Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,50

on, and then it will be nothing but mud on the lanes.”

“I will miss you.” She spoke as casually as she could, though the lump was back in her throat. “Kit and I will miss you.”

“I’ll miss you both, as well.”

She could not find the resolve to view that as positive. As tired as she was, as bleak as the evening’s discourse had been, she couldn’t view much at all as positive.

She was certain of one thing, though: when next Christmas came around, as it inevitably would, she wasn’t going to be making any fool wishes about falling in love and living happily ever after.

***

“It’s late.” Valentine said, toeing off his boots. “Can’t you write letters some other night?”

Westhaven didn’t look up immediately, but finished whatever profundity he was penning at the desk and then shot Val a look. “Have you considered that for our parents, seeing all three of us married in little over a year must be a little like losing us?”

Val had long since given up trying to figure out the labyrinthine corridors of his brother’s mind. It was enough to conclude the man was quietly, sometimes very quietly, brilliant, and prevaricating with him would serve no purpose.

“It felt like I was losing you when you married Anna. There I was, happily quartered with both of my brothers for once, safe from the ducal eye, well supplied with whatever treats and blandishments a bachelor might desire, your excellent Broadwood grand available for my constant delectation, and then all of a sudden, you’re rusticating with your dear wife in Surrey, and Dev has gone clear to Yorkshire to brood. If seeing him off to the Peninsula and then Waterloo didn’t feel like losing him, watching him plod north to Yorkshire certainly did.”

Westhaven stared at his letter for a moment then sanded it. “You are saying you missed us.”

“Probably trying not to say it. Next you’ll have me admitting I miss our sisters.”

Westhaven, damn him, did not accept the comment as a flippant aside.

“Your wife will help with that.”

“Ellen? They aren’t her sisters.” And now that the topic of missing people had been raised, Val felt a low, lonely ache for his recently acquired wife.

“She’ll correspond with them, she’ll make you go visit, and she’ll invite them to visit. You’re going to be a papa, which means you’ll have offspring to show off. Might even get Their Graces to make a progress out to Oxfordshire.”

“Do I want them to?”

Westhaven’s version of a smile appeared, a little turning up at the corners of his mouth, accompanied by a softening of his gaze. That smile had been a great deal more in evidence since the man had taken a wife.

“You want them to visit at least once,” Westhaven said, pushing back in his chair and crossing his long legs at the ankle. “You want the memory of His Grace sizing up your entire operation in a sentence or two. You want to hear Her Grace’s voice in the breakfast room as you come in from your stables. You want to see how your wife can handle your parents without so much as raising her voice. You want to see Her Grace cry when she holds your firstborn and see His Grace pass her the ducal hanky while he swears at nothing in particular and tries not to look anxious.”

“The ducal hanky?” Val had to smile. “I knew about the strawberry leaves and the coat of arms, but a hanky?”

“All right, call it the marital hanky. I’m sure you have one.”

“Two on my person at all times, at least. When I was first married, I wondered if women were simply much more prone to crying and our sisters an aberration in that regard. They don’t cry, that I’ve noticed.”

“They cry.” Westhaven’s smile faded.

“You are fretting about Maggie. It’s thankless, that. She’ll come calling with a copy of the financial pages in her hand, and every time you try to turn the conversation to a handsome single fellow who doesn’t want to be leg-shackled to a simpering twit from the schoolroom, Mags will start nattering on about some shipping venture.”

“I listen when she natters on, I hope you do likewise. I strongly suspect Worth Kettering listens to her, as well.”

“Kettering has no sisters. I don’t mind giving him the loan of one of ours.”

Westhaven was quiet for a moment, sealing up his letter, and replacing the cork in the inkwell, but Westhaven’s silences were always the considering sort, so Val kept his peace,