Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,1
will be returning.” He said it calmly, an observation about the weather, nothing more.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Voice down, madam, lest His Highness start to fretting again, hmm?” He turned his body to provide the woman a little privacy, his larger frame effectively blocking her from the rest of the room.
“Sir, you just said you aren’t sure his mother will be coming back. A trip to the necessary will hardly keep her until spring.” She hissed the words, suggesting she lacked a parent’s instinctive capacity for dissembling before children.
“The necessary is not in the direction of Piccadilly. She took off at as smart a pace as this footing will allow.”
“You must be mistaken.” Except a certain shift in the lady’s expression told him the mother’s behavior might not be entirely out of character.
“She’s a solid young woman, blonde, attired in a purple cloak?” The baby rooted on his shoulder. “I have a handkerchief in my pocket. Would you be so good as to extract it?”
Again he’d spoken calmly, babies being fiendishly perceptive even before they learned their first words. The lady was perceptive too. She stuck a hand into the pocket of his greatcoat and produced the handkerchief without further comment.
“Lay it on my shoulder.”
She had to go up on her toes to do that, which meant amid all the stink and filth of the common, Vim caught a whiff of something… lovely. A hint of late spring. Cool, sunny, sweet… pink-throated roses and soft climbing vines of honeysuckle.
She stepped back to watch him warily.
“I suspect his recent meal has left him a tad dys”—the baby burped loudly and wetly—“peptic.”
“My goodness.” She blinked at Vim’s shoulder, where the infant was now beaming toothlessly at all he surveyed. Vim shifted the child and retrieved the handkerchief, which had protected his greatcoat more or less from carrying the scent of infant digestion for the rest of the day.
He hoped.
“How long do you intend to wait for his mother?” The child swung a tiny hand and caught Vim’s nose.
“Joleen was to board the Portsmouth stage.” Another anxious visual sweep of the surrounds.
Vim took a step back so the lady might have a view out the window. He also disengaged his proboscis from the baby’s surprisingly strong grip.
“I was told the coaches are all putting up for the duration, madam. My own travel has been interrupted because of it.” The baby knocked Vim’s high-crowned beaver straight at the woman beside them. She caught it deftly in one hand. When Vim dipped his head, she positioned the hat back where it belonged.
“That is a naughty baby,” she said, eyeing the child.
“He’s a boy baby. They all have more energy than they know what to do with, until they sleep like the dead, restoring themselves for their next round of mischief.”
This recitation seemed to please the little fellow, for he smiled directly at Vim, a great drooling expression of benevolence disproportionate to his tiny size.
“I think Kit likes you.”
“He likes having food in his tummy and a warm place to cuddle, the same as the rest of us. You can linger here, but I honestly do not think the mother will return. May I have your coach brought round for you?” Though the pandemonium in the yard suggested it would be far simpler to escort the lady to her conveyance.
“I only brought the gig, and it’s right around the corner.” She reached for the baby, but Vim took half a step back.
“I am happy to carry him for you.”
“But he’s…” She fell silent, regarding the baby gurgling contentedly on Vim’s shoulder. “He does seem quite happy there.”
“And I am happy to enjoy his company, as well. If you’d lead the way?” He nodded toward the door to encourage her, because her eyes bore a hesitance, suggesting she knew better than to allow a strange man to accompany her down the street.
“I neglected to introduce myself,” Vim went on. “Wilhelm Charpentier, at your service.” He left off the title, as he usually did with strangers, but he did bow with the baby tucked against his chest. The child laughed, a hearty, merry baby-chuckle calculated to have Vim bobbing around the room for the pleasure of My Lord Baby until one or both of them succumbed to exhaustion.
“I’m Sophie Windham.” She dipped another curtsy while Vim cast around mentally for why the Windham name sounded vaguely familiar. “I should have known Joleen—his mama—was up to something when she took her valise to the necessary.”