lovely rum punch, and listened to his younger brothers squabbling. It was a wonderful sound to a man who had only two younger brothers left.
“I say we wait another day.” Westhaven was getting quite ducal in his pronouncements, which was an understandable tactic, if poorly advised when dealing with their youngest brother.
“I say you’re full of shit,” Lord Valentine replied with a diffidence no doubt calculated to aggravate. “The snow isn’t that deep, we’ve already tarried here a day, and all we’ve seen is some flurries and a lot of low-hanging clouds. This is Sophie we’re talking about, need I remind you?”
“Sophie.” Westhaven pushed out of his wing chair and began to pace around the inn’s private parlor, making a credible impersonation of their mutual father, His Grace the Duke of Moreland. “Sophie, the paragon of probity. Sophie, the delight and comfort of our parents’ eyes. Sophie, the sensible. Sophie, named for wisdom herself. She isn’t clinging to a tree in some enormous snowdrift, her lips too frozen to call for help. She’s ensconced in Lady Chattell’s parlor, being plied with chocolate and marzipan.”
St. Just took another sip of his punch and exchanged a look with Val intended to limit the goading. Westhaven was worried. Worried enough to be counseling sense when sense wasn’t necessarily going to carry the day. As heir to the dukedom, he’d refined worrying to a high art, and his siblings all loved him for it.
Mostly.
“Sophie is sensible,” Val said, still affecting bored tones. “She’s sensible enough not to get caught when she’s visiting the Magdalene houses in the East End. She’s sensible enough to take in every stray animal that ever pissed in a back alley and to put the vagrant humans she finds there to work in the stables. She’s sensible enough to tat lace and embroider pillowcases while fomenting the rights of women with her pin money. The storm is reported to be worse in London, and I say we push on now.”
St. Just intervened before they started yelling in the ducal tradition. “Both of you have some punch. The spices are excellent, and it calms the humors. Seasonal cheer never hurt a fraternal congregation.”
Westhaven resumed his seat, running his hand through dark chestnut hair. They all shared height and green eyes, but St. Just and Val had darker hair. This plan to meet up in Cambridge had been Westhaven’s idea, and as usual with Westhaven’s plans, a sound notion. Val had been appraising some antique harpsichords in Peterborough, Westhaven lecturing at Cambridge, and St. Just traveling south from Yorkshire—and all of them had been cordially summoned by Her Grace to put in a holiday appearance at the ducal seat in Kent.
One could ignore a summons from His Grace. The duke would simply issue a louder summons or come deliver the next summons in person.
One ignored a summons from the duchess at risk of causing that dear lady disappointment, and Val and Westhaven were arguing over the sibling who, in all her twenty-some years, had likely caused Their Graces the least disappointment.
So far. Sophie was a different hairpin, though. She might not merit regular castigation like her brothers and sisters, but St. Just knew she puzzled her parents, and puzzlement was in some ways a more painful state of affairs than disappointment.
St. Just kept his features bland, as he’d learned to do when listening to half-drunk generals squabble over competing idiot plans while the sensible course lay in plain sight before them all, silently begging for notice.
“Valentine, you are agitating to push on in part because you are worried about matters at home in Oxford.” St. Just passed his youngest brother a steaming mug along with a shut-up-and-hear-me-out look. “Westhaven, you are concerned we’ll offend Sophie if we go to heroic measures to retrieve her from Town when she’s perfectly capable of managing competently under all situations—at least to appearances.”
He passed Westhaven a mug, and in deference to the man’s standing and sensibilities, a please-hear-me-out look.
But Val was never one to take orders just because it made sense to do so. “A new wife is not a
Westhaven sighed, took a sip of punch, and glanced over at Val. “It doesn’t get easier the longer you’re married. You still fret, more in fact, once the babies start coming.”
Val’s head cocked, as if he’d just recalled his brother was also his friend. “Well, as to that…” Val smiled at his punch. Baby Brother sported a devastating smile when he wanted to, but this expression was…
St. Just lifted his mug. “Congratulations, then. How’s Ellen faring?”
“She’s in fine spirits, in glowing good health, and I’m a wreck. I think she sent me off to Peterborough with something like relief in her eye.”
Westhaven was staring morosely at his grog. “Anna isn’t subtle about it anymore. She tells me to get on my horse and not come back until I’ve worked the fidgets out of us both. She’s quite glad to see me when I return, though. Quite glad.”
For Westhaven, that was the equivalent of singing a bawdy song in the common.
St. Just propped his mug on his stomach. “Emmie says I’m an old campaigner, and I get twitchy if I’m confined to headquarters too long. Winnie says I need to go on scouting patrol. The reunions are nice, though. You’re right about that.”
Val took a considering sip of his drink then speared St. Just with a look. “I wouldn’t know about those reunions, but I intend to find out soon. Dev, you are the only one of us experienced at managing a marching army, and I’m not in any fit condition to be making decisions, or I’d be on my way back to Oxfordshire right now.”
“Wouldn’t advise that,” Westhaven said, still looking glum. “Your wife will welcome you sweetly into her home and her bed, but you’ll know you didn’t quite follow orders—our wives are in sympathy with Her Grace—and they have their ways of expressing their…”
Both brothers chimed in, “Disappointment.”
A moment of thoughtful imbibing followed, after which St. Just went to the door, bellowed an order for another round of punch, then returned to the blazing fire.
“All right, then. It seems to me the clouds are hanging off to the south and west, but all the northbound and eastbound travelers are telling us the storm is serious business. Here’s what I propose…”
Lord Val and Lord Westhaven listened, and in the end they agreed. The grog was good, the advice was sound, and Sophie was, after all, their most sensible sister.
It wasn’t a mews, it was a menagerie.
As Sophie introduced Kit to the end of Goliath’s nose, Vim’s gaze scanned the interior of what should have been ducal stables. For some reason, Miss Sophie held sufficient sway over the household that she could command space in the barn for a little brindle milk cow with one horn, another hulking draft horse which looked to Vim to be blind in one eye, and a small cat missing one eye, part of an ear, and all of a front paw. Vim had no doubt if he inspected the rest of the premises, he’d find yet more strays and castoffs in her keeping.
“Kit likes Goliath,” Sophie said, taking the child’s tiny fingers and stroking them over the largest Roman nose in captivity. “But then, who would not love my precious, hmm?”
She leaned over and kissed the horse’s muzzle, a great loud smacker of a kiss that had the baby chortling with delight. Kit swung a fist toward the horse, but Sophie leaned away before the child could connect.
“Come meet wee Sampson, my other precious.” She moved off down the shed row as Higgins came shuffling up to Vim’s elbow.
“She’ll be in here half the morning, dotin’ on them buggers.”
“Where does she find them?”
Higgins hitched his britches up and frowned. “She just does. She come upon Sampson at the smithy when they was blinding him for work at the mill. Miss Sophie wouldn’t have none of that, no matter the colonel tried to explain to her a half-blind horse is worse than one with no sight at all.”
“A horse that size could turn the millstone handily.”
“Not if he’s got sight in one eye, he can’t. He’d fall down dizzy after an hour in the traces.”
“Who’s the colonel?”
