Ophelia (6 page)

Ophelia looked at him, and then at Andrew, but both shrugged.

“Westbrooke, stay with my brother. Whitaker,
keep an eye on everyone and perform first aid if necessary,”
she
ordered.
“I will go out and direct the ambulance. Perhaps I
can find a
garda
on the street.”

When she was halfway across the room, a pair of paramedics
burst through the doors. Ophelia motioned to the guest nearest her bodyguards
and picked up her pace a bit. She was gone for barely five minutes, however,
when David and Andrew heard her in the hall, jabbering away in Spanish. If the
situation hadn’t been so serious, the bodyguards would have laughed as Ophelia
returned, dragging a rather bewildered police officer of Puerto Rican descent.
She was too far across the room to allow David to interpret for Andrew, but by
the way Ophelia was gesturing, there was little need. After a moment, the
officer jogged across the room and Ophelia resumed her rant against her
brother.

“
You
are the one who has brought
shame on the House of Osborn, Harold Ambrose!” she screamed in English. “If you
ever set foot in this house again, it will be too soon!”

June 2004

“I’ve
been attending a lot of meetings lately.”

Ophelia frowned as she stepped behind the screen that
separated her closet from the rest of the room.
“I do not give
you free time that often.”

“I leave more than you think,” David replied. “Enough to have
met with Andrew Whitaker on a regular basis.”

“That friend from your Marine unit?”

She saw his shadow nod.

“He thinks we should increase security.”

“Why?”

“Andrew believes that since you sent Harry to jail, you’ll be
his first target upon release.” He hesitated. “Your brother went home this
morning.”

Ophelia nearly dropped her earrings.
“It has
scarcely been three days!”

“According to the news, his attorney got him off on a
technicality.”

“It must have been quite the technicality—he
was charged with attempted murder!”

“I haven’t paid attention to the details.”

“How many more guards does Mr Whitaker think
I need?”

“One. Possibly two. He mentioned hiring a woman to stand
watch when you go to the restroom and another who would sleep on a trundle in
your bedroom, but I told him I didn’t think you would approve.”

Ophelia shoved the screen aside.

“That is too much. If Harry wants to attack
me in the water closet, then so be it! I am not giving up the privacy of my
bedroom when the protection of my husband is sufficient.”

“Andrew suggested the second guard when he realized that
Eduardo could leave in a fit of jealousy at any moment.”

Ophelia didn’t feel inclined to point out that Eduardo hadn’t
had one of his outbursts since before the handfasting. She was even less
inclined to mention that he had resumed counseling after their honeymoon.

“Even if Eduardo keeps his temper, what will you do when he
visits his family?” David continued. “Surely you’ve considered the fact that
there will be occasions when you are too busy to go with him? Or that there
will come a time when you will be pregnant with the next heir to the Osborn
Empire?”

~*~

“Doctor Otto Octavius, page thirty-five.”
Ophelia slid the
scholarly journal toward her brother.
“An investment that will
certainly benefit our company in the future.”

Harry didn’t open it.

“The article is about fusion-based
energy—its benefits as opposed to coal, how it burns more cleanly than fossil
fuels. It is also easily renewable.

“Dr Octavius made only the barest of
references to his own work, but the article was written by someone with
experience in the field of fusion—I assume from his own experiments.”

“Spare me the lecture on why Octavius is a good investment
and get to the point of dragging me in here.”

“As president, it is your job to contact Dr
Octavius and help me determine if this venture is worthwhile.”

Her brother started to complain, but Ophelia held up her
hand.

“You are still friends with Peter Parker, correct?”

“I haven’t seen him since he got it into his head that he
should move out because he couldn’t pay a fair share of the rent.”

“Be that as it may, Mr Parker still cares
for you as a friend, correct? He would do you a favour, if you asked?”

“I guess.”

“Invite him to accompany you and Dr Octavius
to dinner. If his mind has the scientific capacity
Athair
always
admired, Parker will be impressed by Octavius…and will be there to bail you out
when the doctor becomes overly enthusiastic in discussing his work.”

“Why can’t you persuade Octavius yourself?”

“It is time for the departmental reviews and
I need to meet with each supervisor individually,”
Ophelia replied.
“Furthermore, I am scheduled to meet with the accountants so that I
can establish what kind of offer we can make Octavius.”

She leaned across the desk.
“If the idea of
meeting with the doctor makes you
that
nervous, let Parker do all the
talking. But make no decisions without my consent!”

~*~

Several
weeks passed before Eduardo found himself bounding up the stairs to the master
bedroom, his most recent photo shoot interrupted. A maid lurked outside the oak
doors in a surgical mask, looking unusually apprehensive. Eduardo approached
the door on the right, but the woman inserted herself into his path.

“I am sorry, Mr. Miraz,” she said in heavily accented
English. “Mr. Westbrooke and Mr. Whitaker gave me explicit instructions—no one
is to enter the room without their accompaniment.”

“Mr. Westbrooke called me and told me to come
pronto!
”
Eduardo snapped. “I left a
shoot
for this!”

The maid shook her head, but Eduardo shoved her aside and
barged into the room.

The curtains were pulled and the lights were off. He couldn’t
be sure in the gloom, but Eduardo thought that it appeared that the drapes had
been drawn on the four-poster bed. Unsure of what to expect, he crept closer.

“
¿Cariño?
”

Eduardo swept one of the curtains aside to find a blindfolded
form huddled in his bed, its features obscured by a mask. He frowned at the
thought of having to lecture the servants about being overprotective.

“Ophelia?”

He lifted the blindfold and tenderly pulled the mask down
around her chin.

            “
Corazón
,
what’s wrong?”

“Hmm?” Her eyes fluttered, but did not open.

