Page 55 of To Woo and to Wed
“I don’t know—somewhat, I think. They were very puzzled when I married Fitz. Particularly with you being so ill—they thought me heartless. Maria and I quarreled about it, and we’ve never fully recovered from that quarrel, I don’t think.”
“Because you let a future duke slip through your fingers?” he asked, thinking of Sophie’s status-obsessed younger sister.
“Because she knew that I was in love with you,” Sophie said quietly, and gazed down into her drink for a long moment. “I mean, yes, she also thought I was a fool to throw away the chance to be a duchess someday—sheisMaria, after all—but more important to her was the fact that I loved you, and I was marrying someone else. She thought it monstrously unfair to Fitz, for all that I tried to tell her that he didn’t love me, either. Maria is surprisingly romantic. She didn’t know thetruth of what happened with the duke—she still doesn’t—because I knew she’d feel guilty. But since I couldn’t inform anyone of why I’d done what I’d done, they… disapproved.
“And then, once I’d been married awhile and hadn’t had a baby, they started to worry about that, too—I think that was what made them finally forgive my impetuous marriage. They felt so sorry for me that they managed to get over their disapproval, I suppose.”
Something in her tone confused him; it was somehow wry, almost guilty.
“And you didn’t want their pity?” He was hazarding a wild guess, feeling his way along in the dark. It made him uncomfortable; he was unaccustomed to speaking without being entirely sure of what he was saying. Future dukes did not speak unless they were sure. Future dukes werealwayssure.
But that was the magic of Sophie, he thought—it had been seven years ago, and he felt it again now:
With her, he did not need to be certain. She did not think any less of him for this.
“I did not think I deserved it,” she said, very quietly, and she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Fitz and I… ours was not a particularly passionate marriage. We entered it heartbroken, both of us, and he soon developed interests that lay elsewhere, and made sure I was aware that I could do the same—but he liked the idea of children, and we were both lonely, and it was convenient enough, having another warm body on the opposite side of the connecting door. So we—we went to bed together. Often enough, over the years, that it began to seem odd to us both, when there was no resulting child. It bothered him.” Her gaze on him was steady. “But it never bothered me.”
West was silent for a long moment, taking in what she had justtold him. He had never heard anyone, male or female, express such a thought. In his experience, couples who were unable to have children were to be pitied; the wife was always to blame, though he’d personally always found this assumption on the part of most men of his acquaintance to be based on some rather flawed logic. But whether a child was something to be desired was never in question—and anyone unable to produce one must feel the loss quite deeply.
He had never, not once, considered that anyone might feel otherwise. But then, he was a marquess, would be a duke someday; children were, in his world, not so much beloved additions to the family as necessary acquisitions, like a new horse or a particularly fine carriage. He’d never once, in the whole of his life, paused to consider whether hewantedthem.
“You do not want children, then?” he asked, finding his voice, his mind still full of these thoughts.
“I had never thought to want or not want them,” she said. “It’s not as if I’d have much of a choice in the matter, once I was wed—that is what a wife is for, is it not? Providing heirs?”
He nearly flinched at the last word.Heirs.Most men would wish for a wife to provide them with children, it was true, but he could not help but think her word choice had been deliberate. After all, how many men had to worry as much about their future legacy as he did? As another man’s wife—as Bridewell’s, for instance—she would not feel the weight of this so heavily. He suddenly appreciated what a bold and presumptuous thing it had been, expecting her to marry him.
“But then, when no children appeared, I realized that I didn’t… mind. And as I thought about it more, I realized that I’d never looked at other women’s babies and longed for one of my own. I love my niecesand nephew, but I have never felt a pang of loss that my marriage did not produce a baby of my own.
“So you see, West, it’s just as well that we never wed—you can’t possibly have a duchess who can’t produce an heir. But you also needn’t worry that I’ll fall pregnant from any… recreational activities, shall we say, that we might choose to engage in.”
She was still meeting his eyes very steadily, but he felt certain that this was in some sense an act; she was stating this boldly to shock him, to put him off, to see how he’d react.
He paused a moment, to gauge his own emotions: Howdidhe feel about this? He wasn’t entirely sure; but he knew, with utmost certainty, that when he’d wanted to marry Sophie seven years ago—when he’d spent all those years since longing for her—it was not because he wanted her to supply him with an heir and a spare.
He’d wanted her for herself, because she made him happy.
Everything else was… well, everything else was negotiable.
“How do you know that you’re barren, and it wasn’t Bridewell who was the problem?” he asked now, the thought belatedly occurring to him.
She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it always the woman who is at fault?”
“I am no doctor,” he said carefully, “but it seems to me that there are two sets of organs involved in the act, and it seems just as likely it could be the husband as the wife.”
“Would you be willing to risk it, though?”
He rose from his seat then, and approached her with slow, deliberate steps; he leaned down and braced his hands on the arms of her chair, bringing his face close to hers.
“Need I remind you that, until recently, my father was under the impression thatIcould not have children?”
She frowned. “I know, but—well, you just told him that to irk him. It wasn’t true.”
“I told him that,” he said very deliberately, “so he’d abandon any hopes of me marrying and providing him with an heir, when I’d no desire to do so.”
Not unless it was with you.
He did not speak the words aloud, but they hovered between them, understood.
