as grand as Robinson Crusoe.”

  “You know Crusoe?” Her breath hitched.

  “Certainly.” He cocked his head and shook it. “I may not be as worldly as Fair Wind, but I have read a novel or two.”

  “I did not think—“ His chuckle halted her words, and they both smiled. “Besides, I know life is not always a grand adventure; however, it does not harm the soul to escape into fantasy every now and again.”

  Ophelia feared she’d said something wrong when he glanced around the small garden, crossing his arms. “I am happy to hear you think Sheerness a lovely town because,” he paused, his stare narrowing on her as if his next words and her response meant much, “that is where I—we—are headed. Molly and I believe answers reside in the town she and my grandpapa both loved so much.”

  “Thank you for letting me know. I truly cannot wait to hear what you find—“

  “No.” He held up his hand to stop her.

  He hadn’t come to say goodbye or inform her of their change in direction. “Oh, you came for the book!”

  She pushed his family heirloom toward him, once again feeling she’d stepped over some invisible boundary when she’d chosen to open and read Fair Wind’s writings. How could she have ever been so foolish to think the baron had come to see her?

  Lord Hawke had come for his family’s legacy, that was all. Not out of any lasting responsibility to her.

  “I suppose it is a good thing I haven’t returned the book to my father as yet.”

  She gave him no choice but to take the title from her or leave her looking ridiculous with her arm outstretched, holding it toward him, her other hand clutching the blanket about her shoulders.