Page 36 of To Woo and to Wed
And then his gaze lifted back to hers. And caught. And held.
And Sophie was suddenly reminded why she had spent the past three years not allowing herself to so much as glance across a ballroom at him—because once she met his eyes, what happened next was inevitable.
Watching a woman brush her hair had never been a particular, specific fantasy of West’s, but he could watch Sophie at her dressing table for the rest of the night, he thought. Quite happily.
She was running a silver hairbrush through her long golden waves, wrapped in a luxurious dressing gown that she’d donned over her chemise. He hated seeing her in her black dress—hated the lossit reminded him of; hated the knowledge that she’d be wearing black for another year.
He buttoned his waistcoat, his eyes still fixed on the slim hand that moved the brush methodically through the hair that he had mussed with his own fingers not an hour before. Reaching for his coat, he took a breath—uncertainty did not come naturally to him, but he’d never had to ask a woman he wished to marry how he might go about courting her while she was still mourning the husband she’d thrown him over for.
He settled on a simple, “How do you wish to proceed?”
Sophie’s hand slowed, and she carefully set her brush down on her dressing table. She turned to him with a questioning look. “Very discreetly, obviously.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But I meant more—are we going to tell anyone? Or just wait until you are out of mourning, and surprise them?”
She frowned. “It’s hardly the sort of thing I’d like to confess to my parents over Sunday night dinner.”
It was West’s turn to frown. “I thought they might be pleased.”
Sophie’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “That their daughter, who was widowed only a couple of months ago, is conducting an affair with the unmarried heir to a dukedom?”
West’s frown deepened, uncertain if she was jesting. “No,” he said carefully. “That their daughter is beingcourtedby the unmarried heir to a dukedom—a man she was once rather fond of, if memory serves.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice—something with which he usually had little difficulty—but he didn’t quite manage it.
Sophie inhaled a single, sharp breath, and somehow he knew that he was not going to like whatever came next.
“Courting,” she repeated. “West, you—you can’tcourtme. This can’t—we can’t—” She waved her hands, seeming at a loss for words—a rarity from a woman who had always, from the very first night he’d met her, when she was only twenty, seemed almost astonishingly self-possessed.
“You are a widow now,” he said evenly, and some dark part of him took a petty pleasure in the sight of her slight flinch at the word “widow.” Perhaps it was the same part of him that thought nothing—or, at least, not enough—of taking to bed the widow of a man who’d once been a friend, before he was even cold in his grave. He could add it to the list—considerably longer now than it was a few years earlier—of things with which he had to reckon when he glanced in the mirror each morning. “Once your mourning period is over, there will be nothing standing between us—unless…” He trailed off, unable to continue. Unless this had meant nothing to her—when it had meanteverythingto him, as everything about her always had. That had always been the trouble; he, who so carefully controlled his emotions where others were concerned, seemed curiously unable to do so with her alone.
“That changes nothing of our past,” she said. “That changes nothing about the reasons we could not marry then. Unless your father has recently had a touching change of heart and… well, of his entire philosophy of life?”
The words were bitter—not that he could blame her.
“I have told you before, and it is still true, that it does not matter to me if my father approves of this match.” He spoke each word very carefully, stepping toward her with slow intent.
She rose, even as a flush crept up her neck—a sure sign that she was growing angry. “Perhaps it does not matter toyou,but it very much matters tome.”
“What is the trouble?” he asked, frustrated. “Your sisters are all married—he cannot destroy their prospects anymore. There is no reason we could not wed.”
Sophie cut her glance away from him, an odd expression flickering across her face. She did not answer him directly, instead saying, “I thought we’d already been through all this—I thought we could be sensible! There is clearly a lingering…” She faltered briefly, scrabbling for a delicate way to describe the way the very air between them always seemed to come alive the second they set foot in the same room. The way he could barely catch a hint of her perfume before he wanted to press her against the nearest wall, every gentlemanly impulse that usually governed his behavior instantly forgotten.
He waited, bitterly amused.
“… attraction,” she said carefully after a moment, lifting her chin, “between us, and I thought we could be adults about it—a discreet affair—”
He leaned forward. “I do not want, and have not ever wanted, to conduct anaffairwith you.”
She held his eyes, her gaze defiant. “It is all I will ever offer you—because we are never going to marry.” She presented the words like a thrown gauntlet, with color high in her cheeks.
He took a step back. Turned, very deliberately, and retrieved his cravat from the bedpost where he’d knotted it not so many minutes before, it being put to a far more interesting use than its usual role of guarding the scandalous few inches of skin at his throat from innocent feminine eyes. Clutched it in his fist. And then turned, slowly, back to her, and said, “Then I do not think we have anything left to discuss.” He offered her the shortest bow that courtesy would allow. “Lady Fitzwilliam.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “Lord Weston.”
And then he turned and left her bedroom, descending the back stairs to the kitchen, where he could make his exit unobserved by the prying eyes of theton.
It was only once he’d emerged into the mews behind her house that he allowed himself a single, soft expletive. He slapped his palm, once, against the brick wall before him, allowing his forehead to briefly rest against his forearm, his eyes fluttering shut against the memory of the words he and Sophie had just exchanged.
And then he opened his eyes, straightened, placed his hat atop his head, and headed toward the street with slow, measured steps to hail a hack—the Marquess of Weston once more, the man he was in Sophie’s company tucked carefully away.
