to keep my wife safe and content. These creatures”—he gestured at Kit—“confound me entirely.”
“But the King’s English does not,” Sophie said before the breathing got out of hand. “Go ask if they have a cradle, and if they do, have it placed in my chamber.” She spun him by his prodigiously broad shoulders and gave the middle of his back a shove.
“St. Just or Westhaven will be along momentarily,” Vim said, rubbing noses with the baby. “They aren’t complete fools.”
“Do they think I’m going to have my wicked way with you right here in the common?” Sophie hated the exasperated note in her voice, hated the way Vim slowly turned his head to assess her, as if he wasn’t quite sure he recognized the shrew standing there, hands on her hips, hems soaked, hair a fright.
“Is it your courses?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My sisters grow… sensitive when their courses approach.” He went back to having his nose-duel with the baby, while Sophie fisted both hands and prayed for patience.
“I am traveling in the company of my three older brothers and the man with whom I violated every rule of polite society, as well as a baby whom I will have to give up when we reach Morelands, and all you can think is that my—”
He did not kiss her, though she hoped he might be considering it, even here, even with her brothers stomping around nearby. He regarded her gravely then passed her the baby.
“Because if it’s not your courses, then perhaps it’s all that rule violating we did that has you so overset. Or maybe it’s that we got caught violating those rules. I am willing to answer for my part of it, Sophie, duke’s daughter or not. I think your brothers know that.”
He glanced around then leaned in and brushed his nose against hers.
Leaving Sophie not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
“Lady Sophia sends her regrets. She’ll be taking a tray in her room.” Westhaven settled into a chair as he spoke, then reached across the table and appropriated a drink from his brother’s ale while Vim watched.
Lord Valentine slapped his brother’s wrist. “Which means we don’t have to take turns passing Beelzebub around while we pretend we’re having a civil meal. Is Sophie truly fatigued, or is she being female?”
“Can’t tell,” Westhaven said. “She’s probably worn out, worrying about the child. Valentine, if you value your fingers, you will put that roll back until we’ve said the blessing.”
Lord Valentine took a bite of the roll then set it back in the basket.
“Think of it as playing house,” Devlin St. Just—also the Earl of Rosecroft, though he apparently eschewed use of the title—suggested. “Westhaven gets to be the papa, Val is the baby, and I am the one who refuses to indulge in such inanity. For what we are about to receive, as well as for infants and sisters who travel fairly well, and snowstorms that hold off for one more freezing damned day, we’re grateful. Amen.”
Before the last syllable was out of St. Just’s mouth, Lord Val had retrieved his roll.
They ate in silence for a few moments, food disappearing as if it were indeed being inhaled. Vim figured it was some kind test too, and aimed his question at St. Just.
“To what do we attribute Goliath’s miraculous recovery? He was off when I tried to take him from Town yesterday, and today he’s dead sound.”
St. Just lifted his mug and peered into the contents. “Higgins explained that Goliath is a horse of particulars. Westhaven, did Valentine spit in my mug?”
Westhaven rolled his eyes as he glanced at first one brother then the other. “For God’s sake, nobody spat in your damned mug. Pass the butter and drop the other shoe. What manner of horse of particulars is Sophie’s great beast?”
“He does not like to travel too far from Sophie. He’ll tool around Town all day with Sophie at the ribbons. He’ll take her to Surrey, he’ll haul her the length and breadth of the Home Counties, but if he’s separated from his lady beyond a few miles, he affects a limp.”
“He affects a limp?” Vim picked up his mug and did not look too closely at the contents. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve never heard of.” Westhaven shot him a peevish look. “I’ve never heard of my sister, a proper, sensible woman, spending a week holed up with a strange man and allowing that man unspeakable liberties.”
Lord Val paused in the act of troweling butter on another roll. “Kissing isn’t unspeakable. We know the man slept in my bed, else he’d be dead by now.”
And thank God that Sophie hadn’t obliterated the evidence of their separate bedrooms.
“I have offered your sister the protection of my name,” Vim said. “More than once. She has declined that honor.”
“We know.” Lord Val put down his second roll uneaten. “This has us in a quandary. We ought to be taking you quite to task, but with Sophie acting so out of character, it’s hard to know how to go on. I’m for beating you on general principles. Westhaven wants a special license, and St. Just, as usual, is pretending a wise silence.”
“Not a wise silence,” St. Just said, picking up Lord Val’s roll and studying it. “I wonder how many cows you keep employed with this penchant you have for butter. You could write a symphony to the bovine.”
Lord Val snatched his roll back. “Admit it, St. Just, you’ve no more clue what’s to be done here than I do or Westhaven does.”
“Or I do.” The words were out of Vim’s mouth without his intention to speak them. But in for a penny… “I want Sophie to be happy. I do not know how to effect that result.”
A small silence spread at the table, a thoughtful and perhaps not unfriendly silence.
“We want her happy, as well,” Westhaven said, his glance taking in both brothers. He ran his finger around the rim of his mug twice clockwise then reversed direction. “When I wrested control of the finances from His Grace, things were in a quite a muddle—I hope I don’t have to tell you that bearing the Windham family tales would not be appreciated?”
In other words, it would earn him at least that beating Lord Val had referred to.
“I can be as discreet as my brother.”
“One suspected as much.” Another reversal of direction. “I gradually got the merchants sorted out, the businesses, the shipping trade, the properties, the domestic expenses, but the one glaring area that defied all my attempts at management was the pin money allocated for my mother and sisters.”
From Westhaven’s tone of voice, this had been more than a mere aggravation. Pin money by ducal standards for that many women could be in the tens of thousands of pounds annually.
“Her Grace likes to entertain,” Lord Val observed. “Monthlong house parties, shoots in the fall, a grand ball every spring. Gives one some sympathy for our dear papa.”
“And bear in mind,” St. Just said, “we have five sisters of marriageable age. Five. Most of whom are quite social, as well.”
“Dressing them alone was enough to send me to Bedlam,” Westhaven said. “I’d end up shouting at them, shouting at them that even a seven-year-old scullery maid knew not to overspend her allowance, but then Her Grace would look so disappointed.”
This was indeed a confession. Vim kept a respectful silence, wondering where the tale was going.
“Sophie does not overspend her pin money,” Westhaven said. “Not ever. She did not want to offend me, you see, but she saw I was far more overset to be shouting at my sisters than they were to be shouted at—His Grace is a shouter—and she intervened. She asked me to turn the ladies’ finances over to her, and a more grateful brother you never beheld. She passes the ledger back to me each quarter, the entries tidy and legible, the balances—may all the gods be thanked—positive. I don’t know how she does it; I haven’t the courage to ask.”
“I’m a grateful brother too,” Lord Valentine said after a short silence. “I got my year in Italy thanks to Sophie.” His lips quirked into a sheepish smile. “I play the piano rather a lot, though composition has my interest these days, as well. His Grace does not—did not—approve of the intensity of my interest in music but was unwilling to buy me my colors with both Bart and St. Just already on the Peninsula. I was climbing the walls.”
“I’m sorry I missed that,” St. Just said.
“You should be glad you missed it,” Lord Val replied. “Shouting doesn’t begin to describe the rows I had with
