Page 32 of To Woo and to Wed
She drew a book off the shelf, squinting down at it; it was one of the account books for Rosemere from two years prior. The spine was cracked, the leather rubbed buttery soft, not a speck of dust visible onthe pages; clearly, this was a volume he consulted often. She swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat, and carefully replaced it on the shelf before turning to him.
“Because a study is more proper, obviously. Less conducive to amorous activity.”
“Any room can be conducive to amorous activity, Sophie.” His voice was low, like a caress.
Her eyes shot to his, and, for the second time in the past five minutes, she felt a blush rising in her cheeks; he met her gaze evenly, unblinking.
“I shall keep that in mind, thank you,” she managed, feeling oddly disconcerted. She knew—thanks to a conversation, some years earlier, that she still remembered with unfortunate clarity—that he was not interested in an affair. How dare he now make her blush?
But then, he’d always been able to do so, seemingly without even trying. She’d proved oddly resistant to blushing in the face of other men’s flirtations—she’d spent two months in Jeremy’s bed without a single rosy cheek, to the best of her recollection—but West was the exception, as he was to so many things. She’d spent the better part of the past seven years attempting to train her body out of this reaction to his presence.
She took a seat in one of the chairs before the desk, in hope that he might sit as well, but he did not move for a long moment, merely continued to lean against the door, surveying her. He’d loosened his cravat; she caught sight of the tiniest hint of skin at his throat. At last, he pushed off from the door and made his way toward her; instead of settling behind his desk, however, he took a seat in the chair next to hers. Without the barrier of the desk between them, the room felt considerably more intimate.
Any room can be conducive to amorous activity, Sophie.
West’s thoughts clearly lay along different lines, however, because after a moment he said, “My father and I quarreled, you know.”
“Oh? When was this?”
“After that run-in with Bridewell seven years ago. I showed up at his front door at midnight, the worse for drink—he was not amused, as you might guess.”
“Indeed.” Sophie hated to think of West like this—younger, full of grief and pain and heartbreak, drowning his sorrows in brandy.
“I told him that I knew he had something to do with frightening you off—that he was the reason I couldn’t have a happy marriage.”
“Did he deny it?” Sophie asked evenly.
“He did not,” West said, leaning back slightly in his chair, his jaw flexing. “I think that might have made me almost as angry as the fact that he’d interfered in the first place—the fact that he admitted it so brazenly. That he didn’t feel ashamed, or even apologetic. He merely told me that I’d be grateful to him later.”
“Were you?” The words rushed out before she could consider them; she immediately wished them unsaid, and yet also wished, quite badly, to know his response.
He turned his head slowly to face her; there was a bit of pink in his cheeks from a long afternoon in the sun, and his dark hair was mussed from the breeze on the river.
“Not for a single second.”
He held her gaze in a moment that stretched taut between them. She wished to reach out and touch him, to rest her palm against the sharp lines of his face, to let him relax into her touch, just once.
Instead, she carefully knotted her hands together in her lap.
“I did, however, have my revenge,” he added conversationally,breaking the tension that built with each moment the silence between them lengthened.
“Did you?”
“I may have led him to believe that my accident had left me incapable of having children.” He said this easily, cheerfully, and she proceeded to choke on air at this revelation.
“Are you all right?” he asked solicitously as she coughed and gasped for air. Before she could recover, there was a knock at the door; it opened a moment later, revealing someone bearing a tea tray. Two someones, in fact—not maids, however, but…
“Hawthorne. Briar.” West’s voice was dryly amused. “This is… unorthodox.”
Briar, she recognized as West’s butler. He was perhaps in his late thirties, dark-haired, with a stern brow. The other man was shortish and wiry, with hair of a dark blond and a shrewd, intelligent face; after a moment, she registered the name.
“You’re West’s valet!” she said delightedly; she had memories of West mentioning him, years earlier, when they’d been courting. From what she recalled, they were from the same village in Kent, and had known each other for years.
Hawthorne swept her a surprisingly gallant bow as Briar carefully set down the tea tray. “Does my reputation precede me, my lady? How thrilling.” He batted his eyelashes at her; Sophie suppressed a laugh. She had the distinct impression that Briar, next to him, was resisting the urge to offer a very un-butler-like eye roll only with great difficulty.
“Howdoyou get his cravats knotted so precisely?” she inquired curiously. “They keep his chin tilted at such an attractive angle.”
“I contemplate how much I’d occasionally like to strangle him, andchannel that fervent energy into my craft instead,” Hawthorne said, straight-faced.
