Page 3 of To Woo and to Wed
“Drinking alone?” his friend asked, sinking down into the chair next to him. “Perhaps we’ll make a dissolute rake out of you after all.” He paused, then added, his tone a bit gentler, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” West drained the glass; it was not his first. Nor his second. He’d retreated here after parting from Sophie, his mind occupied by thoughts of how to approach his father—how to make him understand, once and for all, that he was not to interfere. Three glasses of brandy had not yet miraculously provided the answer.
“I thought to take my new curricle to Kent tomorrow,” David said, taking a sip from the wineglass in his hand. His golden hair was mussed, and his cravat was askew; West wondered idly whom he’d found to entertain himself with that evening. “It’s the fastest one I’ve ever driven.”
“I’d hope so,” West said mildly, “if you’re hoping to outrun your creditors.”
“Ha.” David took another sip of wine, staring moodily into the fire. “I could certainly outrunyou.”
West sloshed a bit more brandy into his glass. Held it up, gazing at the amber liquid within the crystal. His head was spinning, and his conversation with Sophie was still echoing in his mind; the looming prospect of a confrontation with his father was like a sudden weight upon his shoulders. He felt frustrated, angry, and—for once—ever so slightly… reckless.
He rolled his head against the back of his chair, giving his friend a sideways glance as he took another long sip from his glass.
“Want to bet?”
He did not see Sophie again that evening, instead departing in David’s company in a brandy-soaked haze and then awakening the next morning with a splitting headache, in a decidedly ill humor, with a commitment to a poorly considered bet with his friend.
Tomorrow, he thought; he’d go to Kent this afternoon, and then speak to his father and call upon her tomorrow.
But he did not see her the following day—not when everything that afternoon went so horribly, irreparably wrong. The next time he saw her, instead, was some weeks later—after the accident. After David’s death. After he’d finally arisen from his sickbed, recovered enough to walk but with a fierce limp as a souvenir of that ill-fated race.
And after she’d become another man’s wife.
Chapter One
London, May 1818
Sophie did not recommend widowhoodas a rule, but there were undoubtedly certain advantages. She could come and go as she pleased, for example, without any man to fuss over her whereabouts. She could spend an entire day reading, or playing piano, or painting. (She had not, in fact, ever spent an entire day doing any of these things.) She could slip a tot of brandy into her afternoon tea without suffering a man’s disapproving gaze. (She absolutelyhaddone this, on more than one occasion.) And she could eat a leisurely breakfast, presented with a mouthwatering array of baked-good bounty, without a single other person to interrupt the peaceful solitude of her breakfast room.
Or, rather, sheimaginedthis last thing was possible; her sisters, however, made certain that this option was almost never presented to her.
“Sophie!”
Sophie glanced up from the newspaper she was idly perusing over a cup of tea, resisting the urge to roll her eyes heavenward at the sight of not one, nor two, butthreeof her sisters beaming at her from the doorway of the room. Behind them, Grimball, her long-sufferingbutler, managed to bleat a frantic, “Mrs. Brown-Montague! Mrs. Lancashire! Mrs. Covington!”
Harriet, Sophie’s youngest sister—by a mere sixteen minutes—turned a radiant smile on him. “Thank you, Grimball, but I do not think we need announcing! We arefamily.”
“Why does that sound like a threat?” Sophie murmured, rising to embrace her sisters in turn.
“Sophie, sarcasm does not suit you,” scolded Betsy, Harriet’s twin. She caught sight of the platter piled high with croissants on the sideboard. “Ah! I see that Mrs. Villeneuve has made croissants! How convenient, when they are myparticularfavorite!” She gave them a look of such lascivious appreciation that Sophie felt rather protective of the virtue of a platter of baked goods.
“Mmm, yes,” Sophie agreed, resuming her seat as Harriet, Betsy, and Alexandra fell upon the bounty on offer. “It could notpossiblybe that it is a Monday, and Mrs. Villeneuve is in the habit of making croissants every Monday—a fact of which you are perfectly well aware?”
“No,” Betsy said brightly, placing two croissants on a plate and eyeing a third. “I think it is a mere happy coincidence—the eyes of fate smiling upon us on this joyous day of sisterly reunion!”
“Betsy,” Harriet said severely, “have you been reading novels again?”
“Writing them, actually,” Betsy said, and Sophie and Harriet both blinked; before they could pursue this most intriguing line of inquiry, Betsy fell into raptures at the sight of a particularly enticing apple tart and was temporarily deaf to any further queries.
“How was Cornwall?” asked Alexandra—Sophie’s middle sister, who had been widowed within a year of Sophie. She had selected a more reasonable quantity of pastries and was now settling herself in a chair directly opposite Sophie.
“Lovely. I think my hair still smells of salt.” Sophie had recently returned from a fortnight at a house party hosted by Viscount Penvale and his new viscountess.
“It’s been an age since I went to the seaside,” Alexandra said a bit wistfully.
“Perhaps we should take a holiday together, once the Season is over,” Sophie said, taking a sip of tea and watching her sister scrutinize the jam options before her. “We could go to Brighton and go sea bathing,” she added, merely to annoy Alexandra; Alex hated to be cold and was generally reluctant to dip more than a toe into the frigid English waters.
“I think a nice walk along the shore would suffice, thank you,” Alexandra said, spreading raspberry jam upon a piece of toast. “Besides, I don’t know what I shall have planned for the summer.”
