The group around them was not entirely quiet—several sidebar conversations had sprung up, hushed in nature. But all eyes continually darted to Sophie and Mr. Whitcomb. She appeared so diminutive, facing him. Everything about her seemed fragile, from her frame to her stature… except her eyes. Those flashed with both anger and pain.
“Mr. Langford, your wife is, I am sure, a very fine woman.” He did not appear convinced by his own words. “But that does not equate to a brilliant mind. And Mrs. Sophia Langford does not appear to possess one, to the regret of all.”
“How dare you!” Andrew objected. “That is mywifeyou are speaking of.”
Sophie grasped his arm, but his blood ran hot. Everywhere but with her, he could keep a level head; he would not stand for this insult. This unfounded, pathetic,cruelinsult.
“Mr. Langford, you appear overwrought, perhaps—” Mrs. Whitcomb began.
“With good reason, I should say!” Andrew declared.
“Yes, yes of course, but—”
Mr. Whitcomb put up a hand, silencing his wife. “This is not the place to hold this discussion,” he said placidly, as if it were not he who had brought it to this point. He turned a cold gaze on Sophie. “Monday, say four o’clock, we can meet to discuss your future with our company. I have a meeting just after noon regarding financing—I will hope for a good outcome so that there is even a place for you to secure.” His eyes flicked to Andrew’s, a slight raise of his brow granting him a sardonic expression.
Andrew understood immediately. He was holding the funding of the project in the balance. If Sternam complied to help Whitcomb, Sophie’s place was better guaranteed.
The man was blackmailing him.
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.
