Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (6 page)

Now why in the hell had he brought that up? The moment had haunted him, left him wishing he could scoop up all the silent, listless babies and bring them home to merry England to be cosseted and cuddled and stuffed with porridge.

Sophie ran her hand down the baby's back then tried to adjust a nappy that had been tied securely if not exactly prettily onto the child's body. “I'm going to wash my hands. You plot petit treason with Kit, and when I come back, I want to hear more stories of your travels. Not just the company stories that make people laugh, but the real stories—the ones that stayed with you.”

She made a silent departure, leaving Vim to watch as the baby once again maneuvered to all fours.

“And you think exploring the world will be great good fun, don't you?” he asked the child. “You don't know yet that you'll see children starving and old women nigh freezing to death.” He picked the child up and cradled him closely, speaking with his lips pressed against the baby's downy hair. “Don't be in a hurry to grow up, young Kit. It isn't all it's reported to be. You go wenching and drinking and carousing around the globe, and pretty soon, all you want is home, hearth, and a woman of your own to give babies to. You can find your way to any port on any sea, but you can't find your way to those simple blessings.”

The baby let out a sigh and mashed his fist into his mouth. Vim set him down faceup on the blankets.

“Roll over, why don't you? It's one way to get a change in perspective.” He rolled the baby slowly to his tummy just as Sophie came back to the room.

“Have you listed all the best taverns in Oxford for him?”

“There are no taverns in Oxford. It's scholars cheek by jowl, scholars on every street corner, composing poetry in Latin and Greek.”

She sank to the floor, this time stretching out on her side near the baby. “My brothers said there was an entirely different sort of commerce being conducted on those street corners. Does that fist just taste better than the other, do you think?”

Vim took the opposite length of floor. “He favors the left. One of our old grooms in Cumbria said it's a function of how the child lies in the womb, so one hand is easier to maneuver than the other. Said horses are prone to the same tendency, more supple on one side than the other.”

“When Kit learns to trot, we'll put the theory to the test.”

A silence descended, broken by the sound of the cozy fire a few feet away, the bitter wind outside, and the baby's contented slurping. It wasn't like any silence Vim could recall—sweet, comfortable, and yet… poignant. He would be leaving in just a few hours, going out into the chill wind while the woman and child would remain here before the fire.

“Shall I pour you some tea, Sophie?”

“Yes, thank you. And I saw some cinnamon buns too. I'll take mine with butter.”

Vim busied himself with the food, grateful for the distraction. Kit was up on his hands and knees again, occasionally rocking and bouncing as if he expected the floor itself to propel him along the carpet somehow.

Sophie took her tea, setting the cup and saucer up on the coffee table out of the baby's reach. “What story will you tell me?”

“What kind of story would you like?”

“An exciting story. One with an exotic climate and mortal peril.”

He had to smile at the relish in her voice. “Do we have bloodthirsty warring factions in this story?”

“No war, please.”

She'd lost a brother to the Corsican's armies. He'd forgotten that, though she never would. “You want a happy ending, then?”

She studied her teacup for a thoughtful moment. “I don't admit to my family that I still want the happy endings and wishes to come true. A mature woman should just take life as it comes, and I do have a great deal to be grateful for.”

“But a mature woman should also be honest with herself, and with me. You're allowed to wish for the happy endings, Sophie. For yourself and for Kit too.”

When he looked up from his teacup, she was studying him. “May I wish for a happy ending for you too, Vim Charpentier?”

She would. Regardless of her role in this grand household, Sophie Windham was decent enough—lady enough—to include him in her wishes, though he knew a fleeting frustration at not being able to divine what
exactly
her role was.

“Christmas approaches, and I'm sure you've been a very good girl. You may wish for anything you like.”

Something flickered across her usually serene features, something feminine and mysterious and quite… attractive.

Vim launched into a tale of shipwreck on a tropical paradise, leaving out mention of flies, dysentery, and petty squabbling among the survivors. He described the noise and destruction of the hurricanes, the attempts to rebuild the boat, and the difficult voyage from the island back to some semblance of civilization, wondering why no one had ever asked for this story before.

Not that anyone asked him for any stories.

“You have entertained Kit marvelously,” Sophie said when he'd brought the tale to its mandatory happy conclusion. “I can see him planning his first voyage.”

Kit was sailing the expanse of Vim's chest, the baby's back arched like a baby seal's. Vim tapped him gently on the nose. “I can see My Lord Baby succumbing to exhaustion following this very eventful day. If Miss Sophie and I are flagging, sir, then you most certainly are overdue for a visit to the arms of Morpheus.”

Kit grinned hugely and thumped Vim on the chest with one fist.

“I don't think he agrees with you.” Sophie finished this observation on a polite yawn.

“Shall I take his cradle up to your room?”

