fell. Bart caught the horse before it could go thundering back to the stables without me. Dev sneaked a sewing kit down the stables so I could repair the damage before anyone was the wiser.”
She did not see him shifting, but one moment he was sitting placidly on the floor next to the cradle, his knees drawn up, his hands linked around them. The next, he’d moved a few inches so his shoulder pressed against Sophie’s thigh.
“Just when I thought I was recovering from Bart’s death, I realized Victor wasn’t going to get better. Victor sensed it before we did, but he kept this unhappy truth to himself, letting each of us accept it at our own pace. My father never quite got around to acknowledging that his son would die, and if my mother did, she wasn’t about to contradict her husband.”
“Was it a wasting disease?”
“Consumption.”
With just her fingers, she stroked his hair. His queue had come loose—it often did around Kit—and Sophie felt an ache in her middle to think she wouldn’t have another night like this to speak quietly with him, to feast her eyes on his golden splendor, to hear his voice coaxing confidences from her.
“Bloody miserable way to go.” He tilted his head so his temple rested on her leg. “He fought it, I’m guessing.”
“He fought so hard… not to live exactly, but to keep us from seeing how awful it was, struggling for breath, not being free to laugh lest it mean he started coughing, not being free to run, to ride, to do anything really. I read to him by the hour.”
“What was he like as a younger man?”
“Full of the devil.” Sophie traced the shape of Vim’s ear, a delicate, curious part of man’s body she’d never considered before. “Victor got my father’s charm and my mother’s ability to smooth over an awkward moment. He was handsome—all my brothers have the audacity to be gorgeous men—urbane, witty, graceful on the dance floor and dashing in the saddle. Victor was…”
It hurt to recall all that Victor had been. It hurt awfully.
“And then he was ill,” Vim said. He turned and rose up on his knees, slipping his arms around Sophie’s waist. “He’s the one who died at the holidays?”
She nodded, the lump in her throat making words too difficult. Vim’s hand settled on her hair, gently pushing Sophie’s forehead to his shoulder.
“Cry, Sophie. When it hurts this badly, a woman needs to cry.”
She’d cried. She’d cried buckets every time she’d left Victor’s room because he was feigning sleep just to get rid of her. She’d cried after she chased the damned leeches from his bedside, as if bleeding was going to do anything in the face of consumption. She’d cried when she heard her father railing at Victor to quit malingering and get the hell out of that damned bed. She’d cried until she wished she couldn’t cry any more ever again.
“I never cried where Victor could catch me at it.”
“You never cried where anybody could catch you at it.” His hand made slow circles on her back; his chin rested against her hair. The simple comfort of it, the acceptance, was reason enough to start crying all over again.
“Men don’t cry.” What this had to do with losing her brothers, Sophie didn’t know. Another one of life’s injustices, she supposed.
“Have you asked the brother who came home from war about that?”
“Devlin doesn’t like to speak of his years of command.” She lifted her head. “I suppose I could ask him now—he’s doing better since he married.”
And she wished she hadn’t used that word—married.
“Ask him. Men have no corner on dignity. Women aren’t the only ones who cry, but I suspect fatigue has lowered your defenses, Sophie Windham. Get you to bed, and I’ll wait for this naughty boy to fall asleep.”
He wasn’t going to come to bed with her, and Sophie wasn’t going to beg him. She instead went about her routine as if he weren’t there by her rocking chair, the firelight gilding his hair and shadowing the planes and hollows of his face. She used her tooth powder behind the privacy screen, traded her house dress for a quilted dressing gown, and took her hair down.
“I don’t suppose the coaches will be running in the morning,” she observed as she took the brush to her hair.
“Likely not. I’ll hire a stout beast and make what progress I can toward Kent. We’re bound to get some melting once the storm moves