Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish tdd-1

by Grace Burrowes

  * * *

  Sophie’s day dragged, the hours punctuated by Vim’s absence more than by the chiming of the tall clocks throughout the house.

  Vim wasn’t there to help Sophie feed the baby.

  He wasn’t on hand to deal with some of the soiled nappies.

  He wasn’t offering the occasional opinion on the baby’s situation, leaving Sophie to fret that the child was too warm, too cold, too tired, too everything.

  Vim wasn’t offering adult companionship at meals, complimenting Sophie’s pedestrian cooking as if it were the finest food he’d ever eaten.

  He wasn’t there when Sophie contemplated and discarded the notion of lying down for a nap while Kit caught his midafternoon forty winks, there being memories to haunt her in both her own bed and Vim’s.

  Vim wasn’t there, and he would never be there again.

  “I have both brothers and sisters,” she told Kit as she laid him in the cradle near the kitchen hearth. “My oldest sister is named Maggie. She’s several years my senior and very much a comfort to me, though she’s technically a half sister.”

  Would Kit have brothers and sisters? Did Joleen’s footman have other children he’d created with the same careless disregard for the child’s future? That Kit might have siblings and never know them, or not even know of them, made her chest ache.

  “Maggie explained certain things to me when I made my come out,” she said, shifting the cradle to the worktable and putting it beside her baking ingredients. “Things no decent girl is supposed to know.” And how Maggie came upon the knowledge was something Sophie had wondered.

  “She explained that people like you get conceived at certain times and are less likely to be conceived at other times.”

  The baby kicked both feet and stuck the two middle fingers of his left hand in his mouth.

  “I was hoping…”

  She’d been hoping Vim would show her what the greatest intimacy between a man and a woman could be. She’d been hoping to be his lover, to know with him what she’d never know with any other man.

  She’d been hoping a great deal more than that, actually, but hoping was as useless as wishing.

  “I’ll deal with Valentine’s room tomorrow,” she assured the baby. “I’ll clean up the bathing chamber, and I’ll send along a cheery note to Their Graces.”

  She wouldn’t lie, exactly, but she wouldn’t mention Vim Charpentier, either. Among her siblings, there was tacit acknowledgment of the occasional need to protect their parents from some unsavory detail or development. It was the kind thing to do, also the most practical, as some aspects of reality did not yield even in the face of ducal determination.

  Like the reality that Vim was gone and Sophie would never see him again.

  Tomorrow she’d tidy up Val’s room and set the bathing chamber to rights. She’d remove every possible piece of evidence indicating Vim had been in the house.

  Just… not… yet.

  She started mixing another batch of stollen, though she had to pause occasionally to swipe the stray tears from her cheeks.

  * * *

  “My dear, I’m afraid it’s gone.”

  Essie Charpentier watched her husband rise slowly from where he’d knelt on the carpet. One foot on the floor, then while he braced himself, the second foot. A pause, then a hearty shove to gain him his feet, and another pause to recover from the effort.

  “Perhaps it is simply misplaced,” she said as she’d said on an appalling number of other occasions. “Or maybe the servants have taken it downstairs for cleaning in anticipation of the holidays.”

  He cast a glance at her, an indulgent glance laced with a little worry and a tinge of… pity. She hated the pity probably as much as he hated the ways she pitied him in recent years too.

  “It was just an olive dish,” she said briskly. “We have several such, and the olives don’t taste any better or worse for being in an antique silver dish or a piece of the everyday.” She laced her arm through his. “It’s sunny today. I’m of a mind to visit the ancestors, if you’ll escort me?”

  “Of course, my dear.” He patted her hand and led her from the family parlor where they’d stored various items of sentimental and commercial value for years—the heirloom parlor.

  “Perhaps we should take to locking the doors of certain rooms,” Essie said. “You lock the billiards room when we’re not entertaining.”

  “The gun cabinets are in there, my dear. I’m sure the dish will turn up, and it wouldn’t do to offend the staff by locking the place up like some medieval castle. Is there someone in particular you’d like to see?”

