Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (31 page)

When he hung over her, panting and sated, when her fingernails had left an imprint on his backside, he lifted his head to peer around the room. “You really must stop accosting me like this, Sophie. I'm going to have to insist on a New Year's wedding, lest our next child be born prematurely.”

“New Year's is a lovely holiday—or Twelfth Night.” She sounded so satisfied, Vim had to smile.

“Stay put. I'm going to hold you to a date, my lady, if I have to be found sharing a bed with you to do it.” He eased from her body, knowing her eyes would be on him as he climbed from beneath the covers.

When he came back to the bed as naked as God had made him, his intended had considerately obeyed him—for once—and remained on her back, a rosy flush fading from her cheeks.

“You are tired,” he observed, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I do believe you were dozing during Vicar's sermon too.”

“My eyes were closed the better to revere the wisdom he was imparting. Do not tickle me, else I shall have to seek revenge on you.”

He swabbed delicately at her intimate parts, wishing he'd lit more candles. “I love it when you seek revenge, and did I hear you mention that you must wait ten minutes while I regain my manly vigor? Surely that was an exaggeration intended to provoke me.”

“To inspire you.” She held the covers up so he could rejoin her in the bed.

“You're going to love the place in Surrey, Sophie. We won't be far from Westhaven, but if he presumes to call before February, I'm going to sign his blasted sweet shop back over to him.”

Vim would not allow her to miss her brothers. It was badly done of them to neglect her, but now she had a husband who knew all about traveling the realm, though of course he and Sophie would make Sidling their base.

“Hold me, please.” She pulled his arm around her middle to emphasize her point, and Vim had to wonder if any pleasure on earth compared with cuddling with his very own Sophie.

“Will you fall asleep on me now, Miss Windham?”

“No, but I will avail myself of this fifteen-minute interval to speak with you privately.”

“Five minutes.” He palmed her breasts—her marvelously sensitive breasts—and heard her sigh with the pleasure of it.

He was not alarmed that she had something on her mind to discuss. When she'd accepted his heart into her keeping, Sophie Windham had earned his trust, as well—but he was curious.

“Why do we need privacy, my love?” He levered up on his elbow to watch as a predictable softness came over her features at the endearment. He used it with shameless frequency for his own pleasure, but also for hers.

“I have some questions for you.”

Serious, indeed. He brushed her hair back from her forehead with his thumb. “I will answer to the best of my ability.”

“You know about changing nappies.”

“I do.”

“You know about feeding babies.”

“Generally, yes.”

“You know about bathing them.”

“It isn't complicated.”

She fell silent, and Vim's curiosity grew when Sophie rolled to her back to regard him almost solemnly. “I asked Papa to procure us a special license.”

He'd wondered why the banns hadn't been cried but hadn't questioned Sophie's decision. “I assumed that was to allow your brothers to attend the ceremony.”

“Them? Yes, I suppose.”

She was in a quiet, Sophie-style taking over something, so he slid his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “Tell me, my love. If I can explain my youthful blunders to you over a glass of eggnog, then you can confide to me whatever is bothering you.”

She ducked her face against his shoulder. “Do you know the signs a woman is carrying?”

He tried to view it as a mere question, a factual inquiry. “Her menses likely cease, for one thing.”

Sophie took Vim's hand and settled it over the wonderful fullness of her breast then shifted, arching into his touch. “What else?”

He thought back to his stepmother's confinements, to what he'd learned on his travels. “From the outset, she might be tired at odd times,” he said slowly. “Her breasts might be tender, and she might have a need to visit the necessary more often than usual.”

She tucked her face against his chest and hooked her leg over his hips. “You are a very observant man, Mr. Charpentier.”

With a jolt of something like alarm—but not simply alarm—Vim thought back to Sophie's dozing in church, her marvelously sensitive breasts, her abrupt departure from the room when they'd first gathered for dinner.

“And,” he said slowly, “some women are a bit queasy in the early weeks.”

