“I do believe if her bodice was half an inch lower, I’d need to cover your eyes,” Penvale said to Jane. Sophie glanced around, wondering to whom he was referring, but after only a split second she spotted the likely offender: a lady whose neckline was adventurous to the point of being gravitationally implausible. She bit her lip to prevent a smile. “Why should you need to cover my eyes?” Jane asked her husband waspishly. “I believe, of the two of us, I am the one possessed of the anatomy that would be on display. Perhaps it is your maidenly gaze that I should be protecting.” “Maidenly?” Penvale objected. “If my memory serves—” “I see Belfry’s attempts to civilize his theater have been only partially successful,” West said hastily, managing to head off whatever the inappropriate conclusion to Penvale’s sentence would have been, though this did nothing to dispel the heated gaze husband and wife were sharing. (Admittedly, some of that heat was born of irritation. But not all.) “I don’t think he’s that interested in civilizing it,” Sophie said thoughtfully, allowing West to take her elbow and steer her past an earl who was weaving drunkenly on the arm of another gentleman; something about the proprietary way his companion gripped his arm made her think that this was not merely the act of a man ensuring that his foxed friend didn’t topple over. She had no time to contemplate this, however, because they had arrived at Belfry’s private box— the best in the theater, naturally—and were greeted by an assortment of their friends within. “I see we’re the late arrivals,” Sophie said cheerfully, twining her arm more securely through West’s as she smiled around at the assembled couples. Alexandra, looking very pretty in a square-necked gown of champagne-colored satin, was standing close enough to Blackford that he must have a very fascinating view directly down her bodice—one that he was taking full advantage of, if his constantly dropping gaze was anything to judge by. They were de ep in conversation with Violet and James, one that seemed to be hastily broken off as soon as Sophie and West entered the box. Also assembled were Diana and Jeremy, Emily and Belfry, and Harriet and her husband, George Lancashire. “I thought Betsy was coming, too?” Sophie asked her sister, as Harriet came to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “She was,” Harriet confirmed. “But evidently she’s feeling poorly today.” She grimaced. “Having a baby is not a remotely enjoyable process, you know.”
“Exc ept for one bit,” Belfry drawled, approaching with Emily on his arm in time to hear this. His wife poked him in the side, blushing rosily. She was beginning to look a bit round herself, Sophie thought, though she knew that Emily still had a few months before she planned to enter her confinement. “How is the wedding planning going?” Emily asked, still looking rather pink in the face; her husband evidently noticed this as well, as his arm curved around her waist and he pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. “It would be going better,” Harriet interjected, before Sophie or West had the chance to utter a single word, “if Sophie would let me take charge of matters.” “I simply cannot fathom why I might be hesitant,” Sophie said dryly; Harriet’s wedding two years earlier had been nothing short of a spectacle. “Neither can I,” Harriet said, conveniently deaf to Sophie’s sarcasm. “Especially with it being a double wedding, we need to settle on a date, send invitations—” “Oh!” Emily clasped her hands. “A double wedding! How lovely!” Her face fell. “Oh, but I hope it’s not too late in the summer, otherwise I might not be able to attend.” Her hand gestured vaguely in the direction of her abdomen. “Isn’t the baby due in October?” Sophie asked, frowning. “Yes,” Emily said slowly, “but you never know! It might take it into its head to put in an early appearance and disrupt everything—I shouldn’t be surprised, considering who its father is,” she added, with a half-affectionate, half- exasperated glance at her husband, who looked unr epentant. His arm was still tight around her waist. “Well,” Sophie said, “I’m certain that won’t be a problem—” “Then you’ll have the wedding this summer?” Emily asked brightly, the appearance of a dejected mother-to-be that she’d worn a moment earlier suddenly mysteriously absent. “Sooner, rather than later?” “I—well—” Sophie looked helplessly up at West, with whom she was still arm in arm. “I don’t think we’ve decided upon a firm date—” “Well, naturally,” Harriet said reasonably. “You’d need to ask Alexandra and Blackford.” She turned. “Alex!” She waved her hand, beckoning, and Alexandra was at her side within seconds. “We were just discussing your wedding!” Harriet said eagerly. “It would be easier to properly plan if you were to set a date.” Alexandra flicked a glance at Sophie, who attempted to communicate with her own gaze: Please