“I will not refuse a man’s offer to wash dishes in my kitchen.”
She still did not sound precisely happy.
“Tell me of your home,” Vim suggested, using a rag to start washing the mixing bowl in the warm, soapy water.
“It’s beautiful. Big but cozy. It will always be home.”
“Do you miss it?”
She accepted the clean bowl from his hand, frowning as she did. “There comes a point where the familiar can feel more like a prison than a haven, though in truth it’s neither. It’s a home, a place laden with memories, nothing more and nothing less.”
Vim stared at the water. “A place with obligations too.”
“What sort of obligations?”
Now why had he brought up this mare’s nest of unpleasant associations?
“My uncle is getting older, and he refuses to hire new staff. My aunt has never been a traditionally practical woman, and their daughters are no help whatsoever.”
“Do you worry for them?”
“Oh, of course.”
Something in his tone must have given him away. Sophie put a hand on his sleeve. “What aren’t you saying? If you worry about them, you must love them.”
“I hardly know them, Sophie. They’re my only paternal family, but I’ve never…”
She was standing right beside him, her big green eyes holding a world of compassion Vim did not want directed at him. He did not deserve it, certainly not from her.
“Sophie, I want to kiss you.”
He’d meant to state it as a problem, a small, troubling matter she needed to take into consideration when she stood so close. It came out sounding like a prayer, like the most fervent wish hoarded up in a tired, lonely heart that had long since lost the courage to wish.
She set aside the towel in her hand while Vim watched her mouth in anticipation of a gentle, even kind, rebuke.
And then the baby let loose with a loud, indignant squall.
* * *
Sophie didn’t want to kiss Vim Charpentier; she wanted to gobble him up like a holiday sweet, to gorge herself on the feel and taste and scent and sound of him.
Which was… disquieting. She’d been kissed before, fondled, groped, pulled into dark alcoves and promised all manner of outrageous pleasure when it became apparent she wasn’t entertaining offers of marriage.
Some of it she’d found… intriguing, but not intriguing enough to risk the consequences.
Thank God for fussy babies. They gave a woman time to recover her balance and assess what it meant when a man did not kiss a lady but announced that he wanted to.
“Let me try.” Vim took the small spoon from her hand—no flirtation there—and addressed himself to the baby. “If you refuse your victuals, young Kit, we will spank you soundly and send you to bed quite hungry indeed. I will eat them up myself, in fact. Yummy warm porridge with plenty of juicy apple mashed into it. How can a man—even such a wee man as you—refuse such ambrosia?”
“We will not spank you,” Sophie interjected. “Not until you are at least as big as Vim.”
When the baby spat out another mouthful of his dinner, Vim sat back, a puzzled expression on his face. “The boy is in a mood about something. We can try again later, and he’ll probably eat a double portion.”
He tried putting the baby back in the cradle, which provoked more fussing and kicking.
Sophie took Kit from Vim’s arms. “He wants cuddling.”
By the time darkness had fallen, they’d both had turns holding the infant, rocking him, and distracting him with trips to the window. While Sophie took the last of the cakes and muffins from the oven, Vim toured the kitchen with the baby in his arms.
“You never did tell me about your family seat,” Sophie said. Thanks to Kit’s fussiness, there had been no opportunity to revisit Vim’s startling pronouncement regarding that other business.
That business about kissing her. About wanting to kiss her.
“It’s a pretty enough place,” Vim said. “The main part is a Tudor manor with sprawling grounds. My aunt is quite the landscaper. Uncle likes to fish, so we have two ornamental lakes and several ponds.”
“And you will inherit this property?”
“For my sins, yes.”
She paused in the middle of wrapping the bread in muslin. “Do I take it you have bad memories of this place?”
He touched noses with the baby, which Sophie accounted a stalling tactic.
“I have few memories one way or the other. My father died when I was quite young, and then we removed to Cumbria. I spent a few holidays in Kent when I was at University, but my uncle didn’t issue many invitations. My siblings in Cumbria seemed to need some looking after, so I bided there more than anywhere else. That bread smells heavenly.”
“When it cools, we’ll have some. Kit seems quieter.”
“Shall we try to feed him again?”
It was a good suggestion. Sophie didn’t for a minute believe Vim had told her more than a superficial glossing over of the truth, but concern for the child won out over her curiosity.
Then too, if she pried too closely into Vim’s situation, he might feel entitled to pry into hers, which would not serve in the least. A man might announce a desire to kiss a housekeeper or other domestic, but he’d never risk offending a duke’s daughter with such forwardness.
Fortunately, the child ate prodigiously, as Vim had predicted. Sophie cut fat wedges of bread for her and Vim, added a dish of butter to the tray, and followed Vim and the child down the hallway to the servants’ parlor.
They put the baby on his nest of blankets, and while Kit seemed to enjoy the change of scenery, he made no move to get up on all fours but stayed on his belly or his back, content to watch as Sophie and Vim ate their buttered bread.
“I should have made you a proper dinner,” Sophie said. “I wonder how women with large families ever get anything done.”
Vim looked over from where he was letting Kit gnaw on his finger. “You’re from a large family.”
