Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (29 page)

“He's a good baby,” she was saying. “And the Harrads are good people, but Kit is special, he's unique, and they've raised only girls.”

“You spent two weeks with the infant, and you know him better than an experienced mother of three would?”

She turned to glare at him in the moonlight. “You are a blockhead, Valentine Windham. Just wait until Ellen presents you with a baby. Vim knew exactly what to do with Kit.
Exactly
. It has nothing to do with time or experience.”

He knew he was taking a risk, but Val opted for goading her rather than comforting her. “Vim knew what he was doing with you too, sister dear. The question is, what are the two of you going to do about it now? I'm told he's leaving for the Americas again, and that is some distance from merry olde England.”

“I hate you.”

“Dear heart, I know this.”

She stomped along beside him then stopped abruptly, dropped his arm and drew in a shuddery breath. Well, hell. He put his arms around her and silently vowed to give up his career as a charming escort. “What hurts the worst, Soph? Tell me.”

“You'll bear tales to Her Grace and to our odious brothers.”

“I'm your only odious brother.”

She nodded. “You're the worst of a bad lot.” She was stalling, but a lady was entitled when her heart was breaking. “I love him.”

“Sindal hasn't earned that honor—” He fell abruptly silent when Sophie drew back and rolled her eyes at him.

“I meant I love Kit, though I love Vim, as well.”

Val dropped his arms, feeling the last of his fraternal patience slipping its leash. “It's no wonder Sindal is uncertain of his reception with you, Sophie Windham, for I'm beyond confused myself. Have you told the man you love him?”

“Of course not.”

Val resumed their walk. “Then how is he to know?”

“Because I'm going to insist he take Kit.” Sophie followed after Val at a brisk pace. “Vim needs somebody to love, and to love him, and he's perfect with Kit. He said he'd consider fostering him at Sidling. The viscountess doted on Kit, and I think old Rothgreb was fond of him too.”

Val kept on walking. “You have taken leave of your senses. Sindal is off to parts unknown. He can't be dragging your dratted baby with him.”

“All manner of children are born on shipboard. Most merchant captains who can afford to take their wives and children with them do so. Then too, if Kit is at Sidling, Vim will have an excellent reason to be home more frequently. Rothgreb and his lady will like that.”

“Sophie, I love you, but this plan has nothing to recommend it, except that it puts the two fellows you seem to love with your whole heart where they're either gallivanting about the globe without you or right under your nose where you can look but not touch.”

She just shook her head and kept moving along with him.

“All right, then, go visit your Holy Terror and explain to the Harrads that no, you'll be haring off in a different direction now, playing skittles with a child's life while you completely ignore your own needs. I'm going to have a sane argument with a piano while I can still reason.”

He marched off—he was
not
retreating—and left Sophie in the middle of the village green, her fists clenched at her sides while the sounds of the Christmas party drifted around in the frigid night air.

***

A man could not aspire to the status of man at all unless he admitted to himself he'd been mistaken.

And Sophie had apparently known this. She'd known Vim had spent more than a dozen years racketing around the world, laying up treasures on earth, all in the mistaken belief His Grace had treated him shabbily, when all the while…

“I beg your pardon.” The very object of his youthful folly stepped back and peered at him through tired eyes. Louise Holderness Horton smiled tentatively. “I know you, sir, or I believe I do.”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “It's Sindal, Louise. Wilhelm Charpentier. Happy Christmas.” He bowed and left her standing there under the mistletoe, her hand to her a cheek and a ghost of her old smile on her lips.

And
now
to
deal
with
what
really
mattered
. He took a quick leave of his hostess, whose serene mature beauty reminded him all too strongly of Sophie.

Sophie, who was discreetly maintaining an absence when he'd come expressly to mend his fences with her. He gave the place one more visual inspection and didn't see her anywhere, so he signaled for his hat and coat.

“Where are you off to?” Westhaven was doing a poor job of masking a glower. “If I'm not mistaken, you haven't made your bow to Sophie.”

“I have not, and if that's how she wants it, that's how it will be. Excuse me.”

“You're really leaving.” The glower faded to puzzlement, though Westhaven's hand stayed on Vim's arm.

“I'm leaving for the curate's house, if you must know, and then, if Sophie still won't give me an audience, I am heading for Yorkshire, or wherever else you lot think you can secret her.”

