Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,84
pistols if the truth should reach him.”
“I don’t think so.” Val kept to his seat and rearranged the cutlery on his empty plate. “I’ve come to realize His Grace picks up a lot more than we thought he did, and he chooses to overlook it.”
“Perhaps.” St. Just shifted in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankle. “That leaves us only with Her Grace to worry about.”
Westhaven rose from poking up the fire and regarded his brothers’ unhappy expressions. “’Tis the season, you lot. Cheer up. At least the man can change a dirty nappy. If he and Sophie have anticipated their vows, he’ll need to be handy in the nursery. Now, shall I beat you at cribbage seriatim or both at the same time?”
“And what if there are to be no vows?” St. Just asked.
Valentine answered as he crossed his knife and fork very precisely across his plate. “Then he’ll need to learn how to disappear from Sophie’s life and never show his miserable face in the shire again. We won’t have him trifling with her.”
Westhaven resumed his place at the table.
“But his family seat is in Kent,” St. Just said. “He can’t very well avoid that for the rest of his life, particularly not after he inherits.”
Westhaven smiled, not a particularly pleasant smile. “Exactly so. Valentine, fetch the cards; St. Just, we’ll need decent libation. As I see it, we really don’t have very many options.”
Fourteen
A quiet knock sounded on Sophie’s door, no doubt one of her infernal, well-meaning brothers come to check on her.
Come to make sure she hadn’t knotted her sheets and eloped with a stable hand to dance on café tables in Paris.
She opened the door and stepped back.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be awake.” Vim didn’t come into the room, just looked her up and down from where he stood in the drafty corridor.
“Come in, please. We’re letting in the cold.”
He advanced exactly three steps inside the door and still made no move to touch her. “I’ve come to spell you with Kit. I can take him tonight, and you can get some rest.”
And wasn’t that just fine? Vim would come for the baby but not to see how she fared or to speak with her privately.
“I’ll let you take him. I must accustom myself to being without him, mustn’t I?”
“Not necessarily.” He shifted half a step as Sophie closed the door behind him. “You can raise that child, Sophie. You’re a duke’s daughter, and your reputation has no doubt been spotless until now. Your family is of sufficient consequence you could take in a half-dozen children and nobody would take it amiss.”
“You’re wrong.” She rummaged in her traveling bag for some clean nappies and a rag. “They would say: Like father, like daughter. They would say: Like brother, like sister.”
“What does that mean?”
“Anna and Westhaven anticipated their vows, as did St. Just and Emmie. The proof is in their nurseries. I expect Val and Ellen did, as well, but time will tell. His Grace raised two bastards in the Moreland Miscellany, though I love my brother and sister dearly. I’m even named for the royal princess whom all believe to have whelped a bastard, though nobody will say it in public.”
“Sophie, what’s wrong?”
Now, he’d moved. He’d crossed the room silently to stand at her elbow. The bergamot scent of him, the Vim scent of him, tickled her nose.
“I’m tired,” she said, shifting away to sink onto the raised hearth of her small fireplace. “Seeing my brothers is wonderful, but under the circumstances…”
He lowered himself to sit beside her. “Under the circumstances, I’ve ruined your holiday.”
“Christmas is not my favorite time of year.”
“Mine either, and hasn’t been since a certain holiday gathering almost half my lifetime ago. I expect your parents will acquaint you with the details if your brothers haven’t already.”
This was news. She lifted her head to peer at him. “Is this why you dread coming to Kent? There is some scandal in your past?”
“My sisters were the victims of scandal, though I started the tradition well before they did, and I was not exactly a victim. I was a fool.”
“Soph?” Valentine’s voice called softly from the corridor. A moment later, a knock sounded on the door, and a moment after that, Val pushed the door open. Slowly—slowly enough she might have hastened to an innocent posture if she’d been, say, kissing the breath out of her guest. “Is the prodigy asleep yet?”