  “Christopher, I think. We must tell him his son is coming for a visit.”

  They made a slow, careful progress up the main stairs, a majestic cascade of oak whose grandeur was dimming in Essie’s eyes as her knees increasingly protested the effort of climbing it.

  “We hope Wilhelm will grace us with his presence,” the viscount said, pausing at the top of the stairs. “There’s been no word, Essie, and he should have been here by now.”

  She paused, as well, and surveyed the front hall below them. All was cheerfully laden with swags of pine. A wreath graced the inside of the front door, and a fat sprig of mistletoe wrapped with red ribbon was temporarily hanging from a coat rack in the corner.

  “Kiss me, Rothgreb.”

  He smiled down at her, a trace of his old devilment in his blue eyes. “Naughty girl.” But he bussed her cheek and patted her hand. “My lovely, naughty girl.”

  “Vim will be here,” she said as they resumed their progress toward the portrait gallery. “He keeps his word.”

  “He keeps his word, but his associations with Sidling are not cheerful, particularly not his associations with Sidling at Yuletide. Watch the carpet, my love.”

  “His associations with Sidling are cheerful. He passed his early childhood here cheerfully enough.”

  Rothgreb held the door to the portrait gallery open for her. Down the length of the room, some eighty feet, a fire was laid but not lit in a huge fieldstone hearth, and the cavernous space was chilly indeed.

  “Shall I fetch you a shawl, Essie?”

  He was not going to argue with her about Vim’s past, which was a small disappointment. Arguing warmed them both up.

  At the rate they moved around the house lately, by the time he fetched the shawl, she’d be frozen to the spot she occupied. She smiled at him. “Bellow for Jack footman. Trotting around will keep him from freezing.”

  “He won’t move any faster than I will, and you know it.” Nonetheless, Rothgreb strode off and could be heard yelling in the corridor. The man had a good set of lungs on him, always had, and no amount of years was going to take away from the broad shoulders favored by the Charpentier menfolk.

  “He misses you,” Essie said to the portrait occupying the wall to the right. She let her eyes travel over blond hair, blue eyes, a teasing hint of a smile, and masculine features so attractive as to approach some standard of male beauty.

  “Christopher was the best looking of us three boys,” Essie’s husband said, slipping his arm around her waist. “He would have made a wonderful viscount.”

  “You make a wonderful viscount, and to my eyes you were and still are the pick of the litter.” She let her head rest on his shoulder, sending up a prayer of thanks that, for all their years, they still had each other and still had a reasonable degree of health.

  “You need spectacles, my lady.” He smiled down at her then resumed perusing his brother’s portrait. “Vim never comes here, you know. When he visits, he doesn’t come say hello to his old papa, nor to his grandfather, either.”

  “He will this time.” She decided this as she spoke, but really, Vim was not a boy any longer, and certain things needed to be put in the past.

  “No scheming, Essie, not without including me in your plans.”

  This was the best part of being married to Rothgreb for decades—though there were many, many good parts. Another
man might have become indifferent to his wife, the wife who had been unable to provide him sons. Another man might have quietly or not so quietly indulged in all manner of peccadilloes when the novelty of marriage wore off.

  Her husband had become her best friend, the person who knew her best and loved her best in the whole world, and Essie honestly believed she’d come to know him as well as she knew herself. It made up for advancing years, white lies, misplaced olive dishes, and all manner of other transgressions.

  She hoped.

  “Let’s say hello to Papa while we’re here,” Rothgreb suggested. “He always did have great fun at the holidays.”

  Essie let him steer her down the gallery at a dignified pace. The point of the outing had been to get away from the family parlor and wipe the concern from Rothgreb’s eyes. If she had to freeze her toes among previous generations of Charpentiers, then so be it.

  “If Vim comes, we will have great fun again,” Essie said. “His cousins will mob him, and the neighbors will come to call in droves. Esther Windham still has five unmarried daughters, Rothgreb. Five, and their papa a duke!”

