Page 8 of To Woo and to Wed
She took a second, steadying breath.
And then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, she knewpreciselyhow she could convince Alexandra to marry Blackford.
If she could somehow find someone to aid her—and she very much feared that there was only one particular someone who would do.
So she would have to persuade him.
Chapter Two
Seven years earlier
Sophie fell in love witha man with perfect shoulders and too many names.
“John Percival George Horatius Arthur Audley,” she repeated, a questioning note in her voice. “Have I got them all?”
West tilted his head. “You’ve missed a St. John in there somewhere,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “After Horatius.”
“But your Christian name isJohn,” she protested, barely suppressing her laughter. “What do you need a St. John for as well?”
“It’s a family name,” he said, all wounded ducal—or, more accurately,futureducal—dignity, but he was betrayed by a telltale twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Sophie loved that twitch.
She’d seen it first on the night they met, at a musicale that could be charitably called “interpretive.” It was early in the Season—Sophie’s third—and her mother had deemed the evening’s entertainment unmissable, so eager was she for her eldest daughter to see and be seen by all the prospective matches sure to be present. (Sophie, for her part, could not possibly understand why a gentleman would choose tosubject himself to a musicale if he had the option to spend his evening getting foxed at his club instead; she raised this point with her mother, who pinched her nose and said, “Sophia” in pained tones, which she tended to resort to only if Sophie alluded to intoxicating spirits, chamber pots, or any portion of the anatomy north of the shin.)
Sophie was not enormously fond of musicales in general—she found that she had only so much patience for sitting in an uncomfortable gown listening to music at an hour that produced the effect of a lullaby—but they were usually tolerable. That evening’s event, however, had been hosted by Viscountess Holyoak, who seemed convinced that her two unwed daughters were violin prodigies, and who only later that year—too late to be of use to any of the unfortunate attendees that evening—would come to be known as increasingly hard of hearing.
Sophie’s mother had abandoned her almost immediately upon arrival, spotting a friend in the far corner whom she wished to greet. Sophie had found a seat in the third-to-last row—not so close to the back of the room that it would seem like a deliberate attempt to escape on her part, but far enough back that if she allowed her eyes to drift shut briefly with her head firmly upright, no one was likely to notice. It was a relief to be here without Maria; her younger sister was in her first Season, and Sophie felt a vague sense of obligation whenever they attended an event together. It was up to her to set a good example—to help Maria navigate the treacherous waters of theton. If Maria were here, Sophie would not have allowed her eyes to flicker shut for even a moment. And shecertainlywould never have contemplated escape.
But Maria was not with her, and barely five minutes into the evening’s entertainment, Sophie determined that—for the sake of her own sanity—she could not remain in this room for the next hour. Shehad never before attended a performance at which the musicians’ definition of “Mozart” and Mozart’s own definition of “Mozart” differed so wildly; she spared a longing glance for the candles burning in sconces along the wall, wondering if she could fashion their wax into earplugs, but abandoned this in favor of the simplest option:
Flight.
She slipped out of her seat, making a whispered inquiry of a liveried footman as to the location of the ladies’ retiring room, and escaped gratefully into the silence of the hall.
Except it was not silent, not truly—Lady Holyoak’s music room must have the thinnest walls known to man, Sophie thought ruefully; she had thought merely to flee into the hall for a minute (or ten), but now she set off in the direction the footman had indicated. After all, a lady could take positivelyagesin the retiring room, and no one would ask her a single question about it.
She rounded the series of corners the footman had described and found the room she sought, but then paused—at the end of the hallway was a set of French doors leading to some sort of terrace, and they had been left ever-so-slightly ajar. A telltale wisp of smoke curled past the glass, indicating that whoever had opened them was still there. Sophie supposed it was some servant or other, taking a minute to escape from their duties, and thought she should likely leave them in peace; her curiosity got the better of her, however, and she took several hesitant steps in that direction—
Just in time to nearly run headfirst into the man who opened the doors at that moment, dropping a cheroot and grinding it beneath his heel before he lifted his foot to step inside.
Both stopped in their tracks, startled.
Sophie recognized him instantly—there could hardly be a singleeligible young lady of thetonwhose mama had not made her excruciatingly aware of the existence of the Marquess of Weston. He was tall and broad-shouldered—good God, those shoulders—and athletic in build, which was displayed to excellent effect by the fact that he was tailored within an inch of his life. Everything he wore, from the snowy-white cravat at his throat to his gleaming black shoes, screamed of money and good taste. He was handsome, too, and not merely in the way of those aristocrats who relied on tailoring and a devoted valet to lend the impression of good looks to a man of average appearance. No, Lord Weston had thick, nearly black hair that was combed back from his face, the slightest hint of a curl smoothed into submission, and eyes of a vivid, arresting green. Everything about his face seemed to have been designed with the utmost care, from the sharp blades of his cheekbones to the dark slash of his eyebrows, lending him a rather stern expression.
One of those eyebrows was now lifted in arrogant inquiry.
“I beg your pardon,” he said a bit stiffly; he and Sophie had never been introduced, though they’d certainly attended the same events a number of times, and she’d seen him from a distance. She wondered if he even knew her name.
She should, she knew, make some excuse and beat a hasty retreat—the daughter of an upstart viscount who’d married into a family who made their fortune intrade, of all things, could not possibly have anything to say to the heir to one of the oldest ducal titles in England. And yet, something about the lift of that single, arrogant eyebrow made her stop thinking entirely, and so the first words out of her mouth to one of the most eligible bachelors in England were:
“You do not seem like the sort of man to smoke a cheroot.”
The brow inched higher.
“That’s a rather bold assumption to make, considering we’ve never spoken.” He made a show of peering around, as if in search of a chaperone, then glanced back at her with a shrug. “As I do not see your mother anywhere nearby, perhaps we might forgo the formality of introductions? I find myself quite desperate to know what sort of man youdothink I am, if not a cheroot-smoker.”
Sophie pressed her lips together to suppress a smile; she had not expected him to be amusing. “I am Sophie Wexham,” she said, the words sounding strange on her lips—she’d never introducedherself, she realized, as there was always someone there to do it for her. Polite society was rather predicated on this rule.
