“I meant I love Kit, though I love Vim, as well.”
Val dropped his arms, feeling the last of his fraternal patience slipping its leash. “It’s no wonder Sindal is uncertain of his reception with you, Sophie Windham, for I’m beyond confused myself. Have you told the man you love him?”
“Of course not.”
Val resumed their walk. “Then how is he to know?”
“Because I’m going to insist he take Kit.” Sophie followed after Val at a brisk pace. “Vim needs somebody to love, and to love him, and he’s perfect with Kit. He said he’d consider fostering him at Sidling. The viscountess doted on Kit, and I think old Rothgreb was fond of him too.”
Val kept on walking. “You have taken leave of your senses. Sindal is off to parts unknown. He can’t be dragging your dratted baby with him.”
“All manner of children are born on shipboard. Most merchant captains who can afford to take their wives and children with them do so. Then too, if Kit is at Sidling, Vim will have an excellent reason to be home more frequently. Rothgreb and his lady will like that.”
“Sophie, I love you, but this plan has nothing to recommend it, except that it puts the two fellows you seem to love with your whole heart where they’re either gallivanting about the globe without you or right under your nose where you can look but not touch.”
She just shook her head and kept moving along with him.
“All right, then, go visit your Holy Terror and explain to the Harrads that no, you’ll be haring off in a different direction now, playing skittles with a child’s life while you completely ignore your own needs. I’m going to have a sane argument with a piano while I can still reason.”
He marched off—he was notretreating—and left Sophie in the middle of the village green, her fists clenched at her sides while the sounds of the Christmas party drifted around in the frigid night air.
A man could not aspire to the status of man at all unless he admitted to himself he’d been mistaken.
And Sophie had apparently known this. She’d known Vim had spent more than a dozen years racketing around the world, laying up treasures on earth, all in the mistaken belief His Grace had treated him shabbily, when all the while…
“I beg your pardon.” The very object of his youthful folly stepped back and peered at him through tired eyes. Louise Holderness Horton smiled tentatively. “I know you, sir, or I believe I do.”
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “It’s Sindal, Louise. Wilhelm Charpentier. Happy Christmas.” He bowed and left her standing there under the mistletoe, her hand to her a cheek and a ghost of her old smile on her lips.
And now to deal with what really mattered. He took a quick leave of his hostess, whose serene mature beauty reminded him all too strongly of Sophie.
Sophie, who was discreetly maintaining an absence when he’d come expressly to mend his fences with her. He gave the place one more visual inspection and didn’t see her anywhere, so he signaled for his hat and coat.
“Where are you off to?” Westhaven was doing a poor job of masking a glower. “If I’m not mistaken, you haven’t made your bow to Sophie.”
“I have not, and if that’s how she wants it, that’s how it will be. Excuse me.”
“You’re really leaving.” The glower faded to puzzlement, though Westhaven’s hand stayed on Vim’s arm.
“I’m leaving for the curate’s house, if you must know, and then, if Sophie still won’t give me an audience, I am heading for Yorkshire, or wherever else you lot think you can secret her.”
“What’s at the curate’s house?”
“Not a what, a who. The love of Sophie’s life, who should at least be with her if she won’t allow me to be. Happy Christmas, Westhaven.”
He slipped out the door and didn’t bother retrieving his horse. It was a short walk down to the village, and he’d need the time to clear his head.
“Where was Sindal going?” St. Just growled.
“I’m not sure, but he mentioned the curate’s house.” Westhaven’s brow knit. “He sounded a bit like he’d gotten into Deene’s white rum, but he had only the one drink with His Grace.”
“His Grace is involved now?”
The brothers exchanged a look, and they spoke in unison. “Let’s go.”
Vim was composing a speech, having failed utterly with his note to Sophie. He sought a means of explaining to the Harrads that he’d like to have the baby back, thank you very much, because Sophie Windham loved the child, and she should have whom and what she loved.
And if he cleared that hurdle without landing on his arse, he might, apology in hand, point out to the lady that a growing boy could use a man’s influence.
It was a shaky plan, but it had the advantage of sparing one and all trips to the West Riding in the dead of winter. Surely she’d see the wisdom of that?
“Vim?”
He stopped dead in his tracks. There shestood in the middle of the green, not fifteen feet away, resplendent in moonlight and velvet.
Twenty
“Sophie. Why aren’t you at the Christmas revels?”
She stared at Vim for so long he thought perhaps she hadn’t heard him. But then a sigh went out of her, and she seemed to grow smaller where she stood.
“I’m fetching Kit to you.”
What?“Why would you do such a thing?”
Her smile was wan, not a smile he’d seen on her before, and it tore at his heart.
“It’s the right thing,” she said, rubbing her hands up and down her upper arms. “It’s the right thing for you and the right thing for Kit. I can’t raise him— LadySophia and all. I can have my charities, but I cannot actually keep a child to raise. I understand that.”
“Can we talk about this?”
Her chin came up. “You didn’t want to talk to me at the party.”
The strains of some old Handel came floating over the sounds of the Moreland gathering, the same pastoral lullaby Sophie had sung to Kit days ago, but this time rendered with mellow beauty on the church piano. The music was soothing, but sad too.
“Your father had something to explain to me, Sophie. I apologize if it seemed as if I was avoiding you.” But she was avoiding him, standing there trying not to shiver in the frigid night air. “Can we not find somewhere to sit? Because I do want to speak with you; I want it badly.”
“You’re taking the baby,” she said, visually scanning the green. “My brother is an idiot.”
He wasn’t sure which brother she referred to. “If you say so. I find them all likeable when they’re not threatening to thrash me.”
She scowled. “They’re still making threats?”
“Not lately.” He took her by the arm and started walking in the direction of the Harrads’ tidy porch. “I’m not inclined to take on the responsibility for the child, Sophie. Not in my present circumstances.”
“Because you’re going to China?”
“I was supposed to go to Baltimore.” And she was going to Yorkshire, for God’s sake.
“Wherever. Children usually travel well, particularly when they’re as small as Kit. He can’t stay with the Harrads, though. They’re decent people, but it was foolish of me to think strangers would love him the way we do.”
“So you love Kit?”
She stopped at the foot of the Harrads’ steps. “I do. I think you love him too, though, and you’re in a position to provide for him. I am prepared to be stubborn about this.”
“Formidable threat, my dear, but I am prepared to be stubborn too. Do you know what your papa wanted to discuss with me so urgently?”
This time when she looked him up and down, Vim had the sense she might be seeinghim. “Papa is prone to queer starts. He does not confide in anybody that I can tell, except possibly Her Grace.”