“What's at the curate's house?”

“Not a what, a who. The love of Sophie's life, who should at least be with her if she won't allow me to be. Happy Christmas, Westhaven.”

He slipped out the door and didn't bother retrieving his horse. It was a short walk down to the village, and he'd need the time to clear his head.

***

“Where was Sindal going?” St. Just growled.

“I'm not sure, but he mentioned the curate's house.” Westhaven's brow knit. “He sounded a bit like he'd gotten into Deene's white rum, but he had only the one drink with His Grace.”

“His Grace is involved now?”

The brothers exchanged a look, and they spoke in unison. “Let's go.”

***

Vim was composing a speech, having failed utterly with his note to Sophie. He sought a means of explaining to the Harrads that he'd like to have the baby back, thank you very much, because Sophie Windham loved the child, and she should have whom and what she loved.

And if he cleared that hurdle without landing on his arse, he might, apology in hand, point out to the lady that a growing boy could use a man's influence.

It was a shaky plan, but it had the advantage of sparing one and all trips to the West Riding in the dead of winter. Surely she'd see the wisdom of that?

“Vim?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. There
she
stood in the middle of the green, not fifteen feet away, resplendent in moonlight and velvet.

“Sophie. Why aren't you at the Christmas revels?”

She stared at Vim for so long he thought perhaps she hadn't heard him. But then a sigh went out of her, and she seemed to grow smaller where she stood.

“I'm fetching Kit to you.”

What?
“Why would you do such a thing?”

Her smile was wan, not a smile he'd seen on her before, and it tore at his heart.

“It's the right thing,” she said, rubbing her hands up and down her upper arms. “It's the right thing for you and the right thing for Kit. I can't raise him—
Lady
Sophia and all. I can have my charities, but I cannot actually keep a child to raise. I understand that.”

“Can we talk about this?”

Her chin came up. “You didn't want to talk to me at the party.”

The strains of some old Handel came floating over the sounds of the Moreland gathering, the same pastoral lullaby Sophie had sung to Kit days ago, but this time rendered with mellow beauty on the church piano. The music was soothing, but sad too.

“Your father had something to explain to me, Sophie. I apologize if it seemed as if I was avoiding you.” But she was avoiding him, standing there trying not to shiver in the frigid night air. “Can we not find somewhere to sit? Because I do want to speak with you; I want it badly.”

“You're taking the baby,” she said, visually scanning the green. “My brother is an idiot.”

He wasn't sure which brother she referred to. “If you say so. I find them all likeable when they're not threatening to thrash me.”

She scowled. “They're still making threats?”

“Not lately.” He took her by the arm and started walking in the direction of the Harrads' tidy porch. “I'm not inclined to take on the responsibility for the child, Sophie. Not in my present circumstances.”

“Because you're going to China?”

“I was supposed to go to Baltimore.” And she was going to Yorkshire, for God's sake.

“Wherever. Children usually travel well, particularly when they're as small as Kit. He can't stay with the Harrads, though. They're decent people, but it was foolish of me to think strangers would love him the way we do.”

“So you love Kit?”

She stopped at the foot of the Harrads' steps. “I do. I think you love him too, though, and you're in a position to provide for him. I am prepared to be stubborn about this.”

“Formidable threat, my dear, but I am prepared to be stubborn too. Do you know what your papa wanted to discuss with me so urgently?”

This time when she looked him up and down, Vim had the sense she might be
seeing
him. “Papa is prone to queer starts. He does not confide in anybody that I can tell, except possibly Her Grace.”

He believed her. He believed she'd no more notion of who and what had been involved in Vim's great humiliation all those years ago than he had himself. To this extent, then, His Grace—and likely the ducal consequence, as well—had been guarding Vim's back, not driving daggers into it.

“It is a night for revelations. Can we take a seat?”

There was nowhere to sit, except the Harrads' humble wooden stoop. He lowered himself to it and patted the place beside him. “Cuddle up, Sophie. It's too cold to stand on pride much longer, and we have a dilemma to solve.”

She sat, and he let out a sigh of relief.

“What is our dilemma?” She might have tucked herself just a bit closer to him, or she might have been trying to get comfortable on their hard wooden seat.

“If Kit is to have the best start possible in life, he needs two parents who love him and care for him.”