  “Now, Essie, none of that. The last thing, the very last thing Vim will be interested in is courting a local girl at the holidays, and given how his previous attempt turned out, I can’t say as I blame him.”

  Essie made a pretense of studying the portrait of Rothgreb’s father. The old rascal had posed with each of his four wives, the last portrait having been completed just a few months before the man’s death.

  He was a thoroughgoing scamp of the old school, a Viking let loose on the polite society of old King George’s court. She’d adored him but felt some pity for his successively younger wives.

  “I believe I shall send Her Grace a little note,” Essie said.

  His lordship peered over at her, his expression the considering one that indicated he wasn’t sure whether or how to interfere.

  “Just a little note.” She patted her husband’s arm. “I do think Vim inherited the old fellow’s smile. What do you think?”

  “I would never argue with a lady, but I honestly can’t say I’ve seen Vim’s smile enough to make an accurate conclusion.”

  True enough. They tarried before a few other portraits, and by the time Essie’s teeth were starting to chatter, Jack footman tottered in with a cashmere shawl for her shoulders.

  * * *

  Sophie’s first day tending Kit without Vim’s assistance went well enough as far as the practicalities were concerned. She made more holiday bread and a batch of gingerbread, as well, took care of the baby, folded the dry laundry, placed stacks of clean nappies and rags in strategic locations about the house, and successfully avoided going into the room where Vim had slept.

  Tomorrow, maybe.

  A fresh bout of tears threatened—my goodness, she hadn’t cried this much in years—and she glanced over at where Kit was slurping on his fingers on the parlor rug. While she watched, he took his hand from his mouth and started twisting his body as if to look at the fire dancing in the hearth.

  “You’re getting grand ideas again.”

  His gaze went immediately to Sophie where she sat on the floor beside his blankets.

  “Go ahead; amaze yourself with a change in scenery.”

  As if he’d understood her words, Kit squirmed and twisted and gurgled until he’d succeeded in pushing himself over onto his stomach. His head came up, and he braced himself on his hands, grinning merrily.

  “This is how it begins with you men,” she said, running her hand down the small back. “You have this urge to explore, to sally forth, to conquer the world. Next you’ll be going for a sailor in the Royal Navy, shipping out for parts unknown, all unmindful of the people you leave behind, the people who love you and worry about you every moment.”

  Kit hiked his backside skyward and managed to get on all fours. Sophie wiped the drool from his mouth, but his grin was undiminished.

  “Men. You must adventure; you must go; you must march and sail and charge about in the company of your fellows. No matter you could be killed, no matter you break hearts every time you leave.”

  Kit slapped his blankets with one small hand.

  “I’ve never understood men. Bart would come home on winter leave, and nothing would do but he’d go off to Melton, riding to hounds, hell-bent, in all kinds of evil weather. It wasn’t enough to taunt fate by charging into French lines. No, he must risk his neck even on leave.”

  She fell silent, frowning as Kit raised his second hand and slapped it down, as well, slightly ahead of where it had been previously. He bounced with pleasure, cooing and rocking, until he scooted one small chubby knee a little forward. He rocked on his knees more exuberantly, thrilled with himself for simply moving one small leg.

  He was… crawling. Amid more noise and rocking and drooling, he shifted the second knee, then a hand, until he was shortly pitched forward onto his little chest, smacking the blanket and kicking his glee. He struggled up to all fours again and started rocking once more, while Sophie felt another damned tear slide down her cheek.

  When it appeared Kit had tired of his newfound competence and Sophie had regained control over her wayward composure, she picked him up and hugged him close.

  “I am proud of you. I am most, most proud of you, but these exertions will work up an appetite.”

  She herself had eaten quite enough, finding it did nothing to fill the sense of emptiness created by Vim’s absence. The kitchen was toasty warm and full of the scent of gingerbread when Sophie repaired there to make Kit’s dinner, but it was as if her usual misery at the holidays had descended manyfold.

