Page 35 of To Woo and to Wed
While she was occupied by these thoughts, an odd, strained silence had fallen. West—no matter what she called him aloud, in her mindhe would always be West—looked as though he wasn’t quite certain how to proceed. This was itself a novelty; this was as close to uncomfortable as she’d ever seen him.
After another few moments, he said, “I did not come here to seek you out—I wouldn’t wish to intrude on your privacy, whilst you are grieving.”
She felt these words like a sharp pinch, as she did every time someone alluded to her supposed grief. And shewasgrieving—she’d liked Fitz, and they’d rubbed along tolerably together, even though it had become apparent within a month of their marriage how poorly matched they were. But, while she was certainly sorry that he was dead—in battle mere days before the war’s end; the entire thing was a horrible waste—she was also not grieving the way a wife properly should. Perhaps not even the way West himself was—despite the fact that he and Fitz had had precious little to say to each other for the past three years, they had known each other since boyhood, and she was certain that his loss stung.
“You are not intruding,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes, to let him see whatever he would in hers. “I merely wished to get out of the house, but my maid had a fit at the thought of me going riding in widow’s weeds. This seemed one of the only acceptable places to go, if I did not wish to be judged for enjoying myself too much.”
West flicked a glance around the small churchyard, full of weathered headstones; the one before them was fresh marble. There were no other visitors, merely a collection of headstones and grass spotted with a few persistent wildflowers. “I suppose a graveyard is judged suitably somber,” he said. “Little chance of you lifting your skirts and dancing a jig atop one of the graves, after all.”
“I would bet ready money that most graveyards have seen thatmore than once,” she replied, and there was a faint twitching at the corner of his mouth, a ghost that recalled past conversations when she’d had the knack of offering just the right sly retort to slide under that stern exterior and surprise a hint of a smile out of him.
“But not from you?” The question was quiet, and there was a trace of uncertainty to it, uncharacteristic from this man who always seemed so terribly certain of everything. Behind the question, she heard all the other, unspoken, questions:
Were you happy with him?
Do you regret his death?
And then, quietest of all:
Do you regret your marriage?
And she could answer none of these—not honestly, at least. Not with the full truth. Not when there was no point to it, even now.
So instead, she simply said, “No. Not I.”
West turned to look at the simple headstone before them, his eyes tracing the freshly carved words:Fitzwilliam Charles Bridewell, 2 February 1787–10 April 1814. Beloved son, brother, and husband.
Certainly true on two counts—and true… enough, on the third. Even if it did not feel that way to Sophie, standing in her widow’s weeds, feeling as though she were performing a display of grief that she was not fully experiencing.
A silence fell between them, and Sophie felt a small pang of loss for the ease they’d once had—the words that had fallen, eager and quick, tumbling over each other in their rush to spill out of her mouth. She had been so young then; she had not learned to be cautious, to watch what she said—or, rather, shehad, but not with him. And he, who had learned that lesson young—too young—had let down his guard withher, and this had made her feel powerful, invincible, as though there were nothing on earth that she could not accomplish.
But now, there was too much history between them—a not insignificant amount of it centered on the man whose name they now gazed at, carved into marble.
“When we were boys, he told me that he was missing a toe because a sheep bit it off,” West said, breaking the silence.
This was so unexpected that it startled a laugh out of Sophie. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. I knew he had to be lying, but I spent weeks trying to catch him without his shoes on so I could check for myself.” Sophie sneaked a glance at him, and saw that his gaze was still fixed on the headstone; in profile, the angles of his face were even more perfectly chiseled than they appeared head-on, and she suppressed a sigh. Men simply should not beallowedto look like this, she thought.
“And?”
“And eventually I caught him unawares and sat on him until I could tug his shoe off and count his toes for myself.”
Sophie could barely imagine the man standing next to her doing such a thing—having ever been so young, so mischievous.
“And then,” he added, “my father caught me at it—Fitz was visiting Brook Vale Park on a holiday from Eton—and he thrashed me. Apparently it wasn’t very ducal.”
This was uttered in a matter-of-fact tone, but Sophie nearly flinched as if she’d taken a blow. West’s father was the reason she had so much difficulty in imagining a version of West that was so carefree. So young. The Duke of Dovington had done his best to ensure that his firstborn and heir was a carefree boy for as little time as possible,and then had continued to attempt to arrange all the details of his life like chess pieces.
Sophie knew this better than anyone, after all.
“All this is to say,” West said, turning to face her directly now, and her breath caught in her throat at the intensity of his gaze, “that for a very long time, he was a good friend of mine, and I’m more sorry than I can say that he is dead.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, and—because solitude, apparently, did not suit her, and had addled her head, or at least that was the only explanation she was willing to entertain for the utterly inexplicable thing she did next—
She reached out and took his hand.
And he went very, very still. His gaze dropped to her hand, engulfed in his larger one.
