Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish

“Men.”

His lips quirked, a fleeting hint of his smile. “Yes, men. The host made a joke of my outburst, said half the shire was going to go into mourning because Tony had taken my intended out of consideration, said young men were prone to such overreactions as mine, and with a few more cups of punch, I’d likely be falling in love with mine host’s best milk cow. The man was and is well respected, and the others were all too happy to follow his lead. They ended up toasting His Grace’s milk cow before I was hustled out of the room by three of my burlier neighbors.”

Oh, my goodness. “His Grace?” There were other dukes in Kent, several, in fact.

“Your father, Sophie Windham, His Grace, the Duke of Moreland. Your father was the one who heaped such ridicule and scorn on my head, made a laughingstock of me before my peers, and saw to it an engagement undertaken in bad faith obliterated one made in good faith. I’ve crossed paths with him since in Town, and it’s almost a greater insult that he treats me with great good cheer, as if a defining moment in my life meant nothing at all in his.”

Sophie felt physically ill. Her father, particularly as a younger man, had been capable of callous, calculating behavior but this crossed a line to outright meanness.

“You never married?”

He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle. “I’m English, Sophie. I always envisioned myself with an English bride to go with my English title and my English family, and yet, I’ve spent precious little of my adult life in England until recently. Then too, I was content to dwell in Cumbria when I had to be somewhere in the realm, but that option has been precluded now, as well.”

Sophie blinked in the bright sunshine, hurting for him and feeling a hopelessness close around her. Not only had Vim chosen to leave the area never to dwell here again, her own father had been the author of his difficulties.

“Sophie, are you ready to go?”

How long Westhaven had been standing there, Sophie did not know. Vim got to his feet and extended a hand to Sophie. “I’ll walk you to the livery.”

When she put her hand in his, he bowed over it then wrapped her fingers over his arm, as if they were strangers promenading in some drawing room.

“Looks like we might get yet more snow,” Westhaven remarked.

Neither Sophie nor Vim replied.

Eighteen

Vim boosted Sophie onto her horse, arranged her habit over her boots, and stepped back.

“Sindal, good day.” Westhaven touched his hat brim and urged his horse forward, then checked the animal after a half-dozen steps and brought it around to face Vim. “Might we see you at Her Grace’s Christmas gathering?”

Vim shook his head, wondering if the man had asked the question as a taunt, though Westhaven’s expression suggested it had merely been a polite query. Rather than elaborate on his refusal, Vim turned to make his farewell to the second woman to cause him to associate Kent at Yuletide with heartbreak.

“Lady Sophia, good day. And if I don’t see you before I depart on my next journey, I wish you a pleasant remainder to the holidays.”

She nodded, raised her chin, fixed her gaze on her brother’s retreating back, and tapped her heel against the mare’s side.

Vim tortured himself by watching their horses canter down the lane, the thud of hooves on the frozen ground resonating with the ache in his chest. Her silence told him more plainly than words he was watching her ride out of his life.

As loyal as Sophie was to her family, there was no way she’d plight her troth to a man who’d given such an unflattering recitation regarding His Grace, and no way Vim would make the attempt to persuade her at this point, in any case.

“So you’re still bungling about with my sister’s affections?”

Valentine Windham, coat open, mouth compressed into a flat line, sidled up to Vim outside the livery.

“The lady has made her wishes known. I am merely respecting them.”

Windham studied him, and not for the first time, Vim had the sense that this was the brother everybody made the mistake of underestimating. In some ways—his utter independence, his highly individual humor, his outspokenness, his virtuosic shifts of mood—this Windham son put Vim most in mind of the old duke.

“You are being an ass.” Windham hooked his elbow through Vim’s as if they were drinking companions. “Humor me, Sindal. If I spend another minute wrestling with that monster at the church, I will for the first time in my life consider tuning a keyboard instrument with a splitting ax.”

Vim let himself be walked back toward the bench, mostly because the prospect of returning to Sidling and the plethora of female relations about to descend was unappealing in the extreme. Then too, Val Windham adored his pianos, suggesting the man wasn’t going to do anything foolish—like, for example, obliging Vim’s inclination to engage in a rousing bout of fisticuffs—if it might damage his hands.

“On second thought”—Windham switched directions—“let’s drop in for a tot of grog.”

They appropriated the snug at the local watering hole, steaming mugs of rum punch in their hands before Windham spoke again.

“You sip your drink, and I will violate a sibling confidence.”

“I don’t want you violating Sophie’s confidences,” Vim said, bristling at the very notion.

Windham’s lips quirked. “Oh, very well, then. I won’t tell you she screams like a savage if you put a frog in her bed. I was actually going to pass along a little something told me by an entirely different sister, one not even remotely smitten with you.”

“Windham, are you capable of adult conversation? For the sake of your wedded wife, one hopes you are, and I do appreciate the drink. Nonetheless, I am expecting a great lot of family this afternoon at Sidling, and charming though your company is, I have obligations elsewhere.”

Windham lifted his mug in a little salute. “Duly noted. Now shut up and listen.”

Vim took a sip of his drink, lest by some detail he betray that he was almost enjoying Windham’s company. The man had the look of his sister around the eyes and in the set of his chin.

“While Westhaven was haring about tidying up the family business affairs, and St. Just was off subduing the French, it befell me to escort my five sisters to every God’s blessed function for years on end. I was in demand for my ability to be a charming escort, so thoroughly did my sisters hone this talent on my part.”

“I am in transports to hear it. Alas, I am not in need of an escort.”

“You are in need of a sound thrashing, but St. Just has said such an approach lacks subtlety. My point is that I know my sisters in some ways better than my brothers do.” Windham studied his mug, a half smile playing about his lips. “They talk to me.”

“Then at least you serve some purpose other than to delight your tailor with your excellent turnout.”

“I delight my wife even in the absence of any raiment whatsoever.”

“For God’s sake, Windham—”

“My sisters talk to me,” Windham resumed, “and as a male, I am always torn by the question: why are they telling me such things? Am I supposed to offer to thrash a fellow or lecture a shopkeeper, or am I merely to listen and make sympathetic noises?”

“Your capacity for making noise is documented by all and sundry.”

Green eyes without a hint of humor narrowed on Vim. “Do not insult my music, Sindal.”

“I wasn’t. I was insulting your talent for roundaboutation.”

“Oh. Quite. In any case, I’ve concluded that in the instant case, I am not to offer to do something nor to make sympathetic noises. I am to act. Don’t neglect your drink.”

“At the moment, it would serve me best emptied over your head.”

The half smile was back, and thus Vim didn’t see the verbal blow coming. “Sophie thinks you were offering