stop this madness. “How right you are,” Alexandra said smoothly, and Sophie reflected that perhaps she ought to brush up on her nonverbal communication. It clearly was not working as well as it once had. “We”—she cast a rapturous look over her shoulder at Blackford, who appeared momentarily blinded by it—“are, naturally, eager not to delay too long. Right, darling?” “I’d procure a special license tomorrow, if you’d let me,” he confirmed, offering his betrothed an affectionate look. “Which I won’t,” Alexandra agreed. “We must have a proper wedding! Shall I send a note to the rector at St. George’s tomorrow, inquiring about a date in... oh, I don’t know—early July?” “Early July,” Sophie r epeated, casting an increasingly desperate look up at West. He, at least, did not seem to have any difficulty deciphering it. “That’s very... soon,” he offered. “Precisely!” Alexandra beamed at him. “We don’t want to wait any longer than necessary to commence our happily-ever-afters, do we?” “Our—what?” Sophie asked. “Like something out of a fairy tale, don’t you think? Riding off into the sunset on a white
horse—darling, do you own a white horse?” Alexandra asked; seeing her fiancé’s shake of the head, she added, “Well, if you could see to acquiring one in the next month—you, too, West—that would be most appreciated.” “You intend for us to d epart our wedding on horseback?” Sophie asked, growing more alarmed by the moment. “On white horses,” Alexandra corrected. “So much more romantic! Like princesses being rescued by knights in shining armor.” “How... charming,” Sophie managed, wondering if Alexandra had taken leave of her senses entirely. “I’m glad you agree!” Alexandra said. At this moment, the orchestra began tuning, which was a mercy in multiple ways: not only did it stop Alexandra from spouting more appalling details of her vision for their wedding, it also saved Sophie from having to attempt to ke ep her facial expression from slipping into outright horror. She’d never been so grateful to take a seat—strategically selecting one as far from both of her sisters as possible at the far end of the box, where she and West might manage a whispered exchange with some semblance of privacy. As soon as the music commenced, giving her a bit of cover, she turned to West, whose eyes were fixed on the stage with an expression of such careful neutrality that she was certain that he was internally whimpering. “What are we going to do?” she hissed, glancing past West to where Diana and Jeremy were—mercifully—more engaged in exchanging flirtatious glances than in paying the slightest bit of attention to what their companions might be discussing. “Head to Tattersall’s, apparently. It would seem I need a new horse.” “You are not buying a white horse, West! We’re not actually getting married!” “Yes,” he said, a bit acerbically. “Thank you ever so much for the reminder—I was likely to forget otherwise.” There was the slightest edge to his voice. She decided to ignore this. “How are we going to get out of this? We can’t let up the ruse until Alexandra and Blackford are safely wed—but how can we see them married without doing the same ourselves?” “This was your idea, you know,” he said in an undertone. “Did you not consider such a complication, when hatching this scheme?” “Did I consider that my previously rational sister might completely lose her senses and start insisting on some sort of double wedding straight from a fever dream? No, I did not.” “Shall I take myself off in my phaeton?” he inquired politely. “Stage another accident? It did successfully prevent our wedding once before, after all.” And that was a definite edge—he wasn’t even trying to conceal it. She bit her tongue against the first half-dozen irate r eplies she felt like offering him, and took a de ep breath. “Since it seems your memory is failing you a bit, at your advanced age,” she said evenly, “I will take it upon myself to remind you that seven years ago, we were not engaged. I did not jilt you, because you’d never
asked me to be your wife in the first place. I was at perfect liberty to marry someone else, if he offered.” “As you proved only too willing to do.” “For reasons that I have now explained to you.” Her own voice was growing sharp now—enough so that Diana ceased running her hand in an alarming direction up Jeremy’s leg to cast a surprised glance in their direction. Sophie offered a syrupy smile in return—she might have overdone it, if Diana’s astonished blink was anything to judge by—and squeezed West’s arm until he, too, offered what he seemed to believe was a smile, but which was in actuality closer to a pained grimace. “If you could attempt to look less like a hostage, that would be appreciated,” Sophie murmured, as soon as Diana turned back to Jeremy. They fell silent as the orchestra’s opening number came to a close and the actors below began speaking; several minutes later, however, when