She moved his hand, bringing it to her mouth to kiss his knuckles, then settling it low on her abdomen, over her womb. “A New Year's wedding will serve quite nicely if we schedule it for the middle of the day. I'm told the queasiness passes in a few weeks, beloved.”

To Vim's ears, there was a peculiar, awed quality to that single, soft endearment.

The feeling that came over him then was indescribable. Profound peace, profound awe, and profound gratitude coalesced into something so transcendent as to make “love”—even mad, passionate love—an inadequate description.

“If you are happy about this, Sophie, one tenth as happy about it as I am, then this will have been the best Christmas season anybody ever had, anywhere, at any time. I vow this to you as the father of your children, your affianced husband, and the man who loves you with his whole heart.”

She cupped his jaw with her hand and blinded him with her smile. “The best Christmas,” she said. “The best anybody has ever had, anywhere, at any time, until
our
Christmas, with our children, next year.”

It did not take Vim five minutes to commence celebrating their impending good fortune—it did not take him one minute, in fact. And Sophie was right: their family's ensuing Christmases were the best anybody ever had, anywhere, at any time.

“My best advice is to give up playing the piano.”

Lord Valentine Windham neither moved nor changed his expression when he heard his friend—a skilled and experienced physician—pronounce sentence. Being the youngest of five boys and named Valentine—for God's sake—had given him fast reflexes, abundant muscle, and an enviable poker face. Being called the baby boy any time he'd shown the least tender sentiment had fired his will to the strength of iron and given him the ability to withstand almost any blow without flinching.

But this… This was diabolical, this demand David made of him. To give up the one mistress Val loved, the one place he was happy and competent. To give up the home he'd forged for his soul despite his ducal father's ridicule, his mother's anxiety, and his siblings' inability to understand what music had become to him.

He closed his eyes and drew breath into his lungs by act of will. “For how long am I to give up my music?”

Silence, until Val opened his eyes and glanced down at where his left hand, aching and swollen, lay uselessly on his thigh.

David sat beside him, making a polite pretense of surveying the surrounding paddocks and fields. “You are possibly done with music for the rest of your life, my friend. The hand might heal but only if you rest it until you're ready to scream with frustration. Not just days, not just weeks, and by then you will have lost some of the dexterity you hone so keenly now. If you try too hard or too soon to regain it, you'll make the hand worse than ever.”

“Months?” One month was forever when a man wanted only to do the single thing denied him.

“At least. And as long as I'm cheering you up, you need to watch for the condition to arise in the other hand. If you catch it early, it might need less extensive treatment.”

“Both hands?” Val closed his eyes again and hunched in on himself, though the urge to kick the stone wall where they sat—hard, repeatedly, like a man beset with murderous frustration—was nigh overwhelming.

“It's possible both hands will be affected,” David went on. “Your left hand is more likely in worse condition because of the untreated fracture you suffered as a small boy. You're right-handed, so it's also possible the right hand is stronger out of habit.”

Val roused himself to gather as many facts from David as he could. “Is the left weak, then?”

“Not weak, so much.” David, Viscount Fairly, pursed his lips. “It seems to me you have something like gout or rheumatism in your hand. It's inflamed, swollen, and painful without apparent cause. The test will be if you rest it and see improvement. That is not the signal to resume spending all hours on the piano bench, Valentine.”

“It's the signal to what? All I do is spend hours on the piano bench and occasionally escort my sisters about Town.”

“It's the signal you're dealing with a simple inflammation from overuse, old son.” David slid a hand to Val's nape and shook him gently. “Many people lead happy, productive lives without gluing their arses to the piano bench for twenty hours a day. Kiss some pretty girls; sniff a few roses; go see the Lakes.”

Val shoved off the wall, using only his right hand for balance. “I know you mean well, but I don't
want
to do anything but play the piano.”

“And I know what you want.” David hopped down to fall in step beside Val. “What you want has gotten you a hand that can't hold a teacup, and while that's not fair and it's not right, it's also not yet permanent.”

“I'm whining.” Val stopped and gazed toward the manor house where David's viscountess was no doubt tucking in their infant daughter for the evening. “I should be thanking you for bothering with me.”

