“Her oldest brother. Good fellow with a horse. Was in the cavalry all acrost Spain and at Waterloo.”
Sophie was making every bit as big a fuss over the second horse as she had the first. She held the baby up on the side of the horse’s good eye and spoke quietly to horse and baby both.
“Why did she name her tom cat Elizabeth?” It was a silly question, but some part of Vim wanted to know this detail.
“Ye’d have to ask her. It’s something Frenchified.”
She knew French, and she had a brother who’d made the rank of colonel—not an easy or inexpensive feat.
“Mr. Sharp-an-tee-air?”
Vim glanced down at the little man standing beside him. “Mr. Higgins?”
“I know Miss Sophie has took the nipper in, and that’s a sizeable task for any woman, much less one what hasn’t got any nippers of her own.”
Ah, the stable gnome was working up to a lecture. Sophie didn’t need to lecture Vim, she had minions assigned to the task. “She’s managing quite well, and it’s mostly common sense.”
“And lord knows, the girl has got common sense.” Higgins’s frown became more focused. “About most things, that is.”
“Spit it out, Higgins. Once she’s done petting that bedraggled cat, she’ll turn her attention on you and start ordering you to consume all those buns and refrain from shoveling snow and so on.”
“All I’m saying is her family sets great store by her, and they’d take it amiss did any mischief befall our Miss Sophie.”
“I’m coming to set great store by the lady too, Higgins. But for her, I’d be cooling my heels in some taproom, nothing to occupy me but watered ale, cards, and occasional trips to a privy as malodorous as it was cold.”
“Then you’ll be moving along here directly, won’t you, sir? Wouldn’t want the girl’s family to come to troublesome mis-conclusions, would we?”
Higgins’s rheumy blue eyes promised a world of retribution if Vim attempted to argue.
“Settle your feathers, Higgins. I stayed only at the lady’s express request in order to acquaint her with some basics regarding care and feeding of an infant. If you’re equipped to step in, please do, because I’m on my way as soon as the weather permits—tomorrow at first light, if at all possible.”
And he wanted to go. He just didn’t relish the idea of hours in a mail coach trying to slog its way through the drifts. Hours of cold, hours of the wheezing, coughing companionship of other travelers…
His gaze fell on Sophie where she was crouched in the aisle having some sort of conversation with the bedraggled little cat and the baby.
“Her hems will never come clean.”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until Higgins snorted quietly. “And she’ll never care a whit if they do, either. That is one smart bebby, that Kit. He’s made a good trade.”
“You didn’t think much of the mother?” For God’s sake, the girl had been only sixteen years old.
“She set her cap for young Harry, Joleen did, and damn the consequences. Their Graces turned Harry out, but they give him a character, see? He kept coming around here on the sly, meeting with Joleen and whispering in her ear, if you know what I mean. Last I heard, he was taking passage for Boston.”
Higgins meant a pregnant girl couldn’t get any more pregnant, so an enterprising and conscienceless young man would keep swiving her for his own pleasure.
“I seen Harry prowling around last week, that girl about shivering herself to death waiting for him in the garden. She’s run off to her Harry and left little Kit to shift for hisself.”
“He’s shifting quite well. I’m not sure a baby ever found any better care than Kit is getting.”
“Because Miss Sophie has a soft heart. Her family thinks she’s sensible, but she’s like Westhaven. They’re sensible because somebody in the family has to be sensible, but neither of ’em is as sensible as all that.”
Vim tried to translate what was and wasn’t being said.
“You’re saying sometimes one acts sensibly out of regard for one’s family, not because one finds it a naturally agreeable course.” And God help him, Vim could testify to the truth of that sentiment.
Higgins nodded. “That says it right enough. You’ll be leaving in the morning?”
“Come hell or high water, I intend to.”
Sophie was smiling at the baby, who was making a determined play for the cat’s nose. Vim expected the beast to issue the kind of reprimand children remembered long after the scratches had healed, but the cat instead walked away, all the more dignified for its missing parts.
“He must go terrorize mice,” Sophie said, rising with the child in her arms.
“You’re telling me that cat still mouses?” Vim asked, taking the baby from her in a maneuver that was beginning to feel automatic.
“Of course Pee Wee mouses.” Sophie turned a smile on him. “A few battle scars won’t slow a warrior like him down.”
“A name like Pee Wee might.”
She wrapped her hand into the crook of his elbow as they started across the alley. “Elizabeth gets more grief over his name than Pee Wee does.”
“And rightly so. Why on earth would you inflict a feminine name on a big, black tom cat?”
“I didn’t name him Elizabeth. I named him Bete Noir, after the French for black beast. Merriweather started calling him Betty Knorr after some actress, which was a tad too informal for such an animal, and hence he became Elizabeth. He answers to it now.”
Vim suppressed the twitching of his lips, because this explanation was delivered with a perfectly straight face. “I suppose all that counts is that the cat recognizes it. It isn’t as if the cats were going to comprehend the French.”
“It’s silly.” She paused inside the garden gate, her expression self-conscious.
He stopped with her on the path, cradling the baby against his chest and trying to fathom what she needed to hear at the moment. “To the cat it isn’t silly, Sophie. To him, your kindness and care are the difference between life and death.”
“He’s just a cat.” But she looked pleased with Vim’s observations.
“And this is just a baby. Come.” He took her gloved hand in his. “Kit has had his outing, and so have you. I was hoping the snow would stop, but it seems to be coming down harder again.”
She kept her hand in his and let him escort her back into the warmth and coziness of the kitchen. As short as the daylight was in December, between the child’s bath, the shoveling, and the excursion to the mews, the day was half gone.
Watching Sophie unswaddle the baby, Vim decided that was a good thing. This time tomorrow, he’d be across the river and headed for Kent, just as he’d promised Higgins.
Sophie hadn’t wanted Vim to see the collection of misfits she kept in the stables. She wasn’t ashamed of them by any means, but she was… protective. Each animal contributed somehow, to the best of its ability, but most people didn’t see that. They saw only the ridiculousness of a draft animal who turned to a one-ton blancmange at the sight of a whip, or a mouser who was hunting with half his weapons dulled by injury.
Vim hadn’t laughed.
She could not save every animal in the knacker’s yard, she couldn’t find a home for every cat yowling under the summer moon, but she could help those few in her care.
Vim finished getting out of his winter gear and peered down at the baby.
“I’d say stuff some nuncheon into his gullet and put him down for a nap.”
“I wanted to do some baking this afternoon,” Sophie said. “His nap would be a good time to do it.”
“His nap would be a good time for you to rest, Sophie Windham. He’ll keep you up half the night tonight too, you know, and I won’t be around tomorrow to spell you if you need forty winks.”
He gave her a fulsome look, as if willing her to acknowledge his impending departure.
“Then tomorrow Kit and I will practice napping at the same time. I boiled some apples this morning. Do you think he’d like to try them mashed into his porridge?”
Porridge had never disappeared more quickly, Sophie was sure of it, and it gave her a little dose of pleasure to think the apples had been her idea. While she fed the baby, Vim busied himself constructing a sort of sugar tit
