CHAPTER 263: YOU’RE SLIPPING, OPHELIA

The morning light bled through the sheer ivory curtains like diluted gold, diffusing into the master bedroom with a softness that belied the tension simmering inside it. The heavy oak door opened with the muted groan of old hinges, and Ophelia stepped in, her heels clicking across the marble floor. She paused just beyond the threshold, nostrils flaring.

Edward was seated in the armchair by the window, still in his monogrammed silk robe, a crystal tumbler clutched in one hand. The amber liquid within swirled gently as he tilted it back, drinking in slow, deliberate sips that made her skin prickle.

"Scotch?" she said, voice low but cutting. "It’s barely past ten in the morning."

He didn’t look at her. The rim of the glass remained at his lips a moment longer than necessary before he set it down on the side table with a decisive clink.

"I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to drink in my own home," Edward replied, eyes finally lifting to meet hers. They were sharp and cold, not entirely from the alcohol.

"It’s not a good look, drinking this early."

"And you never used to give a damn when I did," he said, rising from the chair slowly, like a snake uncoiling. "What’s changed, Ophelia? Or should I say who has made you change?"

Her brows drew together. "What are you talking about?"

He took a step closer, the silk of his robe rustling with movement. "Ken. How quaint, him just dropping by after all these years. Remind me, wasn’t he the one you mooned over during your schoolgirl years? The stable boy who you thought was the Romeo to your Juliet?"

Ophelia’s lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. "Don’t be ridiculous. Ken was... is... beneath me. I never liked him that way."

Edward barked a laugh that lacked any real mirth. "No? That’s not how I remember it. But maybe I’m just getting senile. All this alcohol, hmm?"

"You remember what you want to remember," she snapped, moving past him to the vanity where she began unfastening the pearl buttons of her blouse. "Ken was nothing then, and he is nothing now. My irritation is with you, Edward, not with the ghosts you keep dragging into this house."

"Ah." Edward raised his glass in mock salute, then drained the last of the scotch in a single swallow. "So now I’m the villain. How novel."

She turned, eyes narrowing. "You have been drinking more and more and it’s a problem. most especially now that everything is at risk."

"And you’ve been clenching your pearls like some disillusioned duchess watching the peasants take over her garden. Don’t pretend it’s about concern. You care about appearances, Ophelia. You always have."

"And you don’t?" she shot back. "You wear your dead grandfather’s signet ring like it still means something, like it erases the fact that you gambled away everything your family built."

Edward’s jaw clenched. "Don’t speak of things you don’t understand."

"Oh, I understand plenty. I understand that I married a man who promised prestige and security, only to find myself shackled to a relic of faded nobility with a drinking problem and a fondness for self-pity."

Edward stepped closer. The air between them grew taut, crackling like an exposed wire.

"And what did you bring into this marriage, Ophelia?" he hissed. "A last name that doesn’t even belong to you? A fabricated pedigree passed down from your mother’s third husband? Your father was a nobody. A librarian. A man who died alone and unwanted."

Her breath hitched, but she didn’t flinch. "You forget yourself."

"No," he said, smiling cruelly. "I remember everything. I remember how you used to loathe Maeve at those summer parties. Because she was someone. An heiress in her own right. Not an impoverished wannabe like you, playing dress-up in borrowed pearls and fake smiles."

Ophelia’s hands curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. "Don’t you dare compare me to Maeve."

"Why not?" Edward asked, stepping back. "She never had to try. She was what you pretended to be, what you wished you could be. even in those silk gowns, you knew you were a fake who could never compare to the real thing."

"You bastard," she whispered.

He laughed, heading toward the wardrobe, opening it with casual boredom. "Oh come now. You always knew who I was, Ophelia. I may have lost my fortune, but at least I had one. I’m not some child of inconvenience, someone whose only asset is the man her mother seduced."

The silence that followed was thick, suffocating.

Edward selected a shirt, buttoned it slowly, deliberately, not looking at her. When he finally did, his eyes had dimmed from their earlier fire, now cool with finality.

"This performance of yours," he said, "this sanctimonious outrage, it’s tiresome. You knew what I was when you married me. Just as I knew what you were. We were a transaction, not a love story. So don’t pretend otherwise."

He moved past her, the faint scent of scotch and bergamot trailing behind him. As he reached the door, he turned back one last time.

"If you want a man who stays sober and remembers anniversaries, perhaps you should have married your stable boy... wait, even he would not have you."

Then he was gone.

The door shut with a soft thud, but to Ophelia, it felt like a gunshot.

She stood there a moment, her breath short and shallow, the edges of her vision tunneling. The calm, curated façade she wore so well was cracking, hairline fractures spiderwebbing through the porcelain mask of her composure.

He had said all he said with such precision, like a surgeon carving truth from flesh.

Ophelia walked over to the mirror, staring at her own reflection. Her eyes, once brilliant with ambition now held something colder, harder. The lines around her mouth were deeper than they used to be, the corners of her lips forever poised between contempt and exhaustion.

She sat down at the vanity, smoothing her hands over the surface absently. An old photo in the corner caught her eye. Her mother, resplendent at a gala, holding hands with the man who gave them their name. Not her father. Just the man wealthy enough to lend them legacy.

"You’re slipping, Ophelia," she muttered to herself. "And you let a drunk with a memory problem point it out."

Edward had been useful once. His name opened doors. His family’s fading nobility made up for the origins she’d worked so hard to erase. But now?

Now he was just a liability. A man unravelling at the seams, dragging her with him into the mire.

Her nails tapped rhythmically on the glass of the vanity. One by one. An old habit. A counting ritual.

She had sacrificed too much to end up back where her started, clawing her way through society’s underbelly, begging to be seen.

Edward’s outburst wasn’t just cruel, it was dangerous. It revealed something she had ignored far too long:

He no longer feared her.

That would have to change.

She stood and smoothed the wrinkles from her blouse. Her heart had already slowed. Her mask was back on, impenetrable and serene.

Edward had played his hand.

Now, it was her turn.