“My mother had scads of help. Does that child’s diaper need changing?”
Vim inhaled through his nose. “Not yet. Will you be all right when I leave tomorrow, Sophie?”
She was glad he’d brought it up, but she would not ask him to stay. Men of a certain ilk could sit still only so long before all around them suffered for it.
And what difference would one more day make? Whether Vim knew it or not, she was still Lady Sophia Windham, with a baby to find a decent home for, and he was a man whom she was convinced never bided any one place long enough to call it home.
“We’ll manage.” She started tidying up the remains of their meal. “My brothers will show up in a day or so, and two of them are parents.”
“I do believe His Highness is yawning.”
Subject changed. He’d wanted reassurances that she’d be able to manage, nothing more. Well, she wanted some things from him too.
“Let’s see if we can’t read him to sleep,” Sophie suggested. She went to the bookshelves and pulled down a volume of Wordsworth’s poetry. There was a copy in the library as well, but that version would not have dog-eared pages or a spine cracked and creased with frequent readings.
She didn’t realize Vim was standing behind her until she bumped into him when she turned around.
“Steady.” His hands closed around her upper arms then dropped away. “What have you found for us?”
“Poetry. Nice, calm, pastoral poetry to read a fussy young man to sleep.”
“What sort of household is this, Sophie, that the servants read poetry?”
“A proper English house. Bring My Lord Baby to the sofa.” She sat a little left of the middle of the sofa, so Vim would have to sit either near her or very near her. He scooped Kit up in a blanket and obligingly took the place to her left, right next to her, which allowed him to prop his elbow on the sofa’s armrest.
“I vote you read and we fellows will listen in rapt silence.”
“And you ladies don’t have conspiracies of your own?” He brought the child to his shoulder and started rubbing Kit’s little back. The sight sent odd tendrils of warmth drifting through Sophie’s insides.
“We women are cooperative by nature; that’s different from conspiratorial.”
She chose a poem at random, not so much to have the last word as to distract her thoughts from the man beside her. Vim was holding Kit with just as much affection and care as if the baby were his own child.
Which he was not. Kit wasn’t her child, either. She must not forget this. Sophie paused, blinked, and tried to recall her place. She had most of the book half-memorized, which meant it was little help when notions of parting from Kit came stealing relentlessly into her brain.
While she was making a pretense of choosing another poem, something warm settle on the back of her neck.
Vim’s hand. He’d said nothing. His body hadn’t shifted. He still held the child in the crook of his arm, but he was touching Sophie too. His thumb was making slow circles on her nape, sending a melting warmth down her spine and up into her brain.
“Read more slowly, Sophie. I think Kit’s dropping off.”
She nodded carefully so as not to dislodge the wondrous gift of his hand on her person. When she read again, she could barely focus on the words, so drunk was she with the sensation of Vim Charpentier’s touch on the bare skin of her neck.
She’d wished for things from him before he left, things no decent woman admitted to wanting, things she could never have asked for in words.
And this slow, sweet touch was part and parcel of what she’d wished for.
* * *
There was something fundamentally aberrant about a man who could sit with an infant propped in one arm and still have erotic thoughts about the woman encircled with the other arm. Though they weren’t truly erotic thoughts.
They were more the kind of thoughts that noticed the way firelight brought out red highlights in Sophie Windham’s hair, or saw how graceful the curve of her cheek was, or heard the sheer cultured beauty of her voice as she did Wordsworth proud. The poetry made Vim miss the Lakes, from whence the poet drew inspiration, where Vim’s younger siblings were gathering for the holidays.
A man could breathe in Cumbria. He could ramble for hours on the fells with no company but the land, the sheep, the gorgeous sky, and his own thoughts. Mental images of the Cumbrian countryside had sustained Vim on many a journey, but they filled him now with a peculiar kind of loneliness.
Beside him, Sophie fell silent.
“He’s asleep.” Vim whispered the words, unwilling to disturb the child or the moment. When Sophie made no move to leave the sofa, he stroked his hand along the side of her head, reveling in the feel of her warm, silky hair.
She put the book aside, and the next time Vim caressed her hair, she sighed and turned her face into his shoulder. They stayed like that for a long time, while the fire burned down and both thought of what might have been and what could never be.
Six
Sophie woke to the feel of Vim’s thumb tracing along the curve of her jaw. She didn’t move, but he must have sensed her waking, because he uncurled his arm from her shoulders.
“You take the baby,” he said quietly. “I’ll bank the fire and collect his cradle. We’ll have you both upstairs before he wakens.”
That hand caressing her neck was to be a tacit touching, then. Better than nothing but little more than a memory. A pleasurable memory but not quite a happy one.
Sophie stood and took the baby from Vim, making no effort to avoid the slide of her hand along his abdomen as she did. Vim was warm and muscular, and sitting in the circle of that warmth had been a gift Sophie could not openly acknowledge. She had the sense as she cradled the child to her chest she was going to miss Vim Charpentier’s warmth for a long time after she’d managed to wish him safe journey on the morrow.