“I am flattered to be of service. And you are not to let some idiot surgeon talk you into bleeding it.”

“You're sure?”

“I am absolutely sure of that. No bleeding, no blisters, no surgery, and no peculiar nostrums. You tend it as you would any other inflammation.”

“Which would mean?” Val forced himself to ask. But what would it matter, really? He might get the use of his hand back in a year, but how much conditioning and skill would he have lost by then? He loved his mistress—his muse—but she was jealous and unforgiving as hell.

“Rest,” David said sternly as they approached the house. “Cold soaks, willow bark tea by the bucket, and at all costs, avoid the laudanum. If you can find a position where the hand is comfortable, you might consider sleeping with it splinted like that. Massage, if you can stand it.”

“As if I had some tired old man's ailment. You're sure about the laudanum? It's the only thing that lets me keep playing.”

“Laudanum lets you continue to aggravate it,” David shot back. “It masks the pain, it cures nothing, and it can become addictive.”

A beat of silence went by. Val nodded once, as much of an admission as he would make.

“Christ.” David stopped in his tracks. “How long have you been using it?”

“Off and on for months. Not regularly. What it gives in ability to keep playing, it takes away in ability to focus on what I'm creating. The pain goes away, but so does both manual and mental dexterity. And I can still see my hand is swollen and the wrong color.”

“Get rid of the poppy. It has a place, but I don't recommend it for you.”

“I comprehend.”

“You think your heart's breaking,” David said, “but you still have that hand, Valentine, and you can do many, many things with it. If you treat it right now, someday you might be able to make music with it again.”

“Is there anything you're not telling me?” Val asked, his tone flat.

“Well, yes,” David replied as they gained the back terraces of the manor house. “There's another possibility regarding the onset of the symptoms.”

“More good news?”

“Perhaps.” David met his gaze steadily, which was slightly disconcerting. In addition to height and blond good looks, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, had one blue eye and one green eye. “With a situation like this, where there is no immediate trauma, no exposure to disease, no clear cause for the symptoms, it can be beneficial to look at other aspects of well-being.”

“In the King's English, David, please.” Much more of David's learned medical prosing on, and Val was going to break a laudanum bottle over his friend's head.

“Sickness can originate in the emotions,” David said quietly. “The term ‘broken heart' can be literal, and you did say the sensations began just after you buried your brother Victor.”

“As we were burying Victor,” Val corrected him, not wanting to think of the pain he'd felt as he scooped up a symbolic fistful of cold earth to toss on Victor's coffin. “What in the hell does that have to do with whether I can ever again thunder away at Herr Beethoven's latest sonata?”

“That is for you to puzzle out, as you'll have ample time to ponder on it, won't you?”

“Suppose I will at that.”

Val felt David's arm land across his shoulders and made no move to shrug it off, though the last thing he wanted was pity. The numbness in his hand was apparently spreading to the rest of him—just not quickly enough.

***

“You seem to be thriving here, Cousin.”

“I am quite comfortable.” Ellen FitzEngle smiled at Frederick Markham, Baron Roxbury, with determined
pleasantness
. The last thing she needed was to admit vulnerability to him or to let him see he had any impact on her existence at all. She smoothed her hair back with a steady hand and leveled a guileless gaze at her guest, enemy, and de facto landlord.

“Hmm.” Frederick glanced around the tidy little cottage, a condescending smile implying enormous satisfaction at Ellen's comedown in the world. “Not quite like Roxbury House, is it? Nor in a league with Roxbury Hall.”

“But manageable for a widow of limited means. Would you like more tea?”

“'Fraid I can't stay.” Frederick rose, his body at twenty-two still giving the impression of not having grown into his arms and legs, despite expensive clothing and fashionable dark curls. She knew he fancied himself something of a Corinthian, paid punctilious attention to his attire, boxed at Gentlemen Jackson's, fenced at Alberto's, and accepted any bet involving his racing curricle.

