Page 74 of To Woo and to Wed
“I—you—”
“I was hesitating, yes, for all the reasons Blackford told you,” Alexandra said, “but I was hoping to discuss it with you at some point, without Harriet and Betsy present. Iwasworried that you and West would never work things out, that you’d never be happy, but you’ve always gone so stubbornly silent whenever anyone mentions his name that I wasn’t certain how to raise the subject. So you can imagine my surprise,” she added, “when you suddenly informed me that you were engaged.”
Sophie rubbed a hand over her face, and drained the rest of her champagne. “Did you smell a rat immediately?”
“More or less,” Alexandra said. “And once Blackford told me about the conversation he’d had with you, I was fairly certain I knew what you were about.”
“You might have spared me the torment of the double wedding planning,” Sophie said severely.
“I wanted to see how far you’d be willing to take this ruse.” Alexandra sounded quite pleased with herself. “And then I grew annoyed with you, and kept making things more and more ludicrous, to see if you’d just admit that you were lying. But the more I watched you and West together, the more convinced I became that you were still in love—and the more irritated I was that you continued agreeing to all my plans,which I knew you wouldn’t do if you’d really intended to marry him.” She shook her head. “It all grew a bit mixed up in my head, I’ll admit. But whilst Blackford and Iwereplanning our own, much smaller wedding all the while, I promise you that I would have walked down the aisle in something utterly horrifying and departed on a white horse, if that was what it took to see you and West married.”
“Fortunately, a special license was actually all it took.” Sophie attempted a stern look at her sister, but couldn’t quite manage it; how could she be annoyed, when Alexandra was essentially doing precisely what she’d done toherfor years? “Did Harriet and Betsy know?”
“Oh no, I knew I couldn’t possibly trust them with this,” Alexandra said. “Though that has been troubling in its own way, as it means they’ve been sincere in their enthusiasm for every one of my unhinged ideas.” She frowned. “Should we be concerned about their mental states?”
“We shall simply blame Betsy’s on the baby, and Harriet’s on the all-consuming fervor of her rivalry with Hyacinth Montmorency.” Sophie smiled, and Alexandra smiled back at her.
“We’re allowed to worry for you, Soph,” Alexandra said a bit tentatively, and Sophie swallowed. “Just because you’re the eldest doesn’t mean that you’re the only one who cares for us. We love you—we want you to be happy. And I would have welcomed anyone who made you happy, but… well, I’m just so glad that it’s West.”
Sophie’s smile wavered at this point, and her lower lip was a bit unsure of itself, but she blinked away the tears that threatened to blur her vision and took the extra glass of champagne from her sister’s hand. She lifted it to Alexandra’s glass in a toast.
“So am I.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Combining two households—and two householdstaffs—was proving to be more complicated than West had anticipated.
“Briar, for the love of God, Ido not care,” West said, after the fifteenth interruption in the past two hours, all to do with the question of whether the footmen who were joining their household from Sophie’s were properly matched in height. “If you think one of them needs to wear stilts, then feel free to see that it is taken care of, so long as the footman in question is amenable.”
Briar, aquiver with wounded dignity, drew himself up to his full height, puffed out his chest, and offered a stiff, “Indeed, my lord,” before bowing himself out, narrowly avoiding bumping into Sophie as he did so. He was full of apologies and inquiries as toherneeds; it seemed that Briar approved of marriage in general, and Sophie specifically. There had been a few hairy moments before he’d realized that Sophie’s elderly butler was happy to take this opportunity to be pensioned off, but once that was sorted he’d been full of nothing but solicitous concern for the new lady of the house.
“Why does he like you more than he likes me?” West asked darkly, rising from his desk as Briar bowed himself out with one last adoring look at Sophie before the door clicked shut behind him.
“Perhaps because I told him that I thought the infusion of new staff into your household was an excellent opportunity to rethink the bedrooms for the servants, and in all the upheaval and redecorating, I saw to it that he and Hawthorne were moved into adjoining rooms.” She sauntered toward him clad in a fetching dress of white muslin, her hair simply arranged, a few loose curls escaping; waving him back into his seat, she perched on the edge of his desk in a way that was likely not intended to look seductively inviting, but which had that effect on his body all the same.
He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Why are you so much more clever than I am?”
She leaned forward to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “Because I am a woman, and I’ve had to be. How else would we ever get anything done?”
She made to pull back, but he reached out and slid his hand into the loose knot at the nape of her neck, pinning her in place. He leaned forward again, tipping his head up to give her a more thorough kiss. Her lips parted on a sigh and her breath mingled with his own. His free hand made slow, steady progress from her waist up her side, tracing the curve of a breast, cupping its weight in his hand. She made a needy noise in her throat, her hands tugging on his hair just hard enough to send a bolt of pleasurable pain straight to his cock, and he was about to rise from his seat when there was yet another knock at the study door.
He tore his mouth from hers. “Briar, I do not wish to answer any more questions about the height of our footmen!” Sophie stifled a laugh in his shoulder.
There was a brief pause, and then a rather ostentatious clearing of the throat from the other side of the door. “It is His Grace, the Dukeof Dovington, here to see you, my lord.” West did not think he was imagining the faintly smug note to Briar’s voice.Accuse me of frivolous, footman-related interruptions ever again, and see where it leads you!
Sophie was out of his arms and off his desk like a shot, smoothing her hair back into place as she turned to face the door. She glanced back at him, and he took three seconds to think very innocent,coldthoughts before he nodded at her.
“You may send him in, Briar,” she called, and the door opened and West’s father walked in.
He paused briefly and allowed his gaze to flick back and forth between West and Sophie, fast as a blink, and West had the sense that he knew precisely what they’d been up to approximately thirty seconds earlier. Unfortunately for the duke, West did not give a damn.
“Father,” he said, rising.
“Your Grace,” Sophie added, dipping a polite—but not terribly deep—curtsey.
“West.” The duke nodded at him, and then at Sophie. “Lady Weston. I apologize for the interruption, but I have something I wish to discuss with you—some new information that has come to light.”
West gestured at one of the chairs opposite his desk, and his father took a seat as soon as Sophie had. “Is something amiss?” West asked.
