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“Alright, Father. I’ll wait. But if I’m pushed, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
“I know. But I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Thomas felt like doing the right thing was also doing the wrong thing.
#
“Are you absolutely sure you can manage tonight?” Edwin asked, adjusting the lapels of his jacket as he looked in the mirror. “Lord Westbury is expecting you to ask Aimee to marry her. I hear he’s planning on making sure there’s a lull in the music, so you’re the centre of attention.”
Thomas stared.
“You heard that as well? I thought it was just Pierce messing around.”
“I heard it as well from Christiana. That’s what she heard from her mother.”
Thomas groaned. Now that would be one way to completely ruin the evening. He had no idea how he was going to get out of that.
“What do I do, Edwin? I can’t exactly say in front of everyone in the county that I’m not going to marry her. That would be humiliating for her family.”
“I thought you didn’t like Aimee anyway.”
“I don’t, but she doesn’t deserve that. I want to leave her with some self-respect and dignity.”
“How charming of you,” Edwin quipped. He turned to his brother sitting on the edge of the bed. “What are you going to do about Pierce? If you’re certain about wanting a future with Sophia, you will need to tell him.”
“I know. But that should be Sophia’s job to tell him, not mine.”
“How so?”
“She’s the one Pierce is courting, isn’t she? If she feels the same about me, then it should be up to her to break it to him.” Thomas ignored Edwin’s raised eyebrows. “If I go charging in and telling Pierce that I’m in love with the woman he’s courting, we’re just going to end up fighting, and I want as little drama as possible.”
“Is it because you don’t want to find out that Sophia doesn’t feel the same way about you once Pierce agrees to step back and let you be together?”
Thomas frowned.
“But Sophia feels the same way. I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be sure? She only said that she feels the same thing as you. There was nothing about love being mentioned.”
“I can tell by looking at her. When she’s in my arms, how she looks at me. She’s my everything.”
“A while ago, it was Constance who was your everything,” Edwin pointed out.
“Please don’t remind me about Constance. Besides, Sophia is different.” Thomas fiddled with one of his cufflinks. “I look at her, and something is just … I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s better than what I had with Constance. While I loved her, and we had passion, it doesn’t compare to Sophia.”
It had been four days since Thomas had seen Sophia. Even when he visited to go through the motions with Aimee, her sister kept herself absent. When he asked where she was, the family didn’t seem to care about her whereabouts. They just brushed over her and focused on him and Aimee. Thomas disliked the way Sophia’s family treated her more and more. She was such a lovely, sweet woman. How did anyone think they could mistreat her?
She deserved to be treated like a queen.
“Well, you’d better be absolutely sure about this, Thomas,” Edwin warned. “You don’t want this to go wrong, and then you ruin both families. How will you explain how you ended up falling for Sophia instead? Are you going to tell everyone that you ended up being with her alone? That’s going to be bad for her reputation.”
“You think I don’t know that? I was thinking that we could start courting officially a little while after I break things off with Aimee. I’m not about to keep Sophia a secret.”
“I still see this going really wrong.”
Thomas snorted.
“I can tell. You’re always the pessimist, aren’t you?”
