Page 10 of To Woo and to Wed
“So let me be certain I understand this,” he said slowly. “You’re worried you’ll disappoint your parents by not marrying—and you’re also worried you’ll disappoint them by not marrying happily enough?”
“And,” she added, “I’m worried that I need to make a decent enough match to make my family seem at least somewhat palatable to theton, so that my sisters can make good matches, too.”
“Why are they unpalatable?” he asked, frowning, and Sophie experienced a brief, powerful desire that she, too, could be a wealthy, titled man, one who did not spend his days with a mother filling his ears with talk of matrimony, who did not feel acutely conscious of the need to marry upward, to secure his spot among the rest of the aristocracy. One who didn’t file away every piece of information ever heard about any other member of their class.
“My father’s title is quite new,” she said, instead of vocalizing any of those thoughts. “It only dates back to his father, so his family is already not considered terribly high in the instep, and then my father made the unforgivable error of marrying a Landsdowne.”
West frowned. “As in, the shipping company?”
“The very one. We reek of trade.”
The words were a test, she realized—one she hadn’t entirely intended to set for him, and yet which proved irresistible once the opportunity arose. How would this man, with a lineage far more ancient than that of the king, respond to this revelation of her own roots?
He made a great show of sniffing the air around him. “Odd. I don’t smell anything.”
And then he smiled at her.
And her heart wentthump, thump.
And in the days—and weeks—and years to come, with all that would pass between them, with a Season of courtship, his accident and her marriage, the surreptitious glances across ballrooms, the fleeting pressure of his hand on hers in polite greeting at this event or another—
She would never quite manage to forget the way her heart felt, that first night they met, when she was basking in the bright, unexpected glow of his smile. Despite the pain this memory would cause her, she could never bring herself to wish it away.
Chapter Three
“Is that really necessary?”
There were many sounds that West was fond of: The pounding of galloping hooves. A piano playing a complicated concerto. Once—but not at all recently—a woman’s sighs in his ear.
His father’s voice, in his own home, before the hour of noon, was not one of them.
West pushed up his helmet, offered Hawthorne a grimace, and lowered his foil. “Father,” he said, politely bowing his head as he turned.
“West. If you feel up to fencing, then would Angelo’s not suit better than your valet?” Hawthorne was not merely his valet, but one of his closest friends—a fact that his father, as fixated on status as he was, would never acknowledge.
“Hawthorne is a better opponent than any I’ve yet found at Angelo’s,” West said, which was not entirely true—Hawthorne was damned handy with a sword, but he’d never had any proper training, and doubtless there were opponents at the fencing academy who could beat him without undue difficulty. West, however, had no interest in fencing at Angelo’s, not when he was slow and clumsy where once he’d been quick-footed, capable of beating most men he knew. Hawthorne,bless him, never gave him the slightest ounce of pity, even as West’s movements were halting, his footwork appalling.
He really shouldn’t be fencing at all; he knew there would be hell to pay later, as there always was when he attempted anything that involved him setting aside his cane for any duration of time. But it made his mind go temporarily, blissfully blank—and, occasionally, this was too powerful a temptation to resist.
How kind of his father to appear just in time to ruin all of that blissful blankness.
The Duke of Dovington was an imposing man, for all that he was nearing seventy; his hair was entirely gray, but still thick upon his head, and his dark eyes were as sharp and intelligent as ever. West and his brother both took after their father in appearance; staring at the duke was rather like gazing into a mirror showing West what he’d look like decades in the future.
He hoped, however, he’d manage to be a bit less of a complete and utter ass.
With this bit of warm familial regard in mind, he handed Hawthorne his foil and crossed the room, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg as he walked. His cane was leaning carefully against one wall, and West took the time to shrug back into his waistcoat and jacket before reaching for it, acutely conscious of his father’s eyes on him all the while. His father, being a duke, was accustomed to everyone he deigned to speak to springing into action to meet his every need, and West was not above allowing himself the small pleasure of forcing him to wait.
“Do you have something you wish to discuss?” he asked, his tone blandly polite as he turned to face his father.
“Yes. Perhaps we might step into your study?” The duke wasdressed for riding—he and West’s brother, James, shared a fondness for morning rides in Hyde Park, though West was fairly certain that both of them took some pains to ensure that they rarely encountered each other on these rides—and there was a trace of impatience in his voice, as if he could not believe that he had to take time out of his busy day of wafting around on a cloud of ducal superiority to pay his son a visit.
“I think the library will do,” West said pleasantly as they left the ballroom and entered the first-floor hallway, inclining his head at a door to his left.
Sparing a brief regret for the hope that, by the time he reached the age of two-and-thirty, he would be above pettily trying to thwart his father in matters of little importance—clearly, this was not going to happen—he opened the door, allowing his father to precede him into the room.
The library was one of West’s favorite rooms in his London residence; it was situated toward the back of the house, meaning there was little noise from the street here, and the walls were papered in a dark green that reminded him of a gown—
He broke off that thought abruptly, before his mind could even finish formulating it.
