Page 59 of To Woo and to Wed
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “West.” It was soft, pained.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I’ve tried to forget you—I’ve tried to move on—I’ve tried to convince myself that I’d be just as happy without you, eventually. But I can never quite manage it. I only want you—I’ve only ever wanted you.”
“I want you, too,” she said softly. “But not enough to toss everything else about my life into a blazing fire.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows. Small frizzing tendrils of hair, mussed from his fingers, formed a golden halo around her head. “Your father was willing to ruin my sister’s marriage prospects if I married you—he was willing to destroy the one thing you care about the most, that gives you a sense of purpose.”
“Your sisters are all married now—quite happily, I believe—with one exception, and I know Blackford well enough to know that there’s nothing my father could do to convince him not to marry Alexandra, at this point.”
“Butyou,” she pressed, sounding frustrated. “Even if my sisters are safe from him,youaren’t. He could still sell Rosemere, could cast the tenants off the land, all for the sake of spiting you.”
“I don’t believe he will,” West said levelly, even as the thought caused a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, one that had recurred ever since his father had first issued this threat. Hedidn’tthink hisfather would—it was ultimately pointless—but he disliked the possibility all the same. He was not a gambling man; he played low stakes at the card tables, when he played at all; he did not consider it his right, given the privilege he was born to, to risk the fortune that countless people depended on, in some way or another.
“But there’s risk, all the same,” Sophie said, as if reading his thoughts. “And I do not want you to risk that for me—I do not want a future with you, not if it means you’ve given up something so great, something you care for so much.”
“I care foryou,” West said, frustration creeping into his voice to match the frustrated note in hers. “And I do not know why you value your own happiness so little—why you are so quick to give it up.”
“Even if I weren’t,” she said evenly, “the fact that I cannot guarantee you an heir should be enough to make you see reason.”
“I don’t care about a bloody heir.” He pushed himself to a sitting position, and then rolled off the bed entirely, ignoring the sharp pain in his leg that resulted from moving too quickly. He leaned down and scooped up his smalls and trousers from the floor, pulling them on with a furious energy that coursed through his limbs. Sophie watched in silence. “I have a brother—I have cousins—I don’t care who inherits the bloody title after me, not if caring means that I don’t get to spend the rest of my life caring foryou. When will you realize that you are worth it, to me? When will you stop putting your happiness last, behind everyone else’s?”
“Easy enough to say, when one is to inherit a dukedom,” she said coldly. He eased himself back down onto the bed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
“You knew my position the night we met,” he said softly. “It did not bother you then.”
“Perhaps I’ve changed my mind.”
“Then if that’s the case—if I cannot convince you that the man I am is worth all the bother that comes from the title I hold—then I do not know what else I can say to persuade you.”
She rose, too, and reached for her chemise, pulling it over her head, hiding her bare skin from his view.
“Neither do I,” she said softly, reaching for her corset, and after a long moment of silence, without another word, West leaned forward to help her with the laces.
Chapter Nineteen
Ten months earlier
He found her in thegallery of a country house in Wiltshire.
It was August—a sunny, sticky afternoon that lent itself to lazy conversations and restful sojourns in the shade. Sophie knew that at least some of the other members of their party—who had all, like herself, arrived within the past several hours—were strolling around the garden, or resting in the cool quiet of their rooms. She, however, had merely assured herself that her trunk had made its way to the guest room she’d be occupying for the next fortnight, left her bonnet on her bed, and then taken herself off on a walk around the house, her footsteps muffled by the expensive rugs that covered the floors.
She had considered carefully before accepting Jeremy’s invitation to his annual shooting party; their liaison had ended on friendly terms, and over the course of the previous month she had become closer to Violet, who she knew planned to attend. She thought it would be rather nice to escape the heat of town for a few weeks in the countryside, in the company of friends she hoped to deepen her acquaintance with. And had she not said to Jeremy, when ending things,I do hope that we might still be friends? She had meant it, too; she liked Jeremy,for all that their short-lived affair had not been particularly earth-shattering.
(She very much feared that her expectations regarding lovemaking had been set far too high because of a single afternoon three years earlier.)
So here she was; but after a long day in a hot carriage, subjected to her lady’s maid’s unending chatter, she badly wished for five minutes to herself. Time alone was not a commodity she’d been lacking, these past three years, yet there were still occasions when she found herself craving the chance to gather her thoughts in peace.
Or perhaps, today, it was merely the knowledge of who would be awaiting her, once she eventually joined the group, that sent her on a slow, circuitous tour of the house. Whatever her motive, it was ultimately futile: It was as she was standing in the gallery, thoughtfully regarding a portrait of Jeremy and his elder brother as boys, their arms slung round each other’s shoulders, that she heard footsteps, and the muffledthunkof a cane on carpet, and she knew whom she would find even before she turned to face him.
He came to an abrupt halt the moment he spotted her.
Sophie knotted her hands together, and inclined her head. “Lord Weston.”
“Lady Fitzwilliam.”
An awkward silence fell; West was looking around the room, seeming desperate for something to rest his eyes on that wasn’t her face, and Sophie studied him. He wore a dark-blue jacket and riding boots; his cravat was a bit loose, and his hair mussed. He must have been out of doors, she thought; he had not yet transformed back into the immaculately groomed version of himself that would no doubt appear at the dinner table in a couple of hours’ time.
After another long moment, he looked directly at her; there was a bit of color in his cheeks, presumably from the heat. It had been a long time sinceshehad been the one to put color there.
“I apologize for disturbing you—I got a bit turned around, looking for my room. I’ll just—”
