Page 47 of To Woo and to Wed
“Oh?” he murmured, gazing down at her, his gaze inscrutable. “And what did you have in mind?” This was a bit more flirtatious than she’d expected by way of a response—but if he thought to bluff, she’d put that attempt to rest.
“What I offered you four years ago,” she said quietly. She reached out a hand and very deliberately traced one finger down his forearm.
“Four years ago, you informed me you’d never marry me.” His voice was careful, even.
“But, if you will recall, I was more than willing to come to some other sort of arrangement,” she said, just as carefully. “You were the one who was unwilling, in that regard… so I eventually found entertainment… elsewhere.” Her gaze flicked toward Jeremy, who was entirely oblivious to this conversation, as he was at the moment occupied in whispering something—doubtless inappropriate—in his wife’s ear.
“You really think,” West said, his voice still low and even, “that we could go to bed together, and walk away again?”
“I’ve confidence in my own ability to resist temptation,” Sophie said lightly.
“Then I don’t have much confidence in your memory,” he said. “Because I have relived that night—afternoon—we spent together hundreds of times in the past four years, and I don’t think either of us could walk away again. I think we’d ruin each other.”
“I’m a widow. You can’t ruin me.”
His gaze on her was steady. “I didn’t mean your reputation.” A brief, heavy pause. “I meant that I’d ruin you for anyone else.”
A slow, simmering heat seemed to have taken up residence in Sophie’s stomach; she was acutely conscious of her pulse making its presence known in a way it normally did not. She knew she was playing with fire, and yet she could not bring herself to stop. Not when she’d been so very good—had resisted temptation for so very long.
“If you’d like to test that theory,” she said, even more quietly, “you know where to find me.”
And then she was leaning back in her seat, the spell broken, her attention fixed again—or, more accurately, for the first time all evening—on the actors on the stage below her.
She did not think he’d say yes—could not imagine that the West she knew now, the man he’d become, would be amenable to such an arrangement, not when he’d once spoken so firmly against it.
But she was conscious of every breath, every move that he made beside her. She heard the slow, ever-so-slightly unsteady exhale he let out after a few long moments had passed. She heard him shift in his seat. And she felt once again the nudge of his finger against hers, where their hands rested between them, the brief, deliberate contact like a lick of flame on her skin, even through the fabric of her glove.
And she wondered, for the briefest of moments, if perhaps, this time, she was wrong.
Chapter Sixteen
One year earlier
“You are looking quite welltonight, Soph.”
Sophie was not certain compliments counted when they came from one’s little sister—but, in this instance, she knew that Harriet was correct.
“Thank you.” She took a sip of ratafia, idly gazing around the room. It was a pleasantly cool early May evening outdoors, which was a relief, because the ballroom was—as the hostess would no doubt be crowing about the next day—a dreadful crush. Sophie had never entirely understood why this was a state to be desired; she, personally, reserved a fair bit of resentment for the inevitable trickle of perspiration that would creep slowly down her spine during these events, impossible for her to reach and wipe away.
Fortunately, her gown tonight was a midnight blue that would disguise any telltale perspiration—and which looked quite fetching on her, she knew. She’d commissioned an entirely new wardrobe from her modiste this year, one that was a bit more daring than she was accustomed to. But it had been three years since she’d been widowed—three years since that one, perhaps ill-advised afternoon with a certainmarquess—and she had grown to realize that she was feeling a bit…bored.
So she’d put on a new dress with a plunging neckline, and had Fox, her lady’s maid, dress her hair with more than usual care that evening, and as she stood there with Harriet, scanning the room for familiar faces, she told herself that there was absolutely not any one particular gentleman who she was hoping might take note of this fact.
Until he walked in the door.
West looked handsome this evening, as always; his hair was combed neatly back from his face, and his green eyes glittered in the candlelight. She did wish that he would do her the courtesy of not always looking so enticing every time she saw him, but that alone would require him to think of her as often as she thought of him.
The first time she had seen him last Season, at the first event she’d attended since her husband’s death, they’d caught sight of each other across the room at the Royal Academy, where they were both attending an art exhibition. Their eyes had locked for a split second, he’d offered her a polite nod, and then he’d moved on to continue speaking to a group of his Oxford friends and their wives.
She’d felt as though she’d been kicked in the stomach, and was furious with herself for feeling that way.Shewas the one, after all, who had told him that they could never marry—a reality that she could not deny when she spotted the Duke of Dovington a minute or two later, surveying the room like a predator taking note of the location of all of its prey.
Occasionally, she thought she felt West’s eyes on her at these events, after they’d moved past each other—but whenever she turned, he was deep in conversation with someone else, or sometimes nowhere to be seen at all.
Which meant she was imagining it, like some sort of lovesick fool.
Tonight, however, she was determined not to be that lovesick fool any longer. She was twenty-six years old, and she was tired of allowing a short-lived love affair at the age of twenty to occupy so much of her thoughts. If he had moved on, then so would she; therefore, she proceeded to dance, chat, and flirt her way around the room over the course of the next couple of hours. Truth be told, she had forgotten how exhaustingtonevents were; she had never considered herself much of a bluestocking, but the years since she’d been widowed had taught her of the joy that could be found in a quiet evening in her drawing room or library, curled up before the fire with a book on her lap. She found herself thinking of that vision of domestic coziness almost longingly as she finished dancing a rather energetic reel and tried very hard to ignore that dreaded trickle of perspiration on her back.
She slipped off the ballroom floor, fanning herself, and was just considering attempting to beat a path through the crowd to the refreshment table when she turned—
