Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,94

be a marvelous place to hold a holiday reception.”

“It would take days to heat it.” But she had a point: when had his aunt and uncle stopped entertaining?

“Fill it with enough people, and it will heat easily enough. Who’s this?”

She stood before a full-length portrait of a big, blond fellow standing beside a pretty, powdered lady lounging in a ladder-backed chair.

“My grandfather. He never took to wearing powder or wigs, though he liked all the other finery. That is his first wife. My grandmother is in the next portrait down.”

Sophie moved along a few steps. “I see where you get your great good looks. These four are all of him?”

“With his various wives. He lived to a great old age and was expecting to get a passel of sons on them all.”

She studied the portrait, while Vim wondered what, exactly, constituted great good looks.

“I can see Rothgreb in him,” Sophie said, “about the eyes. They have a Viking quality to them, devil take the hindmost. Was your grandmother the only one to give him sons?”

“An heir and spare, and then years later, when the heir died of some wasting disease, my father as an afterthought. I think my father’s death was particularly hard on the old man.”

She moved to the last portrait of Vim’s grandfather. “He had you by then, though. You should have been some consolation.”

“I was not.” Vim shifted to stand beside her but focused on Kit, not the painting of his grandfather. “My father had a weak heart. His lordship was convinced, because I look like my father, I would be a similar disappointment.”

Sophie perused him up and down, her lips compressed in a considering line, then she gestured to the next portrait. “This is your father?”

“Christopher Charpentier, my sainted father.”

“He’s quite handsome, but I have to say, you look as much like your grandfather as you do your sire.”

“I do not.” Not one person had ever told him he looked like his grandfather.

She crossed her arms. “By the time you came along, his hair had likely gone white, but it was the exact shade of golden blond yours is now. As a younger man, his eyes were the exact shade of baby blue yours are too.”

“If I am the spit and image of him, I wonder why, when I told him I was leaving for a life at sea, he did nothing to stop me.”

She gave him another visual inspection. “Was this declaration made after your heart was broken?”

“Shall we move on? The older portraits are over here.”

Sophie crossed the room with him and took a seat beside him when he lowered himself to one of the padded benches between paintings.

“I never liked this room,” he said, shifting so Kit sat on his lap. “Never liked the sense the eyes of the past are upon me.”

“Some of the people in this room loved you, I should hope.” She reached over and loaned Kit her finger to wrestle into his mouth.

“And I loved them, but they’re dead all the same.” He paused to take a breath and marshal his composure. “It wasn’t my heart that was damaged so much as it was my pride, and on the occasion of a gathering attended by the entire neighborhood. A young lady made it dramatically apparent she preferred another, and I did not handle the situation well. In hindsight, I made far too much of the entire matter. Would you like to hold the baby?”

As gambits went to change the subject, it ought to have been foolproof, but Sophie shifted to look out over the room, taking her finger from Kit’s maw.

“He’s comfortable where he is, and if I’m dreading my leave-taking from him, you can’t be looking forward to losing him, either. Are you still in love with your young lady?”

“For God’s sake, Sophie.” He set the baby, blankets and all, in her lap and rose, pacing off a half-dozen feet. “I haven’t seen the woman in years, and she preferred another. No sane man would allow himself to hold on to tender feelings under such circumstances.”

“We’re not necessarily sane when we’re in love.” Her smile was wistful, as if recalling her own first love.

“Then I’m happy the condition has since not befallen me. Shall we go? I’m sure I heard the first bell for luncheon, and we don’t want Kit taking a chill.”

She looked peevish, as if she might argue with him, which was about what he deserved for being so short-tempered. Fortuitously, the baby started bouncing in