Page 33 of To Woo and to Wed
Sophie laughed, while Briar—evidently deciding that things had gone quite far enough—reached out to clamp a firm hand upon Hawthorne’s arm. “We thought you might want some refreshment, my lady,” he said, very politely.
“And none of the maids were available to perform their duties?” West asked skeptically.
“I wouldn’t wish them to become overly excited at the sight of a lady of gentle breeding,” Briar said.
“Of course,” West agreed. “Odd, though, that that’s never been a concern on the numerous occasions Violet has come to call.”
Hawthorne grinned. “I caught him attempting to eavesdrop at the door, and told him to fetch a tea tray and preserve some of his dignity.”
“A Trojan horse, if you will,” Sophie agreed cheerfully; Briar looked mortified.
“Without the bloodshed, I would hope,” West said. He paused, then leveled a glance at his staff. “Was there anything else, gentlemen?”
“Of course not,” Briar said, beating a hasty retreat, his hand still with a firm grip on Hawthorne’s forearm. “We’ll leave you to it, my lord.” He caught sight of the complicated, extremely suggestive eyebrow waggle that Hawthorne was offering West, and more or less shoved him bodily from the room.
Sophie turned to West as soon as the door clicked shut. “Veryfriendlystaff you have here.”
West cleared his throat, looking a bit embarrassed—a rarity for him, and one that Sophie took a moment to savor as a small pleasure.
“They are most intrigued by our betrothal.” He lifted a milk jug in her direction. “Do you still take your tea black?”
“A splash of brandy would not go amiss, if you have it,” she said boldly, and was rewarded with a lift of that arrogant brow but no further commentary as he stood, rounded the desk, and opened a drawer, extracting a decanter that was three-quarters full. He added a splash of brandy to her tea, then looked at her inquiringly; she tilted her head to the side, and he added another splash. There was a moment of brief consideration, and then he added a splash to his own cup as well.
She leaned forward to gently tap her cup against his. “Cheers.” There was silence for a moment as they both sipped their tea.
“My father is why I agreed to this betrothal, you know,” West said.
Sophie, who’d had her teacup raised halfway to her mouth, lowered it again, a chill coursing through her. “What do you mean?”
“When I… misled him as to my reproductive capabilities, shall we say… he stopped fussing about me finding a suitable bride, and focused all his energy on James, since he was now the one on whose shoulders the future of the dukedom lay.” A bitter note crept into his voice. “I had cause to regret that later.”
“As well you should,” Sophie agreed; the duke’s meddling had led both to Violet and James’s marriageandto their subsequent estrangement, though they’d now sorted things out once and for all, and seemed very happy.
“Recently, however, he has learned that I was not being entirely honest with him, and so he came to see me the other day—the same day you did, in fact. He implied that he should be happy to sell Rosemere, since I—lacking a wife and children—had little need for a country estate.”
Sophie felt a rush of anger at these words, at the realization that it had beenseven years, and the duke didn’t even have the decency to come up with a better way to threaten his son, and those who lovedhim. It was just ahouse. It was a pile of stones inDerbyshire, for heaven’s sake! She was irrationally angry—with West, for caring so much about a stupid house; with West’s mother, for loving the house in the first place; with herself, for feeling angry at all, as well as helpless and frustrated and a dozen other things she didn’t know how to put a name to.
And, most of all, with the duke. She dearly hoped she ran into the Duke of Dovington in the very near future, because at the moment, she thought she could quite happily murder him. And while murdering dukes was undoubtedly a hanging offense, she was beginning to wonder if perhaps she couldn’t get away with it—who, after all, would miss him?
“Nice to see his tactics haven’t changed the slightest bit in the past seven years,” she said coolly.
“It’s my fault,” West said, rubbing a rueful hand over his face. “I made the mistake of letting him know how much I loved that property—how much it meant to me. Not in words, of course—”
“Of course not,” said Sophie, amused in spite of herself.
“—but I didn’t hide it well enough. And now he sees it as nothing more than a weakness to exploit.”
Sophie thought of her own father—he was not a perfect man, but he loved his daughters fiercely, and wanted only the best for them, wished for their happiness above all else. So, too, did her mother; for all that she had been irritatingly obsessed with finding a husband for Sophie, during her years on the marriage mart, she knew that her mother had wanted her to find love, not merely an impressive title.
“You deserve better than a father who sees everything you love as an advantage to seize,” she told West softly. He glanced down into his teacup, and she frowned; did no one else tell him this? “You’re a goodman, West,” she said, the words simple but true. “And your father knows it, and takes advantage of it, because he’s an ass.”
This surprised a chuckle out of him; the sound of his laugh always seemed like a precious gift, so rare was it. He glanced back up at her, an expression in those vivid eyes that she couldn’t quite decipher.
“You deserved better, too,” he said. “What my father did to you—the way he sought to manipulate you—” A note of bitterness crept into his voice, and it made something in Sophie’s chest ache to hear it. “You care for your sisters—you cared for me—and my father knew this, and took advantage of it. And you did not deserve this.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, realizing that the expression she’d seen in his eyes a moment before wasguilt. In being honest with him, had she merely given him another thing to feel guilty about? Would things between them always be this way, laced with pain and guilt and thoughts of what might have been? Moments like this made her feel even more convinced that there was no future for them—not when they were still so mired in the past. Not, too, when his mention of fatherhood—his duty to provide an heir—only reminded her of another obstacle to any future they might share. An obstacle that she did not feel ready to divulge, on the heels of so many other confessions this afternoon.
“Thank you,” he said, gazing steadily at her, and then cleared his throat, dispelling the weight of the moment. “He did not make it clear that he had any particular candidate in mind for matrimony, so I thought perhaps our feigned betrothal could teach him a lesson—teach him to back off. No doubt he’ll be so relieved when we—when it is revealed that we are not to wed, after all…” He shifted in his seat as he spoke, about as close as this man ever came to fidgeting; he wasnot looking her in the eye. “I suspect he’ll be so relieved that he’ll stop caring overmuch about whom I marry.”