“That would be appreciated. I'd best grab some clean nappies, shouldn't I?”

“Forearmed and all that. I'll put the tea tray away.”

“Leave it. I'll deal with it in the morning.”

After
you're gone
. She'd left the words unspoken out of kindness, no doubt.

He cuddled the baby to his chest and got to his feet. The idea of leaving ought to fill him with relief. The longer he stayed, the greater the possibility some word of this interlude would reach the wrong ears. He was overdue to report to Sidling, and Sophie was managing famously with Kit. He really would be glad to be on his way once more, even on his way to Sidling at the Christmas season.

Sophie reached for the baby, and Vim passed him over without another word.

***

“He thinks I've been a good girl.” Sophie made sure Kit was resting comfortably in his cradle then went back to the task at hand, which was brushing out her hair at the end of the day.

Also coming to terms with Mr. Vim Charpentier's disturbing presence just a few doors down the corridor.

“I haven't been good, young Kit. I've been perfect. My conduct is held up to the young debs as exemplary. The fellows all know it's safe to escort me anywhere, my papa has been seen patting my cheek in public, and my mama is confident my portion of charity work will suffice for the entire family's good name.”

She paused with the brush and peered at the baby. “You know how tiresome it is to be good all the time.”

Kit sighed around his thumb. Sophie took it for a sigh of commiseration.

“Except I'm not perfect. I watch Mr. Charpentier's mouth when he speaks of the sun on the Caribbean waves being so bright it makes the eyes ache. He has a beautiful mouth and a gorgeous voice. It isn't all pomp and circumstance, like His Grace holding forth on the Catholic question. It's…”

She let go a sigh. She'd sighed a lot since closing her bedroom door. To her ears, those sighs were the sound of a grown woman admitting she wasn't nearly as done with wishes and dreams as she ought to be. “Vim's voice is warm. He has the knack of making me feel like I'm the only person who has ever listened to him. Like I'm the person to whom he must tell his stories.”

That was so fanciful, she fell silent. Not even a baby should be told of the shifting about going on in Sophie's middle, from a woman of common sense to a woman who, for the first time in her life, understood what it was to be smitten.

“And to think I wanted as much solitude as I could steal this Christmas.”

It had been wicked and daring and very bad of her not to go with her family directly out to Morelands. Every year she dutifully participated in the exodus to Kent for the holidays, and Sophie saw decades of Yule seasons spent with her aging parents, sharing fond reminiscences of nieces and nephews as they grew to adulthood.

“I want to be wicked, Kit. I want to crawl off my blankets and go exploring. I want to get into trouble, but I do not want to bring trouble to Mr. Charpentier.”

Vim looked to her like a man who'd dealt with more than his share of trouble, as if beneath all the kindness and humor in his marvelous blue eyes, there was a weariness of spirit, a burden on his heart. She wanted to ease that burden, and she wanted to do it not just with polite, ladylike, kind words, she wanted to offer him the comfort of her very body.

She should not be thinking of Mr. Charpentier and trouble in the same breath. Sophie knew so little about getting into trouble—much less getting into trouble without making trouble—that she lay awake for a long time, wondering just how a proper lady might go about it.

A proper lady and a wonderful, unexpected gentleman with a beautiful mouth, a gorgeous voice, and an even lovelier heart.

***

Vim had fallen into the luxurious bed, thinking sleep would follow immediately, and it did, only to depart a few hours later. The storm still raged outside, but his guest room was wonderfully cozy. There were several buckets of coal waiting to be added to the fire, the bed curtains were heavy enough to block out both cold and light, and the house was quiet in the way a solid structure could be even with a winter wind howling outside.

And yet, something woke him… a sound, a shift, something.

From down the hall he heard a faint, lilting melody. It came to Vim through the darkness, the tempo slow enough that a tired woman could walk the floor to it, a fussy baby in her arms.

He considered getting up, but there was no strident bawling from the child to pierce the lullaby. There was only darkness and warmth and a sweetness with the erotic edge to it men didn't speak of when considering a mother and baby.

He'd slept naked, a pleasure not always practical when traveling economically. And as Sophie's voice drifted to him through the darkness, he pushed the sheets aside and let his hand find its way to the burgeoning fullness of his cock.

He'd traveled too far and seen too much to feel guilt or awkwardness about a private moment like this. A slow, voluptuous pleasure claimed him as Sophie's voice died away in the warmth and darkness. It wasn't right or wrong, it made no difference in how Sophie would view him in the morning, but as pleasure inundated his body, Vim had to admit it was a solitary, even lonely, pleasure.

***

“Do all male children like being naked?”

Sophie posed the question as dispassionately as she could, but Kit was in rare spirits as Mr. Charpentier unswaddled him in the kitchen.

