Free The Bridgertons Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn Page B

bite.
    Posy stared at her. “Do you know what I’m not doing now?”
    Sophie shook her head.
    “I am not rolling my eyes, because I am trying to act in a fashion that befits my age and maturity.”
    “You do look very grave.”
    Posy stared her down a bit more. “He is unmarried, I assume.”
    “Er, yes.”
    Posy lifted her left brow, the arch expression possibly the only useful gift she’d received from her mother. “How old is this vicar?”
    “I do not know,” Sophie admitted, “but he has all of his hair.”
    “And it has come to this,” Posy murmured.
    “I thought of you when I met him,” Sophie said, “because he smiles.”
    Because he smiled ? Posy was beginning to think that Sophie was a bit cracked. “I beg your pardon?”
    “He smiles so often. And so well.” At that Sophie smiled. “I couldn’t help but think of you.”
    Posy did roll her eyes this time, then followed it with an immediate “I have decided to forsake maturity.”
    “By all means.”
    “I shall meet your vicar,” Posy said, “but you should know I have decided to aspire to eccentricity.”
    “I wish you the best with that,” Sophie said, not without sarcasm.
    “You don’t think I can?”
    “You’re the least eccentric person I know.”
    It was true, of course, but if Posy had to spend her life as an old maid, she wanted to be the eccentric one with the large hat, not the desperate one with the pinched mouth.
    “What is his name?” she asked.
    But before Sophie could answer, they heard the front door opening, and then it was the butler giving her her answer as he announced, “Mr. Woodson is here to see you, Mrs. Bridgerton.”
    Posy stashed her half-eaten biscuit under a serviette and folded her hands prettily in her lap. She was a little miffed with Sophie for inviting a bachelor for tea without warning her, but still, there seemed little reason not to make a good impression. She looked expectantly at the doorway, waiting patiently as Mr. Woodson’s footsteps drew near.
    And then . . .
    And then . . .
    Honestly, it wouldn’t do to try to recount it, because she remembered almost nothing of what followed.
    She saw him, and it was as if, after twenty-five years of life, her heart finally began to beat.
     
    Hugh Woodson had never been the most admired boy at school. He had never been the most handsome, or the most athletic. He had never been the cleverest, or the snobbiest, or the most foolish. What he had been, and what he had been all of his life, was the most well liked.
    People liked him. They always had. He supposed it was because he liked most everybody in return. His mother swore he’d emerged from the womb smiling. She said so with great frequency, although Hugh suspected she did so only to give her father the lead-in for: “Oh, Georgette, you know it was just gas.”
    Which never failed to set the both of them into fits of giggles.
    It was a testament to Hugh’s love for them both, and his general ease with himself, that he usually laughed as well.
    Nonetheless, for all his likeability, he’d never seemed to attract the females. They adored him, of course, and confided their most desperate secrets, but they always did so in a way that led Hugh to believe he was viewed as a jolly, dependable sort of creature.
    The worst part of it was that every woman of his acquaintance was absolutely positive that she knew the perfect woman for him, or if not, then she was quite sure that a perfect woman did indeed exist.
    That no woman ever thought herself the perfect woman had not gone unnoticed. Well, by Hugh, at least. Everyone else was oblivious.
    But he carried on, because there could be no point in doing otherwise. And as he had always suspected that women were the cleverer sex, he still held out hope that the perfect woman was indeed out there.
    After all, no fewer than four dozen women had said so. They couldn’t all be wrong.
    But Hugh was nearing thirty, and Miss Perfection had not yet seen fit to