Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophie and Andrew quit the home forthwith. She could not sit through the rest of the evening and pretend that she had not just been dressed down in front of a dozen men who were meant to be her contemporaries.
Her face flamed, her heart pounded, and all she desired was to be home.
Home. How easily she’d come to think of Andrew’s house that way. Of Andrew that way. She was certain she could not have endured the evening, those insults, if it were not for him.
But her face flamed anew to know he’d witnessed her embarrassment.
“I will call him out,” Andrew growled as he sat hard upon the carriage bench beside her. “To question your abilities so. He has no right!”
“I think maybe he does. Andrew, I have been performing abominably.”
“I do not care if you have gotten every single question wrong, love, you did not deserve that diatribe. Tell me now, only give the word, and I will return and knock some sense into the miscreant.” His eyes sparked in the moonlight.
“I… Drat, but I do not know. I do not know if I want this position any longer. I do not, and yet I do! I feel desperate to see it through, to hold to it and keep it from slipping through my fingers. And yet… I do not know that I am strong enough to meet the opposition. Most especially if it does not relent.” And deep down, she felt that maybe she had made a mistake.
Maybe, when left to her own devices, she had altered the course of her future to seek after success and make her parents proud of her, but in the process, she had lost her true dream.
“You should not have to be strong enough for that—you should be treated with the respect and dignity you deserve. Soph—I will support you in whatever you wish. But I would like to cast my vote for caving the man’s face in.”
That made her smile, even chuckle a little. “I promise to give you the opportunity, should it be needed. I will meet with him on Monday, and then I will decide.”
Andrew nodded, but his jaw was still tight, his eyes far away as they traversed the streets toward his home.
When the carriage rocked to a halt outside the Langford residence, she could only think of her bed and how greatly she wished to sleep.
The door opened, and she was escorted up the stairs into the home.
Spencer awaited them, and as he took their things, he said in an undertone to Andrew. “You have guests, sir.”
Andrew’s brows shot up. “At this hour? Why did you not turn them away?”
The man’s back was stiff, but his eyes shot to Sophie. “They would not be turned away. They are Mrs. Langford’s parents.”
Sophie froze. Her parents? Here? That could only spell disaster.
Andrew crossed to her, laying an arm across her shoulders. “I will see to them, Soph,” he said. “You need not.”
She very nearly accepted the offer. She was wrung out from the evening, and a verbal spar with her parents sounded the worst sort of torture just then. But if her parents were here to see her, they would not leave without doing so. “Together?” she asked him.
He nodded, then hesitated. “Or we could just go to bed, and hope they are gone in the morning.”
Despite the situation, her mouth twitched, but she tugged him towards the drawing room. Might as well get it over with.
“Mr. Langford?” Spencer interjected the moment their words stopped. “Your father has arrived too. He is with his solicitor in the study, but I was asked to send for him the moment you returned.”
Andrew swallowed, but nodded. “We will be with the Renards.”
Without discussion, they assumed a united front, her arm in his as he opened the door. Already, Sophie was mentally cringing. Could her pride take any more this evening? She feared she was a breath from curling up in a ball and crying.
Her father was pacing the back wall, but turned upon their entrance. Mother sat on a cream chair, her narrowed eyes on Sophie.
“Sophia,” she said, her tone pinched.
“Mother,” Sophie returned in an even tone, doing her utmost to don her mask of serene civility. Heavens, but she hated how small she felt this night. How small she always felt around these two, who should have been a safe haven.
“Mr. Langford, a word,” Father said, studiously not looking at Sophie.
“If it concerns me, Father, you might speak to us both.”
“This is business for the men, dear, leave them to it,” Mother said.
Sophie cringed at the term of endearment, because it was a stark reminder that her mother did not hold her dear. Had not for quite some time, not since it became clear that Sophie would not be a model of feminine perfection like her two older sisters had been.
What would life have been like had her parents supported her dream?
“No,” Andrew said, not moving, though Father had started for the door. “I quite agree with Sophie. If it has to do with her, she ought to be here for the conversation.” Bless Andrew and his implacable confidence.
Father’s jaw tensed, but he nodded and sat. Andrew saw Sophie settled on the sofa, then sat beside her. Sophie’s eyes widened when he left hardly any space between them.
“You two are not married,” Father said, looking between the two of them. It was not a question.
“Did you travel all this way to inform us of that?” Andrew asked, and Sophie could have stared. She’d never seen anyone treat Father in the same manner he treated them.
Father ground his teeth. “Sophia’s mother was informed of an unsettling rumor, and we felt it was dire enough to come in person.”
And then the door opened again, and Andrew’s father entered. His expression was inscrutable when it passed over Sophie to land on Andrew.
Guilt surged. Sophie had used this man ill. He had provided her a place to stay in Weybridge, had always been kind to her, and she had enacted this farce with his son unbeknownst to him. In his own home.
That had to be why they were here. Had Mrs. Haverwick written moments after leaving the theater the night before? She must have, or else word got to Mother and Father in another avenue. Regardless, the jig was up.
And the absolute insanity of what she’d done was shown in crystalline light. She had faked a marriage. Lived alone with a man, had him in her room… all for a job she did not like and that treated her as if she were nothing more than the dung on a horse’s foot.
Andrew stood to shake his father’s hand with a steady gaze. How was he not quaking with the understanding of what they’d done? What she would not do for a modicum of his calm.
Then he sat by Sophie, looking at each of their parents in one. “So, you are here because you’ve learned Sophie and I are married.”