the lead actress had burst into a particularly energetic song-and-dance number and Sophie thought she could again speak without being overheard, she said, “I had the most charming conversation with your father the day before yesterday.” This had the expected effect: West’s arm went rigid where it rested next to hers, and his jaw looked so tight that she wondered vaguely if she should be concerned about him breaking a tooth. “Where did you have this conversation?” he asked in a low voice, turning at last to fully face her. The candlelight of the theater did nothing to soften the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones. Although it was late evening, his jaw was as cleanly shaven as it was in the morning, and the elaborate knot of his cravat k ept his chin at just such an angle that one was left with the impression that he was looking down his nose at whomever he was conversing with. Nothing about this man spoke of softness, or affection; the simmering anger in his voice as he addressed her now made him seem very ducal—and very dangerous. In an undertone, she quickly summarized her encounter with the duke at Hookham’s, watching his jaw clench tighter and tighter with each sentence. “I’ll speak to him,” he said at once, the moment she’d fallen silent. “I apologize. He had no right to approach you like this. I’ll see that he doesn’t do it again.” “I thought it was rather complimentary, actually,” Sophie said airily. “He sees me as a threat—evidently our ruse is working.” “Not on everyone,” West said tersely; when she cast him a surprised glance, he sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked tired, she thought; the lines that bracketed his eyes, usually faint, looked a bit de eper than usual. She wondered if he’d been sle eping—and, if not, what the cause was. But then, how he passed his nights was none of her concern. “James and Violet were evidently a bit perplexed by our performance on Rotten Row the other day,” he admitted in an undertone. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Yes, thank you, I’m aware that I’m rubbish at this—that point has been well made, my potato. But...” He trailed off, looking the slightest bit shifty. Sophie was instantly on alert; in the seven years she’d known this man, she had never once, for a single moment, seen him look shifty. She hadn’t thought him constitutionally capable of it. “What did you do?” she demanded in a whisper, alarmed. “I might have admitted to James and Hawthorne that we’re not actually engaged.” “You did what!” “He was already suspicious,” West said in a low voice, leaning closer to her as he spoke; this close, she could smell the sandalwood of his soap, and the scent of his skin—so familiar that it caused a ghost of a memory to arise, unbidden, of his arms around her, his lips on her throat in the corner of a London mansion a lifetime ago. “I decided to take him into my confidence.” “And I expect he told Violet,” Sophie murmured grimly, the memory of Violet’s peculiar gleam as she’d looked at Sophie that day at Hookham’s making more sense now. “I would not, ordinarily, make such a decision without asking you,” he said, his voice having grown even quieter—enough so that Sophie found herself leaning in toward him, the better to hear above the noise of the actors on the stage below, and the music that accompanied them. He paused, and added, “Ours may not be a betrothal in truth, but it still seems only fair to treat our arrangement with the same respect that I would, were we actually engaged. And I would not make any decision of import without consulting you.” His tone was even, but Sophie felt the words like a blow; her gaze locked on to his, and whatever expression was on her face caused something worried to flit across his, evident in the wrinkling of his brow as he gazed back at her. I would not make any decision of import without consulting you. But she had, seven years ago—was that what he was implying? It was nothing more than the truth—but a truth that she felt like a knife nonetheless. She cleared her throat. “I had my reasons for making a decision about my future, all those years ago, and I had my reasons to not consult you, too.” The wrinkle in his forehead de epened. “I was not—I did not—” He blew out a breath, frustrated; it was odd and uncomfortable to watch him struggle for words, he who always seemed so in command of himself. “I did not intend that as a slight, Sophie. I intended—hell.” He broke off, shaking his head, and then leaned even closer, so that his mouth hovered near her ear and she felt the warmth of his breath on her skin. His hand nudged hers, where it rested on the armrest of her chair, the merest glancing contact, through the fabric of her gloves, sufficient to raise the fine hairs on her arm. “I intended to show you that what happened seven years ago is in the past, and that we might chart a different course. Now.”