He did a thorough job of banking the fire and securing the hearth screen, but he did it quietly too. He took the cradle under one arm, picked up a single candle in his free hand, and led Sophie through the cold house to the family wing.
“Let me light your candles,” he said, stepping back to follow her inside her bedroom. The room was wonderfully warm because Vim had kept the fire going all day.
“This is a nice room,” he said, glancing around. “It looks both well appointed and comfortable.”
Perhaps he was thinking it was a fancy room for a woman who had yet to acknowledge her relationship to the Duke of Moreland, but Sophie made no reply. When Vim set the cradle by the hearth, Sophie laid the sleeping baby down and tucked the blankets around him.
“He seems worn out,” she said. Vim lit the candle by her bed then came over to light the two on each end of her mantle.
“You seem worn out, Sophie Windham. Kit can stay with me tonight, if you like.”
“Not when you have to travel tomorrow. You need your rest, while I can nap when the baby does. Good night, Vim, and thank you.”
He set his candle on the mantle and peered down at her, moving close enough that his bergamot scent tickled her nose.
“What I said earlier?”
She nodded. He’d said a lot of things earlier, but she knew exactly which handful of words he referred to.
“I can’t offer you anything, Sophie. I’m dealing with problems in Kent I can’t easily describe, but it’s urgent that I tend to them. Even if I weren’t being pulled in that direction, I have obligations all over the empire, and you’re a woman who—”
She stopped him with two fingers to his mouth.
“I want to kiss you too, Vim Charpentier.”
He looked briefly surprised, then considering, then a slow, sweet smile graced his expression. He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.
A kiss, then. She’d at least have a kiss to keep in her heart. Sophie rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around him while he slid his hands along her waist to steady her by the hips. His hold was careful, gentle even, and utterly secure. When she thought he meant for them to share something just a tad more than chaste, that hold shifted, bringing her flush up against his body.
She made a sound of longing in the back of her throat, and his hold shifted again. She realized a moment too late he was anchoring her for the real kiss, for the press of his open mouth over hers, for the startling warmth of his tongue insinuating itself against her mouth.
She’d heard of this kind of kissing, wondered about it. It hadn’t sounded nearly as lush and lovely as Vim Charpentier made it. He didn’t invade, he explored, he invited, he teased and soothed and sent an exotic sense of wanting to all quadrants of Sophie’s anatomy.
He made her, for the first time in her female life, bold. She ran her tongue along that plush, soft space between his bottom lip and his teeth.
He growled, a wonderful, encouraging sound that had her tongue foraging into his mouth again, even as she laughed a little against his lips. The kiss became a battle of tongues and lips and wills, with Vim trying to insist on gentleness and patience, and Sophie demanding a complete melee.
Her hands went questing over the muscles shifting and bunching along his spine then up into the abundance of his golden hair. Bergamot stole into her senses too, a smoky Eastern fragrance that made her want to seek out the places on Vim’s body where he’d applied the scent.
She undid his queue and winnowed her fingers through his hair, even as she felt Vim’s arms lashing more tightly around her.
Against her stomach she felt a rising column of male flesh, and it made her wild to think she’d done that, she’d inspired this man to passion.
“Vim Charpentier…” She breathed his name against his neck, finding the pulse at the base of his throat with her tongue.
“Sophie… Ah, Sophie.”
Her name, but spoken with such regret. It might as well have been
a bucket of cold water.
The kiss was over. Just like that. She’d been devouring him with her mouth and her hands and her entire being, and now, not two deep breaths later, she was standing in his embrace, her heart beating hard in her chest, her wits cast to the wind.
“My dear, we cannot.”
Vim’s voice was a quiet rumble against her body. He at least did her the kindness of not stepping away, though his embrace became gentle again, and Sophie felt him rest his cheek against her hair. Her mind drunk and ponderous, she only slowly realized what he was saying. He’d contemplated taking her to bed—and rejected the notion. In her ignorance, she’d been so swept up in the moment she’d given no thought to what might follow.
What could have followed.
If only.
She tried to tell herself “if only” was a great deal closer to her wishes and desires than she’d been one kiss ago. There was “if only” in Vim’s voice and in the way he held her, as if she were precious. It was a shared “if only.”
It was better than nothing.
She realized he’d hold her until she broke the embrace, another kindness. So she lingered awhile in his arms, breathing in his scent, memorizing the way her body matched up against his much taller frame. She rested her cheek against his chest and focused on the feel of his hand moving over her back, on the glowing embers of desire slowly cooling in her vitals.
He’d experienced desire, as well—desire for her. His flesh was still tumescent against her belly. Before she stepped back and met his eyes, Sophie let herself feel that too.
If only.
* * *
Vim drifted to awareness with jubilant female voices singing in his head. “Arise! Shine! For thy light is come!”
Too much holiday decoration had infested his dreams with the strains of old Isaiah, courtesy of Handel.
Though somebody was most definitely unhappy.
He flopped the covers back and pulled on the luxurious brocade dressing gown before his mind was fully awake. In the dark he made his way down the frigid corridor and followed the yowling of a miserable infant to Sophie’s door.
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