She focused on something in the distance, as if trying to see the notes her brother's playing was casting into the chilly darkness. “I cannot be both mother and father to him; neither can you.”

“I suggest a somewhat more conventional arrangement. You be his mother, and I'll be his father.”

The arrangement was conventional in the extreme: one baby, a mama, a papa. It was the most prosaic grouping in the history of the species. The slow pounding of Vim's heart was extraordinary, though. He fought to speak steadily over it.

“I owe you an apology, Sophie Windham.”

She closed her eyes. “You are speaking in riddles, Mr. Charpentier.”

Not my lord, not baron, not Sindal. “Vim. I would be Vim to you, and I will start with the apology. When we were in Town—”

She shook her head. “That was then; this is now. That time was just a silly wish on my part, and we stole that time for ourselves despite all sound judgment to the contrary. If you are going to apologize to me for what took place there, I will not accept it.”

He thought she might get up and walk away, and that he could not bear. Not again, not
ever
again. Not for himself, and not for the child, either. He found her hand and took it in both of his.

“You took the notion I was offering you a sordid arrangement before we left Town.”

She ducked her face to her knees. “Must we speak of this?”

“I must.” It was his only real hope, to give her the truth and pray it was enough. “You were not wrong, Sophie.”

Her head came up. “I wasn't?”

“I was offering you any arrangement you'd accept. Marriage, preferably, but also anything short of that. I was offering anything and everything I had to keep a place in your life.”

“No.” She wrestled her hand free and hunched in on herself. “You were being gallant or honorable or something no woman wants to have as the sole motivator of a man's marriage proposal before she watches her husband go boarding a ship for the high seas. That wasn't what I wished for. It wasn't what I wished for, at all.”

He shifted so he was kneeling before her on the hard ground, as much to stop her from leaving as because it seemed the only thing left to do.

“Tell me what you wished for, Sophie. Tell me, please.”

“I wanted—” She paused and dashed the back of her hand against her cheek. “I wished for some Christmas of my own. I wished for a man who will care for me and stand by me no matter what inconvenient baby I've attached myself to. A man who will
love
me, love our children, and sojourn through life with me. I wished, and then you appeared, and I wished—”

“What did you wish, Sophie?”

“I wished you were my Christmas, wished you could be all my Christmases.”

He wondered if maybe those shepherds on that long ago, faraway hillside had heard not the beating wings of the heavenly hosts but nothing more celestial than the beating of their own hearts, thundering with hope, wonderment, and joy.

“Happy Christmas, Lady Sophie.” He framed her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly, reverently. “Be all my Christmases, mine and Kit's, forever and ever.”

She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and tried to draw his hands away when he brushed his thumbs over her damp cheeks.

“I cannot,” she said. “It isn't enough that we both care for the child or that I care for you.”

He kissed her, kissed to silence her, kissed her to gather his courage. “Then let it be enough that I love you, you and the child both, and I will always love you. Please, I pray you, let it be enough.”

She drew back and studied him, and he could not stop the words from forming. “I don't want to go to Baltimore. I don't want to leave my aunt and uncle to continue managing when I should have been here years ago. I don't want to avoid my neighbors because of some sad contretemps a dozen years ago, but I have wishes too, Sophie Windham.”

“What do you wish for?”

“A place in your heart. A permanent place in your heart. I wish for my children to have you as their mother. I wish for your idiot brothers to be doting uncles to our children and your sisters to be the aunts who spoil them shamelessly. I wish to make a home with you for our children, where your parents can come inspect our situation and criticize us for being too lenient with our offspring. I want one present, Sophie Windham—a future with you. That is my Christmas wish. Will you grant it?”

Lord Valentine's impromptu recital came to a close as Vim posed his question, and silence filled the air.

“Please, Sophie?”

Vim was on his knees in the freezing darkness, and he reached for her. He reached out his arms for her just as she—thank God and all the angels—reached for him.

“Yes.
Yes
, Mr. Charpentier, I will be your Christmas, and you shall be mine, and Kit shall belong to us, and we shall belong to him, and my bro—”

He growled as he hugged her to him, and now, over in the church, Valentine's choice was an ebullient, thundering chorus from the old master's oratorio:

“
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given… unto us, a son is given.
”

***

How long she stayed in Vim's arms there on the miserable cold steps Sophie could not have said. Spring could have come and gone and still she'd be reeling with joy and relief and hope.

