Page 37 of To Woo and to Wed
Chapter Twelve
“Are you certain this doesn’tbother your leg?” Sophie asked for the second time.
West shook his head. “No more than anything else does.”
Sophie pressed her lips together, clearly biting back whatever it was she actually wished to say. Instead, she merely offered, “That does notpreciselyanswer my question.”
He glanced sideways at her, weighing his words. Nothing about the first thirty-one years of his life had made him feel easy with admitting to even a hint of weakness—but this was Sophie. He had been comfortable unburdening himself to her… once. And the past week had done nothing more than remind him of all that he missed from those days. “If we ride too long, it will be sore later,” he conceded. “But I can tolerate it for a short distance—it’s certainly not any worse than my weekly fencing sessions with Hawthorne.”
He expected her to debate him further—to take issue with the fencing, at least, which he was perfectly well aware no doctor would have advised—but she merely shook her head and said, “All right.” Catching his surprised look, she added, “If you think I’m going to waste my time arguing with a man who turns noble suffering into high art, you must have taken leave of your senses entirely.”
“Noble suffering?”
Sophie nodded, her gaze fixed on their surroundings—they were on Rotten Row at five o’clock, meaning it was positively teeming with aristocrats. It put one in mind of rats on a ship. “You have been raised with the knowledge that you are one day to possess enormous wealth and responsibility, and so you seem to have decided at some point that making a mild martyr of yourself is the best way to offer some sort of atonement for the privilege you inherited on the day you were born.”
She ignored his indignant sputtering and offered a cheerful wave to Lady Wheezle, who was out walking one of her alarmingly small dogs and who gave Sophie a mildly suspicious look at this display of enthusiasm. This look quickly melted into one of intrigued delight upon seeing West at her side; he offered her a more restrained nod of the head in greeting as they rode past.
“What do you think she does with the other dogs?” he asked Sophie in a low voice. “She only ever walks one at a time, but she must have half a dozen.”
“How on earth can you tell? They all look the same—like potatoes with wigs.”
West could not suppress an amused snort, and Sophie cast him a sideways glance, a smile creeping across her own face.
“They’re different colors,” he informed her. “There’s a black one, and a tan one, and a white one, and a sort of off-white one—”
“I did not realize that you paid Lady Wheezle sufficient attention to be able to describe her dogs in such detail. She’s a widow, you know. If you are seeking a new inamorata, once our ruse comes to an end.”
West gave her an appalled look. “She must be at least seventy.”
Sophie sniffed. “That merely means she’s experienced. I like tothink that when I’m seventy, I could catch the eye of a dashing young nobleman if I set my mind to it.”
“I’ve no doubt,” he said with complete sincerity, but this felt dangerously like flirting, something he did not trust himself to do with her—not when merely being at her side was sufficient to drive all thoughts of every other woman he’d ever kissed out of his mind. It would have been a lovely state of affairs, had theyactuallybeen betrothed.
“Violet and Audley,” Sophie said in an undertone, interrupting West’s thoughts. He glanced up; his brother and sister-in-law were approaching them on horseback. Violet in particular looked downright delighted when she caught sight of them.
“West! Sophie!” she called.
“Violet,” West said. “James.”
“We were just out for a ride,” Sophie said, smiling radiantly as she tried to nudge her horse closer to West’s. He reached out a hand to seize her by the elbow and steady her when her attempts at nudging threatened to dislodge her from her sidesaddle entirely.
“Yes,” James said slowly, looking at Sophie with some perplexity. “We can see that.”
“It’s a nice day for it,” West added inanely.
Now Violet was looking at them strangely, too, but appeared determined to ignore the fact that West and Sophie seemed to have been replaced by two people who had never had an interesting conversation in their lives. “We ran into your father a few minutes ago, West,” she told him. “He was in a bit of a temper. I don’t suppose…” She trailed off, before adding delicately, “I don’t suppose he was very pleased to be informed of your betrothal in anote.” She seemed to be torn between disapproval and amusement.
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose he was. But if I were to list the number of things he has done over the years thatIhave not appreciated, we’d still be standing here at midnight, so I expect he shall learn to manage his disappointment.”
Now James, Violet,andSophie were all regarding him rather strangely.
“West, are you feeling all right?” James asked, real concern evident in his voice.
“Dearest,” Sophie said through a smile, “I thought you were going to inform him yourself.”
“And so I did, my…” He trailed off; the word that had sprung naturally to his tongue was not one he could ever utter to her again. She was not his love—she was not hisanything, not anymore. Not in truth, at least. His father had seen to that, seven years earlier. “Potato,” he finished weakly, Lady Wheezle’s root-vegetable-like dogs apparently still on his mind.
James’s eyebrows were approaching his hairline. “Your potato,” he repeated, sounding as though he was approximately five seconds away from summoning a doctor.