And still, to Ellen, he would always be the gangly, awkward adolescent whose malice she had sorely underestimated. Only five years difference separated their ages, but she felt decades his senior in sorrow and regret.

“I did want to let you know, though”—Frederick paused with his hand on the door latch—“I'll likely be selling the place. A fellow has expenses, and the solicitors are deuced tightfisted with the Roxbury funds.”

“My thanks for the warning.” Ellen nodded, refusing to show any other reaction. Selling meant she could be homeless, of course, for she occupied a tenant cottage on the Markham estate. The new owner might allow her to stay on. Her property was profitable, but she didn't have a signed lease—she'd not put it past Freddie to tamper with the deed—and so the new owner might also toss her out on her backside.

“Thought it only sporting to let you know.” Frederick opened the door and swung his gaze out to his waiting vehicle. A tiger held the reins of the restive bays, and Ellen had to wonder how such spirited horses navigated the little track leading to her door. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” Freddie's smile turned positively gleeful. “I brought you a little something from the Hall.”

Dread seeped up from Ellen's stomach, filling her throat with bile and foreboding. Any present from Frederick was bound to bring ill will, if not worse.

Frederick bent into his curricle and withdrew a small potted plant. “You being the gardener in the family, I thought you might like a little cutting from Roxbury. You needn't thank me.”

“Most gracious of you, nonetheless.” Ellen offered him a cool smile as he put the clay pot into her hands and then climbed aboard. “Safe journey to Town, Frederick.”

He waited, clearly wishing she'd look at the little plant, but then gave up and yelled at his tiger to let the horses go. The child's grasp hadn't left the reins before Frederick was cracking the whip, the horses lunging forward and the curricle slewing around in Ellen's front yard as the boy scrambled up onto his post behind the seat.

And ye gods, ye gods, was Ellen ever glad to see the last of the man. She glanced at the plant in her hand, rolled her eyes and walked around to the back of her property to toss it, pot and all, on her compost heap.

How like Frederick to give her an herb often used to settle the stomach, while he intimated he'd be tearing the roof from over her head. He'd been threatening for several years now, as winters in Portugal, autumn at Melton, a lengthy stint in London each spring, and expensive friends all around did not permit a man to hold on to decrepit, unentailed estates for long.

She should be grateful she'd had five years to settle in, to grieve, and to heal. She had a few friends in nearby Little Weldon, some nice memories, and some satisfaction with what she'd been able to accomplish on this lovely little property.

And now all that accomplishment was to be taken from her.

She poured herself a cup of tea and took it to her back porch, where the vista was one of endless, riotous flower beds. They were her livelihood and her solace, her greatest joy and her most treasured necessity. Sachets and soaps, herbs for cooking, and bouquets for market, they all brought a fair penny, and the pennies added up. Fruits and vegetables created still more income, as did the preserves and pies made from them.

“And if we have to move”—Ellen addressed the fat-headed orange tom cat who strolled up the porch steps—“we have a bit put by now, don't we, Marmalade?”

Himself squeezed up his eyes in feline inscrutability, which Ellen took for supportive agreement. The cat had been abandoned at the manor house through the wood and had gladly given up a diet of mice for the occasional dish of cream on Ellen's porch.

His company, though, combined with Frederick's visit and the threat to her livelihood, put Ellen in a wistful, even lonely mood. She sipped her tea in the waning afternoon light and brought forth the memories that pleased her most. She didn't visit them often but saved them for low moments when she'd hug them around her like a favorite shawl, the one that always made a girl feel pretty and special.

She thought about her first pony, about the day she'd found Marmalade sitting king-of-all-he-surveyed in a tree near the cottage, like a welcoming committee from the fairy folk. She thought about the flowers she'd put together for all the village weddings, and the flowers on her own wedding day. And she thought about a chance visit from that handsome Mr. Windham, though it had been just a few moments stolen in the evening sunshine, and more than a year had passed since those moments.

Ellen set her chair to rocking, hugged the memory closer still, and banished all thoughts of Frederick, homelessness, and poverty from her mind.