Page 29 of To Woo and to Wed
But then, Sophie’s words from earlier echoed in his mind:I do not think David would wish you to blame yourself.
And he thought of his friend—his laughing, reckless, loyal best friend, who he had loved so fiercely, and who he knew had loved him just as fiercely in return, even if they’d never once said as much.
And he began to believe, for the first time, that she was right.
This knowledge did not erase his guilt—nothing, he suspected, would ever do that—but it made it feel… smaller, somehow. Less all-consuming.
He knew that others would have told him the same thing, had the subject arisen—but it never did. He went to great pains, in fact, to avoid discussing it with anyone, and he did not know how to feel about the fact that he felt comfortable doing so with her, of all people. He exhaled a slow, uneven breath.
“Your father was going to make our marriage a misery,” she said gently, at last. “He informed me as much, when I tried to visit you.”
He felt her words like a blow. “When you tried to visit me,” he repeated slowly, and his gaze fixed on hers with an unblinking intensity that other women would have quailed from, but which she faced steadily. “You didn’t visit me,” he said, but even he could hear the questioning note in his own voice, the barely concealed yearning, and thought it must be obvious to her how badly he wanted this to be true, what she was telling him. “They told me you didn’t.” Even as he spoke, he realized how absurd this was; had he truly believed this of her? He’d been under the impression, based on how Fitz had framed the story, that his father had paid a call on her—ridiculous, now that he thought about it for three seconds. But at the time, mired in grief and pain, having lost both his best friend and the woman he’d planned to marry in the span of mere days, he hadn’t been thinking clearly.
“I did,” she said simply. “And that is when your father made his move.”
West gazed at her for a long moment.
“Tell me,” he said at last.
And so she did.
Chapter Nine
Seven years earlier
Sophie would always remember thatparticular morning at the breakfast table, because she had never seen her parents’ faces so grim. The Wexham household was one of laughter and joy, overall; there were quarrels, as was to be expected in a home full of five daughters, but these were mended readily enough, and did not tend to cause lasting damage. Which was why, when she entered the breakfast room after a second consecutive night of interrupted sleep, her thoughts occupied by her conversation with the Duke of Dovington at the Haverford ball, the sight of her parents’ solemn, pale faces had stopped her in her tracks.
She did not recall precisely what words they had used to inform her of the news; her memories of that conversation would always be fragmented.Curricle accident. Willingham was killed. West was badly injured.All that she would recall afterward was the plunging swoop of her stomach, the sinking feeling within her chest. It felt as though a weight had settled there, one that she could not dislodge.
Her father had told her he was sending a note to the Duke of Dovington in the hope of further news, and her mother had pressed her toher chest with a strength that Sophie found smothering, but Sophie herself had said nothing, merely nodded. She did not miss the worried glance her parents exchanged as she made her way out of the room.
She drifted along, in the days that followed, like a ghost; she could not settle to any task, and was filled with enough restless energy that even sitting still came to feel like a hardship. Her father had received a brief reply from the duke, informing him that his son was gripped with a worryingly high fever, but there had been no further word, nor any invitation to visit—not that Sophie had expected one, given the duke’s feelings about her presence in his son’s life.
Her mind was occupied with thoughts of West lying in bed, feverish, insensible, with only his cold, stern father to watch over him. She thought, too, of Willingham—the laughing, golden man she’d seen only days earlier—and could not reconcile her memories of him with the knowledge that he was dead. When she thought of what this knowledge would do to West, if—when—he awakened, she felt a howl of misery clawing its way up from her chest and lodging in her throat; she felt as if she were choking on it.
By the fourth day, she could not bear it any longer.
It was easy enough, as it turned out, to dress quietly, to sneak down the servants’ stairs and make her way to the mews. The family coachman had always been fond of her, and it was relatively simple to convince him to take her out in the carriage, once she threatened to set off on foot alone and hail a hack. Particularly after she told him her destination, and something in his face softened—the servants, after all, were hardly unaware of the concerns that gripped the family upstairs.
The Duke of Dovington lived in an imposing mansion in Berkeley Square; Sophie had ridden past it before, but had never had cause to knock at the door. This morning, it was answered by the mostregal-looking butler she’d ever seen; for all that it was a thoroughly indecent hour of the morning, he did not have a single hair out of place.
“I was hoping for news of West—of Lord Weston, I mean,” she said, hating how uncertain her voice sounded. She stiffened her spine, took a breath, and added, “I am aware this is a difficult time for the family, but if you would please give my card to the duke”—she extended the engraved calling card she had carefully tucked into her reticule half an hour before—“and inform him that I do not intend to leave until I have spoken to him, I’d very much appreciate it.”
After a lengthy pause the butler stepped back, allowing her to stand in the entrance hall while he withdrew, presumably to inform his employer of a shockingly improper young lady refusing to remove herself from the property. There was a long enough delay that Sophie began to wonder if she really was going to have to refuse to leave—and to wish, not for the first time, that West’s brother were in town; Lord James was at a house party in the countryside, and was presumably making his way back to London with great haste, but had not yet arrived—when the steady click of footsteps on the marble stairs drew her attention upward, and she watched as the Duke of Dovington descended toward her.
Even now, at this hour, with his eldest son lying horribly ill, he looked entirely ducal, his attire immaculate. There were dark circles under his eyes, however—the only sign that his nights had recently been as sleepless as Sophie’s own.
“Miss Wexham,” he said; there was a slightly frayed edge to his voice that betrayed his exhaustion. “This is unexpected.”
“I realize that this is a bit unorthodox, but I’ve been desperate for any news of West,” she said; she clasped her hands tightly before her, only in this instant realizing that, so hasty had she been in dressingwithout her maid, she had neglected to put on gloves. The duke’s eyes dropped to her bare hands, then flicked back up to her face, but whatever disapproval he was experiencing was at least not visible in his expression.
He inclined his head to the right. “Let’s step into my study.”
Sophie felt as though a pit had formed in her stomach at these words, and she trailed the duke through the door he indicated, scarcely taking notice of her surroundings. Had West taken a turn for the worse? Had he…
But she could not form the word—could not breathe life into it, even in her thoughts. Something of her anxiety must have shown on her face, much as she was attempting to maintain a cool demeanor before this man she did not like, nor trust, because he said, as soon as the door closed behind him, “The fever broke in the night.”
Sophie felt weak with relief; she reached out to grip the arm of a leather chair, suddenly feeling a bit uncertain as to her legs’ ability to support her.