“No.” He lifted the child into his arms from the blankets spread on the worktable. “All males of any age like being naked, and I'm fairly certain it's true across species, as well. Test the water.”

He said things like that to her, naughty things, things her brothers probably thought and didn't say—though they might have when they were younger.

Sophie dipped her fingers into the small washtub on the table. “It's warm but not hot.”

“Then let the games begin.”

The games were to comprise Kit's first bath in Sophie's care, and entailed heating two buckets of water over the kitchen fire, lining the edge of a tub with towels, and mixing hot and cold water just so, to just such a depth, and assembling blankets and nappies and flannels and socks, as well as the mildest soap Sophie could borrow from her mother's private chambers.

Mr. Charpentier was in shirt, waistcoat, and breeches, his cuffs rolled back to his elbows. He'd warned Sophie that bathing a baby was best undertaken in old clothing, so she was in a comfortable dress of maroon velvet, her sleeves turned back, as well.

“In you go, young Kit.” He slowly lowered the baby into the tub, which provoked an immediate and deafening squeal of delight. Kit sat in the middle of the tub, smacking the water vigorously with both hands and crowing with glee.

“Told you it wasn't for the faint of heart.”

There was gruff humor in Mr. Charpentier's voice, the first humor Sophie had detected from him that morning. “Now what do we do?”

“We play.”

He lowered his hand into the water and used his thumb and middle finger to flick the baby's chest with water. The gleeful squealing stopped, and Kit stared at the large male hand that had produced such a startling new sensation.

“He wants you to do it again.”

“You do it.” Mr. Charpentier straightened and grabbed a cloth to dry his hand, the baby's gaze on him the entire time.

Sophie regarded the baby making a happy tempest in the middle of the washtub. A duke's daughter did not engage in tomfoolery… but she wasn't a duke's daughter at that moment. She was a woman with a baby to bathe.

“Kit.” She trailed a hand through the water. “You are having entirely too much fun in there. Perhaps it's time we got down to business.” She dribbled water down the child's chubby arm, and got heartily splashed as Kit expressed his approval of this new game. By damp fits and starts, Sophie got him bathed, got the entire front of her old dress wet, and only realized Mr. Charpentier was largely dry when the man handed her a clean blanket to wrap the wet, wiggling baby in.

“You were no help at all, Vim Charpentier. You left me stranded at sea.”

“You managed quite well with just your own oars, Sophie Windham. Kit looks to be considering a career in the Navy.” He tucked the blanket up over the child's damp head. “Watch he doesn't catch a chill now. Some people think bathing unhealthy, though I can't agree. At Kit's age, it's fun too.”

“But somehow, as older children, we get the idea a bath is not fun.” She used the blanket to pat gently at Kit's face and hands then laid him blanket and all on the worktable.

Vim stood back, watching her as she put a clean nappy on the baby, dodging little feet and hands as she worked. She'd had some practice with this through the night—more practice than any tired woman wanted.

“What's not fun,” Vim said, trailing a finger down the baby's cheek, “is being told what to do, whether it's a bath, sums, or Latin vocabulary. You're getting better at this.”

“You're distracting him, which helps a great deal. Is someone telling you what to do?” She didn't look at him as she posed the question. His mood had been a trifle distant, though he'd been perfectly polite since joining her in the kitchen more than an hour ago. Polite but preoccupied.

“This storm is telling me what to do. It's telling me I won't be making any progress toward my family seat today.”

She couldn't help it. She smiled at him, letting both relief and pleasure show plainly. “I was rather hoping you'd reach that conclusion.”

His answering smile appeared reluctant, lifting one corner of his mouth then working its way to the other. “But you weren't about to lecture or nag or bully me. You just fed me an enormous breakfast then let Master Kit work his wiles on me.” The smile faded. “I don't like to think of you here alone with him in this weather. What if you should need a doctor? What if you should burn your hand?”

“Worrying is seldom productive,” she said, quoting her mother and sounding—to her horror—exactly like Her Grace. She sat Kit on the table amid his blankets and started working a clean dress over his head.

Vim tidied up the little makeshift bath, hanging the now damp towels on nails in the rafters near the hearth. “You didn't worry every time you got up with Kit in the middle of the night?”

“How did you know we were awake?”

He shot her a peculiar look from across the kitchen then went back to hanging towels. “You have a pretty voice, Sophie.”

It made no sense, but his compliment had her blushing. She'd received compliments before, on her attire, her mare, her embroidery, but her voice wasn't something she'd purchased or made, it was part of her.

“My mother thought we should all learn an instrument,” she said. “I tried piano, but my next oldest brother is so astoundingly good at it, I put him to use as my accompanist from time to time. My whole family likes to sing, except my father. He cannot, as they say, carry a tune in a bucket.”