Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,120
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