  “The house is decorated,” she told the baby. “There are presents under the tree at Morelands, the servants are all enjoying their leave, and I want simply to sleep until all the merriment is over. But I mustn’t sleep.”

  Kit spit out his last spoonful of mashed potatoes.

  “I can’t sleep because I must find a family to love you, and I can’t sleep now because both of the bedrooms hold too many memories, and besides, I let the fire go out in Vim’s room. Except it isn’t Vim’s room. It is Valentine’s room, or it was before he ran off and got married just like his brothers…”

  She was babbling, babbling about her brothers leaving her, for death or marriage, it made no difference. They were all gone, her father had had a heart seizure, and he would be going in time too. Kit would soon be gone, and Vim…

  Vim was gone. A sob, a true, miserable, from-the-gut sob welled up, propelled by the darkness falling outside, the effort of being good for an entire day, and God knew what else. Sophie caught herself around the middle and swallowed back the ugly sound which, should it escape her, she feared would signal a permanent loss of her self-control.

  It did not stay subdued, though. No, her body was determined to have its unhappy say. But then the back door slammed shut, and despite her misery, Sophie heard the sound of booted feet stomping in the hallway.

  Good heavens, Merriweather or Higgins would be coming to check on her. She rose, swiped at her cheeks, and set aside the baby’s spoon and rag.

  Then a thought hit her that had her sitting down hard on the bench again: her brothers. Oh, please God, not those three. Yes, she’d missed them terribly, but at that precise moment, she didn’t want to see anybody, not one soul except the very person she would never see again.

  Vim.

  He stood in the doorway, looking haggard, chilled to the bone, and so, so dear. Sophie flew across the kitchen to embrace him, the sob escaping her midflight.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his arms going around her. “There were no coaches going to Kent, no horses to hire for a distance that great. No horses to buy, not even a mule. All day… I tried all day.”

  He sounded exhausted, and the cold came off him palpably. His cheeks were rosy with it, his voice a little hoarse, and against his ruddy complexion, his blue eyes gleamed brilliantly.

  “You must be famished.” Sophie did not le
t him go while she made that prosaic, female observation. Despite all she’d eaten, she was famished—for the sight of him, for the sound of his voice, and oh, for the feel of his tall body against her.

  “Hungry, yes. How fares Kit?”

  Still they did not part. “He started crawling today. Not far, not quite well, but he’ll figure it out quickly. He’s just finished dinner.”

  Vim moved off toward the table but kept an arm around Sophie’s shoulders.

  “Clever lad.” He smiled down at the baby propped amid blankets and towels on the table. “Making your first mad dash across the carpet, are you? And I missed it. You must have a demonstration for me before you retire, for it’s a sight I would not miss.”

  “I missed you.” Sophie hugged Vim close, burying her face against his chilly shoulder.

  She felt a sigh go out of him and wished she could recall the words. Yes, they were the truth, a defining truth, but still, she should not have said the words. When he did not give those unwise words back her to, she stepped away. “Put your wet things in the parlor to dry. I’ll see about dinner.”

  * * *

  Vim did as ordered, spreading his sodden greatcoat over the back of a wing chair, adorning the mantel with his gloves, hat and scarf, peeling off the knit sweater he’d worn all day, and removing his boots and the soaked outer pair of trousers from his legs.

  In his life, he’d been colder, more exhausted, and hungrier on many occasions, but he’d never been so glad to come in from the weather.

  The picture Sophie had made, sitting in a faded brown velvet dress at the table—her dark hair gathered sleekly at her nape, her soft voice a low caress in Vim’s mind as she’d spoken to the child—had been an image of heaven.

  And then the feel of her…

  No hesitance, no remonstrance for reappearing uninvited, nothing but her arms lashed around him in welcome, and those dangerous, wonderful words: I missed you.

  “These are socks I knitted for my brother Devlin when he was wintering in Spain,” Sophie said, closing the parlor door behind her. “I made several pairs for him and for Bart, as well, but Bart’s things were distributed among his men, in accordance with his wishes. Devlin went north in summer, so all his winter socks were left behind.”