Page 54 of To Woo and to Wed
The struggle continued; Sophie was growing slightly red in the face. A strand of golden hair had fallen into her face, and she blew an irritated breath at it.
“I know it would be impolite for me to sit,” he said after another long few moments, “but my leg is beginning to ache—”
“For heaven’s sake!” She thrust the bottle at him; he mentally congratulated himself for successfully guessing that mentioning his leg would end this farce. He accepted the bottle from her and, in a few twists of the corkscrew, had it open.
He filled two glasses, set the bottle down, and raised his glass to her. “Cheers,” he offered.
She clinked her glass against his, still thoroughly out of sorts. “I’m even more irritated now that I’ve learned that you look very attractive whilst opening wine bottles.” She took a seat in one of the armchairs before the empty fireplace, and he sat in the chair opposite hers.
“I have often thought that brandishing a corkscrew is indeed the surest way to woo a woman,” he murmured. She rolled her eyes, and he nearly smiled.
“I can tell you are trying not to smile,” she informed him. “And I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Smile?”
“No, try not to. You have a very nice smile, you know. On the rare occasion it makes an appearance.”
“I smile when the situation merits it,” he said, taking a sip of wine. He’d been saving this particular claret for a special occasion—which, upon reflection, he supposed this evening qualified as.
“As if it’s a particularly fetching coat you only wear for the nicest events,” she said, andshewas smiling, and if his smile was nice, or however she found it, hers was radiant. He looked back down into his glass.
A brief silence descended upon them; she was gazing into the empty grate, evidently deep in thought, which gave him the opportunity to look his fill. For so many years, he’d had to take her in in hasty, furtive gulps: a quick glance across a crowded ballroom, or down a dinner table, careful that no one should observe him doing so. It felt almost dizzyingly luxurious to look at her for as long as he pleased.
“I enjoyed dinner tonight,” she said absently, taking another sip of wine. “With your brother—and my sisters—and all their friends. It was… nice.” She sounded mildly surprised by this realization, that the display of domestic harmony they’d put on tonight had been enjoyable. He was tempted to push at this, but instead broached another topic he’d considered often, these past weeks—and months.
“You have become closer with them. With Violet’s friends, I mean. I recall you used to only be close to your sisters.”
He remembered something she had told him once, years earlier:Why should I need other friends, when I’ve four sisters?Who could possibly be better company than them?
He remembered the pang her words had caused; he’d grown up in a household with a dead mother, a controlling father, and a single younger brother who seemed to resent him half the time. He could not imagine calling a large, loving family like the Wexhams his own. But he’d gone off to school, and made friends with David Overington, the future Marquess of Willingham. They’d met at Eton, and continued onto Oxford together, and he had found the joy that came of belonging, of having another person on whom one could rely.
The thought of David sent a pang through him. But he realized with a start that over the course of this past year—since he’d repaired his relationship with his brother, become closer to his brother’s friends, too—the pain of David’s absence had lessened, like an old wound that was slowly healing.
“I’ve discovered there’s something to be said for being intimate with someone who didn’t know you when you were in leading strings,” Sophie said now, drawing West back from his own maudlin thoughts. “And, besides, my sisters are adults now. They’ve all married and are starting families of their own. They don’t… need me. Anymore.”
He set down his wineglass and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, leveling his gaze directly at her. “Sophie. Your sisters will always need you.”
“But it’s not the same.” She took another sip of wine. “After I—after I married Fitz, I turned my attention to them. Nowtheyneeded to marry well.Theyneeded to be happy. I chaperoned them for events—I hosted balls for Alex and the twins, the years they debuted—I gave them advice when they had suitors. And all along, I thought, if I could ensure that all of them were happy in their marriages, then it wouldn’t matter that I—”
She broke off, as if suddenly realizing what she was saying. What she’d beenaboutto say.
He waited.
“That I wasn’t happy in mine.”
She spoke each word very carefully, very deliberately, without ever allowing her gaze to waver from his—so that he’d know that she meant it. That the words hadn’t slipped out by accident.
He’d known, on some level, that this was true. He was not a vain man, but he flattered himself that Sophie hadn’t gone from loving him to marrying another man without more than a moment’s regret; he’d known that her marriage to Bridewell must have hurt, in both the same and an entirely different way to the manner in which it had hurt him.
But she had never admitted it to him, until now.
And he knew, somehow, that he must proceed very, very carefully.
“Did they—dothey—know that?” He deliberately leaned back in his seat, as if the topic didn’t matter very much to him at all, as if he were approaching a particularly shy cat. For years, all he had wanted—more than to kiss her, or hold her, or make love to her—was simply totalkto her. She was his favorite person to talk to.
She was, he feared, still his favorite person, period.
She gave a sort of half-shrug, one that seemedhelpless, somehow, even though that was nearly the last word he’d ever use to describe her.
