To Have and to Hoax by Martha Waters

Author:Martha Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2020-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

The devil of it was that Jeremy was correct. It had been years now—more than six—but his brother and Sophie Wexham had at one point been very much in love. Miss Wexham had been in her third Season when she’d met West, who had been twenty-four. It must be a family failing, James mused. Falling disastrously in love at an inappropriately young age.

Sophie Wexham was beautiful and clever, and had a dowry that made every fortune hunter of the ton look twice—but she had never quite taken, as James had once overheard one dowager say. Her bloodline was far too new—her family’s title only stretched back one generation, and many of the older aristocratic families turned up their noses at Viscount Wexham and his daughters. The Marquess of Weston, as heir to the ancient and venerable duchy of Dovington, ought not to have looked twice at such an upstart chit.

But he had.

More than twice. They’d met at a musicale and had spent a good portion of the evening in whispered conversation about the crimes against Mozart being committed. One would think it difficult to fall in love while trying not to stuff one’s fingers into one’s ears, but West and Sophie seemed to have managed it. By the end of the evening, they were entirely in one another’s thrall.

So it continued for the rest of that Season—they danced twice at every ball, West called on Sophie at her parents’ town house with almost laughable frequency, and they went for long rides together in Hyde Park. A marriage seemed inevitable—there was even betting at White’s as to when the engagement would be announced.

And then there had been West’s curricle accident.

Such a silly thing to alter the course of one life and end another one.

West had impulsively challenged Jeremy’s elder brother David, the Marquess of Willingham, to a race, during which the curricles overturned on a sharp corner, killing David instantly and shattering West’s leg. He was bedridden for months, and in the days following the accident had been gripped with a fever that had very nearly killed him.

When he was well enough to rejoin society—though society had a rather difficult time recognizing the formerly reckless and charming Marquess of Weston in the somber gentleman who had taken his place—it was to find that his beloved Sophie had married West’s childhood friend Fitzwilliam Bridewell.

Three years later, Lord Fitzwilliam was dead—killed in battle on the Continent. Lady Fitzwilliam was a widow at the age of twenty-four. Through all of this—the six years that spanned West’s long recovery, Sophie’s marriage, her widowhood, her mourning, and her reentrance into society—James had never once heard his brother utter her name.

Until now.

“I would ask what the hell is wrong with you, but I’m certain there are too many correct responses to select only one.”

James looked up—it was the following morning and he was at home in his study, his head full of numbers involving competing offers for a mare in his stables whose foals tended to grow into exceptionally fast runners.

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