Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,42

this stinking inn.” Valentine tossed gloves, hat, and scarf on the table as he spoke. “I’ve only seen a couple Guarneris, and by God they are beautiful. One was a viola, by the old master, but this is supposed to be by Bartolomeo Guiseppe Guarneri himself.”

“Guarneri sounds like a dessert.” St. Just passed his ale up to Val, who was making a circuit of the small parlor. “I favor good English apple tarts, myself.”

“It’s a violin,” Westhaven said. “Valentine, are you suggesting you met some instrument dealer in the stables?”

“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you the old man offered to take me to see this thing and even hinted it might be for sale.”

Westhaven kept his silence, because some things—like older brothers—were occasionally gratifyingly predictable.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Valentine,” St. Just said, “but wasn’t it you who was cursing and stomping about here last night because I suggested we wait one day to see what the weather was going to do?”

“I wasn’t cursing. Ellen frowns on it, and one needs to get out of the habit if one is going to have children underfoot.”

“Doesn’t exactly work that way,” Westhaven muttered. “I’m willing to tarry a day if you’re asking us to, Val. Devlin?”

“The horses can use the rest.”

Val looked momentarily nonplussed at having won his battle without firing a shot then dropped down onto a sofa. “So, Westhaven, are you saying children don’t inspire a man to stop cursing?”

“They most assuredly do not,” Westhaven said, rising. “His Grace and I are agreed on this, which is frightening of and by itself. Let me order some toddies, and we can discuss exactly how the arrival of children changes an otherwise happily married man’s vocabulary.”

Seven

“There are few consolations in my present state—do not piss on the mounting block, for God’s sake. How many times must I tell you?” Aethelbert Charpentier, Eighth Viscount Rothgreb, nudged his dog’s backside with the end of a stout oak cane. Talking to old Jock—not Jacques—was one of those consolations, and one could hardly indulge in it if the dog was off in a snit somewhere for having been too harshly reprimanded.

Jock lifted his head from giving the sight of his last indiscretion a good sniff and trotted obediently to the viscount’s side.

“As I was saying, there are few enough consolations in my life at present, you being one of them, such as you are, her ladyship’s predictability being another.”

The dog sneezed.

“Meaning no insult, old boy, but we’re neither of us what we used to be.”

Jock sidled over to the snow-dusted remains of a chrysanthemum and lifted his leg, his expression blasé while he heeded nature’s call.

“Piss on it, you say? Handy enough sentiment.” The viscount scanned the sky while he waited for the dog—nothing wrong with Jock’s bladder, no matter the canine was older in dog years than the viscount in human years.

“Nasty weather up toward Town,” the viscount remarked as they resumed their progress. “Must be why my nephew has yet to make an appearance. He cuts the holidays closer and closer in those years when he deigns to show up at all. Some people don’t know the meaning of family loyalty, even if they can be counted on not to toss up their accounts on her ladyship’s best carpets.”

If this slight reference to a previous lapse made any impression, Jock was not inclined to acknowledge it when the frosty ground was so full of interesting scents.

The trip to the stables seemed to take longer each season, but when a man felt the cold wheeze of eighty years breathing down his neck, he was grateful to be making the distance on his own two legs at any speed.

“Then again, perhaps Wilhelm has been detained in the North, or his life lost at sea. The boy can’t be bothered to write, but for his damned quarterly accountings.”

Jock stopped to water another bush—the dog’s abilities were still prodigious in some regards—and came quietly to heel as the viscount paused at the bottom of the swale upon which the Sidling stables sat in aging splendor.

“Noble hound, my ass,” Rothgreb said, stroking his hand over the dog’s head. There would be hell to pay for not putting on gloves before leaving the manor, but Essie had gone wandering again. With the weather threatening to turn miserable, retrieving her from the stables became urgent.

“Go find her ladyship,” Rothgreb said, moving one hand toward the stables. “Go find Essie, Jock.”

The beast bounded up the hill, ears flapping with an eagerness better