Most of all with hope.

“Are you
bothering
our sister?”

Sophie raised her head to peer over Vim's shoulder. Valentine, Westhaven, and St. Just were standing not ten feet away, and she hadn't even heard them. St. Just had posed the question in that particularly calm tone that meant his temper could soon make an appearance.

Vim helped her to her feet and yet he kept an arm around her shoulders too.

“He was not bothering me. If you three can't tell the difference between a man bothering an unwilling woman and kissing his very own intended, then I pity your wives.”

St. Just's expression didn't change, though Valentine was grinning, and Westhaven was quietly beaming at her. “And what of the child?” St. Just asked. “Sindal, do your good intentions encompass the child, as well?”

Vim's arm tightened around her marginally. “Of course they do.” There was such a combination of ferocity and joy in his tone, Sophie couldn't help but smile.

“That's fortunate,” St. Just said, sauntering toward them. “You'll be wanting this, then.” He withdrew a piece of paper from his coat pocket and passed it to Vim, who didn't even unfold it.

“What is it?”

St. Just's teeth gleamed in the darkness. “It's the bill of sale for the mare and her unborn progeny.”

Vim glanced at Sophie, but she had no idea what her brother was about and was quite frankly too happy to care.

“It's for the boy,” St. Just said. “I can't exactly take the mare north in her present condition, and I don't want to have come back south for her next fall, do I?”

“I suppose you don't.”

Valentine cleared his throat. “The last thing I need is another violin. Once it's restored, talented people will pay for the use of it in concert. Or given his moniker, the dratted baby might grow up with some musical inclinations.”

Vim looked a little puzzled. “A violin?”

“That's very sweet of you, Val.” Sophie wrapped her arm around Vim's waist. “We accept on Kit's behalf.”

“Don't suppose you'd hold a sweet shop in trust for him?” Westhaven looked positively gleeful to be making the offer. “I will always be his favorite uncle, if you do, and his cousins will hold him in particular esteem. It might also stand him in good stead when it comes time for him to court—”

“That is diabolical,” Valentine expostulated, scowling ferociously.

“It's
ducal
,” St. Just agreed. “Worthy of the old man himself, Westhaven, and not well done of you.”

“We accept,” Sophie said, smiling at the dearest brothers in the world. “Don't we?”

“Of course, we do,” Vim said. “But before our son has more wealth than his parents, I think I'd best be having another little chat with His Grace.”

“Excuse me, my lords, my lady.” Mr. Harrad stood in the doorway to his home, his slender frame exuding a certain self-consciousness. “I heard voices, and as it happens, my wife and I were hoping to speak with Lady Sophia and Lord Sindal in the near future.”

“We'll leave you,” Westhaven said, stepping forward to kiss Sophie's forehead. “Don't stay out too long in this weather. Sindal, welcome to the family.”

“Welcome,” Valentine said, “but if you so much as give Sophie reason to wince, I will delight in thrashing you.” He kissed Sophie's cheek and stepped back.

“And then I'll stand you to a round,” St. Just said, extending a hand to Vim then drawing Sophie forward into the hug. “You'll send the boy to me when it's time to learn how to ride.”

It wasn't a request, but it was sufficiently controversial that as they walked off in the direction of Morelands, all three brothers could tear into a rousing good argument about who would teach the lad to ride, to dance, to flirt, to shoot…

With a particular ache in her chest, Sophie watched them disappear into the night but realized she had one more bit of business to conclude before she could bring Vim home to her family. “Mr. Harrad, would now be a good time to chat?”

He glanced from Sophie to Vim, looking sheepish and tired. “As good as any.”

***

“The boy got through the whole service without making a peep.”

Vim watched as His Grace, Percival, the Duke of Moreland, beamed at the baby in his arms. “Not one peep, my love! I cannot say the same for my own boys.”

“Nor for yourself,” Her Grace muttered from her place beside her husband in the ducal carriage.

Vim exchanged a look with Sophie, to which Their Graces—eyes riveted on Kit in his gorgeous little receiving blankets—were oblivious.

“I can tell you this, Sindal.” His Grace did not glance up from the child. “Your grandfather and I discussed a match between you and one of my girls. He'd approve. He'd approve of this little fellow too.”