Sophie did rear back at this, eyes wide as she regarded him. There was nothing in his face to suggest he was jesting, or sharing a private joke with her. He was not, after all, a man prone to much in the way of laughter. He’d laughed with her, though. Before. That was one of the many things she’d fallen in love with—the glimmers of a sense of humor in this man who presented such a stern face to others. But if West at age twenty-four had seemed stern on occasion, it was nothing compared to the man seated next to her now. The West she had once known had been so young—not yet scarred by his accident, his friend’s death. By her perceived betrayal. It gave her a pang, the realization that she bore some of the responsibility for the man he’d grown into. This was a man she admired fiercely—and still wanted quite helplessly, no matter that her common sense urged her otherwise—but the West she had once known knew how to laugh, even if it was not as frequent as she would have wished. This West, though... Even a fortnight earlier, she would have said that she could not imagine the man before her laughing—but now she knew better. Now she knew that she still had the power to pull a reluctant laugh from him, seemingly against his will. And now—dangerously—she knew that she still found this power as thrilling as she had at the age of twenty. “You cannot think that we have any sort of future together,” she managed, her voice still soft enough not to carry, even as she wanted nothing more than to lock them both within a private room and— Well, she wasn’t entirely certain what she’d do with him, once she had him there. Shout at him, probably. Or kiss him. Or both. “You have said something along those lines to me before,” he said. “And I cannot help but think that, whilst I would give up much for you, I will not give up the right to know my own mind. Not even to you.” And Sophie, astonishingly, felt something like shame burn within her. He, however, looked entirely unruffled by this exchange, and leaned back in his seat, putting some much-needed space between them; Sophie found it alarmingly difficult to speak when he was so close to her. “In any case,” he said calmly, as if they’d been exchanging nothing more interesting than bland pleasantries about the weather, “it occurs to me that if Violet and James have grown suspicious of our behavior, then we run the risk of others becoming so as well.” “Well,” she managed, her thoughts still in a tangle, “if you would see fit to stop comparing me to root vegetables, we might stand a better chance of convincing them.” He didn’t laugh, but the lines at the corners of his eyes de epened as he looked at her, and she found she couldn’t look away. It reminded her at once of the numerous occasions during that first spring when they’d been courting, when he’d catch her eye across a crowded room, or from the opposite end of a dinner table, and they’d share some unspoken joke, communicating solely through a quirk of the mouth or the raising of an
eyebrow. It had felt like they held an entire private universe between them. She had known, even then, that she was lucky to have found this with someone; it was only now, seven years later, with the bitterness of experience, that she knew precisely how lucky. She could not afford to allow her thoughts to drift along these lines. She needed to remind him of what she was pr epared to offer—an offer that she knew he would not take. “There’s one way to ensure that we’re a bit more convincing, you know,” she said quietly, tilting her head and leaning forward once more so that her words landed softly on the sliver of exposed skin just beneath his ear. “Oh?” he murmured, gazing down at her, his gaze inscrutable. “And what did you have in mind?” This was a bit more flirtatious than she’d expected by way of a response—but if he thought to bluff, she’d put that attempt to rest. “What I offered you four years ago,” she said quietly. She reached out a hand and very deliberately traced one finger down his forearm. “Four years ago, you informed me you’d never marry me.” His voice was careful, even. “But, if you will recall, I was more than willing to come to some other sort of arrangement,” she said, just as carefully. “You were the one who was unwilling, in that regard... so I eventually found entertainment... elsewhere.” Her gaze flicked toward Jeremy, who was entirely oblivious to this conversation, as he was at the moment occupied in whispering something—doubtless inappropriate— in his wife’s ear. “You really think,” West said, his voice still low and even, “that we could go to bed together, and walk away again?” “I’ve confidence in my own ability to resist temptation,” Sophie said lightly. “Then I don’t have much confidence in your memory,” he said. “Because I have relived that night—afternoon—we spent together hundreds of times in the past four years, and I don’t think either of us could walk away again. I think we’d ruin each other.” “I’m a widow. You can’t ruin me.” His gaze on her was steady. “I didn’t mean your r eputation.” A brief, heavy pause. “I meant that I’d ruin you for anyone else.” A slow, simmering heat seemed to have taken up residence in Sophie’s stomach; she was acutely conscious of her pulse making its presence known in a way it normally did not. She knew she was playing with fire, and yet she could not bring herself to stop. Not when she’d been so very good—had resisted temptation for so very long. “If you’d like to test that theory,” she said, even more quietly, “you know where to find me.” And then she was leaning back in her seat, the spell broken, her attention fixed again—or, more accurately, for the first time all evening—on the actors on the stage below her.
She did not think he’d say yes—could not imagine that the West she knew now, the man he’d become, would be amenable to such an arrangement, not when he’d once spoken so firmly against it. But she was conscious of every breath, every move that he made beside her. She heard the slow, ever-so-slightly unsteady exhale he let out after a few long moments had passed. She heard him shift in his seat. And she felt once again the nudge of his finger against hers, where their hands rested between them, the brief, deliberate contact like a lick of flame on her skin, even through the fabric of her glove. And she wondered, for the briefest of moments, if perhaps, this time, she was wrong.