“David called me and said there was an emergency.”

“I do not remember what happened,”
Ophelia said in a flat voice.
“Dr Octavius had that exhibition
today…Harry could not go…I went. Fire…explosion…I think Rosalie Octavius is
dead. Maybe others.”

Eduardo tried not to let the shock register upon his face,
but his wife had yet to open her eyes.

“I’ll go find Whitaker or Westbrooke. There might be
something on the news.”

Ophelia didn’t respond and he allowed the curtain to fall
back into place. David had replaced the maid by the time Eduardo returned to
the corridor.

“How is she?”

“Barely conscious,” the younger man replied. “She was
cognizant enough to answer me, but has no idea what happened.”

David nodded. “I’m going check on her and then I’ll come back
and get you squared away.”

The bodyguard disappeared into the chamber and Eduardo gave
in to the urge to pace. At least six weeks had passed since he had moved into
the mansion and he had begun to wonder about the wisdom of marrying Ophelia
shortly after.

It wasn’t that he questioned her fidelity any longer—many
months of counseling had shown him where he went wrong—but more than he
questioned the changes in her life. When he met her, Ophelia had been a
carefree woman who designed clothes and relished the time they spent practicing
the Old Ways in the Temple they had founded together. Since her father’s death,
however, Ophelia seemed to have a higher stress level and no desire to start
another Temple—or at least find another coven. Worse than her increasingly
overprotective bodyguards was the uptick in nightmares. There had been a few
times where he had even snuck out to sleep in Harry’s old suite, but they never
discussed it in the morning.

The click of the door announced David’s return.

 “She’s sleeping peacefully.”

“Ophelia’s accessories were clearly Whitaker’s idea. I gave
him the responsibility of escorting her back here and putting her to bed while
I addressed the appropriate people at Osborn Scientific.”

“She doesn’t appear to be hurt. Why was she sedated?”

“I suspect that was Andrew’s doing, as well.” David shook his
head. “The short version is that Dr. Octavius’s fusion generator backfired
horribly, to the point of destroying his laboratory and killing his wife.
Several went to the hospital, including the doctor. From what I understand, the
needles that connected the actuator harness to his central nervous system fused
with his spine. There was an inhibitor chip for his brain, but I suspect that
that was broken in the explosion.”

Eduardo looked bemused.

“Octavius has…octopus arms, for lack of a better term. The actuators
help him control the fusion reaction and the needles eliminate the need for a
control box. The chip ensured that he controlled the actuators and not the
other way around.”

The younger man cringed. “Ophelia won’t be thrilled at the
loss of a profit-bearing investment.”

“She’ll be
livid
when she’s fully conscious!” David
countered. “Mr. Osborn held a press conference while Ophelia was in the
hospital and glossed over
everything
—while making it appear that
he
will be the one who suffers the most damage.”

Eduardo and David stood against the wall and folded their
arms, lost in thought.

“What would it take to fire Whitaker?”

“I would need to vet a replacement. That could take days,
even weeks. Ophelia would be in Andrew’s company the entire time and he would
want her to completely avoid Harry to make up for the decrease in security. She
would probably have to put him on administrative leave in order to avoid
him—Mr. Osborn doesn’t have the skills needed for a temporary transfer to
research and development; and he doesn’t have the clearance needed to a
transfer to the lab complex, either.”

After a moment, David added, “Whitaker was only supposed to
be temporary. I called him in when Ophelia wasn’t speaking to me because he’s
an old Marine buddy. I thought I could count on him.”

Eduardo turned to his wife’s bodyguard, surprised. “When has
Ophelia refused to talk to
you?
”

David regarded him quietly for a moment.

“It is not my place to tell. When it is time, you’ll know.”

Late August 2004

“My father did not leave a lot undone,”
Ophelia explained.
“Even in death, I find him to be very organized. Clearly, he never
left anything until the last minute.”

Eduardo appeared at her side with a glass of champagne,
causing her to smile. She was about to introduce him to…whomever she’d been
talking to, when…

“
OSBORN!
”

Ophelia’s bodyguards drew closer so quickly that they jostled
her into her husband. She apologized hastily, then gently scooted around
Eduardo so that she could peer over Andrew’s shoulder. After a short
conversation, Ophelia found herself peeking out from beneath her bodyguard’s
armpit, looking straight at J. Jonah Jameson, who was striding toward them at a
fantastic clip.

“Osborn!” her father’s friend said again.

“I
have
a forename.”

“Whatever!” snapped Jameson. “Why haven’t you had dinner with
my son?”

The gentleman drew a rather bewildered young man out of the
crowd, whom Ophelia recognized as the planetarium’s guest of honor.

“I believe your son already
has
a
significant other.”

Sure enough, a woman about Harry’s age elbowed her way
through the crowd a moment later. Ophelia smiled when she recognized the girl’s
vibrant red hair from some of the pictures Bernard had found in Harry’s room.

“Who?
Her?
” Jonah demanded. “Nah!”

Finally succeeding in getting out from underneath Andrew,
Ophelia rummaged around behind her and snagged Eduardo. She put her arm through
his and pasted a smile back on her face.

“I have been happily married for three
months now.”

Jonah gave Eduardo a once-over. “Did your father approve of
this?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“
This!
” Jonah seemed to be at a loss without his
customary cigar and gestured so wildly that he nearly poked out the eye of the
society matron behind him.

“
Eduardo never had a chance to meet my
father,”
Ophelia replied coldly.
“I believe Norman’s favourite
excuse was that he was too busy with his precious company.”

“Figures!” the older man muttered. “Boy isn’t the right type
to be carrying on the Osborn line.”

“Ms. Osborn’s personal life is not up for discussion,” said a
sharp voice.