Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,62

in the face of ducal determination.

Like the reality that Vim was gone and Sophie would never see him again.

Tomorrow she’d tidy up Val’s room and set the bathing chamber to rights. She’d remove every possible piece of evidence indicating Vim had been in the house.

Just… not… yet.

She started mixing another batch of stollen, though she had to pause occasionally to swipe the stray tears from her cheeks.

***

“My dear, I’m afraid it’s gone.”

Essie Charpentier watched her husband rise slowly from where he’d knelt on the carpet. One foot on the floor, then while he braced himself, the second foot. A pause, then a hearty shove to gain him his feet, and another pause to recover from the effort.

“Perhaps it is simply misplaced,” she said as she’d said on an appalling number of other occasions. “Or maybe the servants have taken it downstairs for cleaning in anticipation of the holidays.”

He cast a glance at her, an indulgent glance laced with a little worry and a tinge of… pity. She hated the pity probably as much as he hated the ways she pitied him in recent years too.

“It was just an olive dish,” she said briskly. “We have several such, and the olives don’t taste any better or worse for being in an antique silver dish or a piece of the everyday.” She laced her arm through his. “It’s sunny today. I’m of a mind to visit the ancestors, if you’ll escort me?”

“Of course, my dear.” He patted her hand and led her from the family parlor where they’d stored various items of sentimental and commercial value for years—the heirloom parlor.

“Perhaps we should take to locking the doors of certain rooms,” Essie said. “You lock the billiards room when we’re not entertaining.”

“The gun cabinets are in there, my dear. I’m sure the dish will turn up, and it wouldn’t do to offend the staff by locking the place up like some medieval castle. Is there someone in particular you’d like to see?”

“Christopher, I think. We must tell him his son is coming for a visit.”

They made a slow, careful progress up the main stairs, a majestic cascade of oak whose grandeur was dimming in Essie’s eyes as her knees increasingly protested the effort of climbing it.

“We hope Wilhelm will grace us with his presence,” the viscount said, pausing at the top of the stairs. “There’s been no word, Essie, and he should have been here by now.”

She paused, as well, and surveyed the front hall below them. All was cheerfully laden with swags of pine. A wreath graced the inside of the front door, and a fat sprig of mistletoe wrapped with red ribbon was temporarily hanging from a coat rack in the corner.

“Kiss me, Rothgreb.”

He smiled down at her, a trace of his old devilment in his blue eyes. “Naughty girl.” But he bussed her cheek and patted her hand. “My lovely, naughty girl.”

“Vim will be here,” she said as they resumed their progress toward the portrait gallery. “He keeps his word.”

“He keeps his word, but his associations with Sidling are not cheerful, particularly not his associations with Sidling at Yuletide. Watch the carpet, my love.”

“His associations with Sidling are cheerful. He passed his early childhood here cheerfully enough.”

Rothgreb held the door to the portrait gallery open for her. Down the length of the room, some eighty feet, a fire was laid but not lit in a huge fieldstone hearth, and the cavernous space was chilly indeed.

“Shall I fetch you a shawl, Essie?”

He was not going to argue with her about Vim’s past, which was a small disappointment. Arguing warmed them both up.

At the rate they moved around the house lately, by the time he fetched the shawl, she’d be frozen to the spot she occupied. She smiled at him. “Bellow for Jack footman. Trotting around will keep him from freezing.”

“He won’t move any faster than I will, and you know it.” Nonetheless, Rothgreb strode off and could be heard yelling in the corridor. The man had a good set of lungs on him, always had, and no amount of years was going to take away from the broad shoulders favored by the Charpentier menfolk.

“He misses you,” Essie said to the portrait occupying the wall to the right. She let her eyes travel over blond hair, blue eyes, a teasing hint of a smile, and masculine features so attractive as to approach some standard of male beauty.

“Christopher was the best looking of us three boys,” Essie’s husband said, slipping his arm around