Page 38 of To Woo and to Wed
“You know how it is,” Sophie said quickly, never once allowing her smile to slip, though there was now a telltale, slightly hysterical twitching occurring at the corners of her mouth. “When one has been reunited with a long-lost love, it all feels fresh and new again, nicknames just… materialize.”
“Nicknames involving… vegetables?” James asked.
“Now, James, need I remind you that I have made references to auberginesseveraltimes recently?” Violet put in innocently. “Vegetables are truly the height of romance.”
West and Sophie both blinked. West leaned forward slightly in his saddle, to confirm that his brother was indeed blushing.
“I do not think this is the time for that, Violet,” James said—West was mildly impressed that he was able to speak at all through so tightly clenched a jaw.
“In any case,” Sophie said, mercifully interrupting this thoroughly disturbing turn the conversation had taken, “my… potato and I are very happy. I amsosorry to hear the duke does not share in our joy. Perhaps we should go discuss it with him directly?” She reached out to lace her fingers through West’s, a gesture that likely looked more affectionate than it felt, considering she was gripping his hand so tightly that he thought he was likely to lose feeling in it at any moment.
Violet and James both looked mildly perplexed by this suggestion—it was not often that one of their set announced an intention to speak with the Duke of Dovington willingly—but West could hardly explain to them that they were attempting to rub an entirely feigned betrothal in his father’s face. Instead, he merely said, “Perhaps,” raising Sophie’s hand to his lips for a kiss; this, it was immediately obvious, was a mistake. The kiss was fleeting, but the smell of her skin was so familiar to him that he was instantly awash in memories—of the feeling of her lips against his, the taste of her skin, the silky weight of her hair in his hands.
He dropped her hand as if he’d been burned.
Sophie did not look at him as she said brightly, “Well, we’ll be off! Lovely to see you!”
West kicked his horse into a trot, not daring to turn around as he and Sophie rode away. If he had to guess, however, he would wager that both James and Violet were watching their retreating backs with utter confusion.
“That went well,” Sophie said, her voice positively dripping with sarcasm.
“It was a rehearsal,” he said a bit stiffly, his eyes still on the path ahead. “We’ll do better next time, when we see my father.”
“Willwe?” she asked skeptically. “You compared me to a root vegetable!”
“I was put on the spot.”
“You were not! If you cannot even come up with a moderately sane term of endearment without excessive consideration, then I think perhaps this plan might be doomed to failure.”
“Might I remind you,” he said, jerking the reins with more strength than he intended, causing his horse to come to a shuddering halt, “that this wasyouridea?”
“Whichyouagreed to!” she hissed, reining in her horse as well. “If you don’t think you can play the role convincingly, you should have just told me so from the outset rather than allowing me to waste time and energy on this ruse instead of coming up with some other option.”
“As if I’ve just been having a delightful time of it.” He was growing more irritated by the moment, and took a deep breath, trying to master his temper. This was not a task with which he ordinarily had much difficulty—that was something he’d always prided himself on. But she did have a peculiar way of irking him that no one else had ever quite managed.
“No one forced you to do this, you know.”
“Perhapsyoumight have noticed that I have a peculiar difficulty in saying no to you,” he shot back.
“Odd, then, that you had no trouble whatsoever rejecting me four years ago.”
He could tell from the look on her face that she hadn’t meant tosay this—that it had spilled out in the heat of the moment. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to ignore it, to try to steer this conversation onto more stable ground.
Instead, what he said was:
“Odd, as I seem to recall it a bit differently. I all but asked you to marry me, and you could barely control your eagerness to inform me of all the reasons that would never happen.”
“Reasons that I would think you understood better now, given that I explained them to you not two days ago,” she said through gritted teeth. She must have dug her heel into her horse’s side, for it reared slightly—Sophie could have steadied it herself, but before she had the chance to do so his arm shot out, grasping her reins, bringing the horse back under control. Under his hand, one of Sophie’s hands still gripped the reins; he could feel the warmth of her skin through her glove.
She looked up at him and exhaled a slow, shuddering breath.
And it was at precisely this moment that he heard his father’s voice hailing him, less welcome at this instant than it had possibly ever been in West’s entire life.
“West.”
He wrenched his gaze away from Sophie’s face to see his father approaching on horseback. His father loved horses and he rode beautifully, his seat as impeccable as it must have been thirty years prior. West loosened his grip on Sophie’s hand as the duke approached, but did not drop it.
“Father.” He inclined his head toward the duke. “I believe you remember Lady Fitzwilliam?”
