“I vote you read and we fellows will listen in rapt silence.”

“And thus Kit is indoctrinated into the conspiracy to which all males belong,” Sophie muttered.

“And you ladies don’t have conspiracies of your own?” He brought the child to his shoulder and started rubbing Kit’s little back. The sight sent odd tendrils of warmth drifting through Sophie’s insides.

“We women are cooperative by nature; that’s different from conspiratorial.”

She chose a poem at random, not so much to have the last word as to distract her thoughts from the man beside her. Vim was holding Kit with just as much affection and care as if the baby were his own child.

Which he was not. Kit wasn’t her child, either. She must not forget this. Sophie paused, blinked, and tried to recall her place. She had most of the book half-memorized, which meant it was little help when notions of parting from Kit came stealing relentlessly into her brain.

While she was making a pretense of choosing another poem, something warm settle on the back of her neck.

Vim’s hand. He’d said nothing. His body hadn’t shifted. He still held the child in the crook of his arm, but he was touching Sophie too. His thumb was making slow circles on her nape, sending a melting warmth down her spine and up into her brain.

“Read more slowly, Sophie. I think Kit’s dropping off.”

She nodded carefully so as not to dislodge the wondrous gift of his hand on her person. When she read again, she could barely focus on the words, so drunk was she with the sensation of Vim Charpentier’s touch on the bare skin of her neck.

She’d wished for things from him before he left, things no decent woman admitted to wanting, things she could never have asked for in words.

And this slow, sweet touch was part and parcel of what she’d wished for.

There was something fundamentally aberrant about a man who could sit with an infant propped in one arm and still have erotic thoughts about the woman encircled with the other arm. Though they weren’t truly erotic thoughts.

They were more the kind of thoughts that noticed the way firelight brought out red highlights in Sophie Windham’s hair, or saw how graceful the curve of her cheek was, or heard the sheer cultured beauty of her voice as she did Wordsworth proud. The poetry made Vim miss the Lakes, from whence the poet drew inspiration, where Vim’s younger siblings were gathering for the holidays.

A man could breathe in Cumbria. He could ramble for hours on the fells with no company but the land, the sheep, the gorgeous sky, and his own thoughts. Mental images of the Cumbrian countryside had sustained Vim on many a journey, but they filled him now with a peculiar kind of loneliness.

Beside him, Sophie fell silent.

“He’s asleep.” Vim whispered the words, unwilling to disturb the child or the moment. When Sophie made no move to leave the sofa, he stroked his hand along the side of her head, reveling in the feel of her warm, silky hair.

She put the book aside, and the next time Vim caressed her hair, she sighed and turned her face into his shoulder. They stayed like that for a long time, while the fire burned down and both thought of what might have been and what could never be.

Six

Sophie woke to the feel of Vim’s thumb tracing along the curve of her jaw. She didn’t move, but he must have sensed her waking, because he uncurled his arm from her shoulders.

“You take the baby,” he said quietly. “I’ll bank the fire and collect his cradle. We’ll have you both upstairs before he wakens.”

That hand caressing her neck was to be a tacit touching, then. Better than nothing but little more than a memory. A pleasurable memory but not quite a happy one.

Sophie stood and took the baby from Vim, making no effort to avoid the slide of her hand along his abdomen as she did. Vim was warm and muscular, and sitting in the circle of that warmth had been a gift Sophie could not openly acknowledge. She had the sense as she cradled the child to her chest she was going to miss Vim Charpentier’s warmth for a long time after she’d managed to wish him safe journey on the morrow.

He did a thorough job of banking the fire and securing the hearth screen, but he did it quietly too. He took the cradle under one arm, picked up a single candle in his free hand, and led Sophie through the cold house to the family wing.

“Let me light your candles,” he said, stepping back to follow her inside her bedroom. The room was wonderfully warm because Vim had kept the fire going all day.

“This is a nice room,” he said, glancing around. “It looks both well appointed and comfortable.”

Perhaps he was thinking it was a fancy room for a woman who had yet to acknowledge her relationship to the Duke of Moreland, but Sophie made no reply. When Vim set the cradle by the hearth, Sophie laid the sleeping baby down and tucked the blankets around him.

“He seems worn out,” she said. Vim lit the candle by her bed then came over to light the two on each end of her mantle.

“You seem worn out, Sophie Windham. Kit can stay with me tonight, if you like.”

“Not when you have to travel tomorrow. You need your rest, while I can nap when the baby does. Good night, Vim, and thank you.”

He set his candle on the mantle and peered down at her, moving close enough that his bergamot scent tickled her nose.

“What I said earlier?”

She nodded. He’d said a lot of things earlier, but she knew exactly which handful of words he referred to.

“I can’t offer you anything, Sophie. I’m dealing with problems in Kent I can’t easily describe, but it’s urgent that I tend to them. Even if I weren’t being pulled in that direction, I have obligations all over the empire, and you’re a woman who—”

She stopped him with two fingers to his mouth.

“I want to kiss you too, Vim Charpentier.”

He looked briefly surprised, then considering, then a slow, sweet smile graced his expression. He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

A kiss, then. She’d at least have a kiss to keep in her heart. Sophie rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around him while he slid his hands along her waist to steady her by the hips. His hold was careful, gentle even, and utterly secure. When she thought he meant for them to share something just a tad more than chaste, that hold shifted, bringing her flush up against his body.

She made a sound of longing in the back of her throat, and his hold shifted again. She realized a moment too late he was anchoring her for the real kiss, for the press of his open mouth over hers, for the startling warmth of his tongue insinuating itself against her mouth.

She’d heard of this kind of kissing, wondered about it. It hadn’t sounded nearly as lush and lovely as Vim Charpentier made it. He didn’t invade, he explored, he invited, he teased and soothed and sent an exotic sense of wanting to all quadrants of Sophie’s anatomy.

He made her, for the first time in her female life, bold. She ran her tongue along that plush, soft space between his bottom lip and his teeth.

He growled, a wonderful, encouraging sound that had her tongue foraging into his mouth again, even as she laughed a little against his lips. The kiss became a battle of tongues and lips and wills, with Vim trying to insist on gentleness and patience, and Sophie demanding a complete melee.

Her hands went questing over the muscles shifting and bunching along his spine then up into the abundance of his golden hair. Bergamot stole into her senses too, a smoky Eastern fragrance that made her want to seek out the places on Vim’s body where he’d applied the scent.

She undid his queue and winnowed her fingers through his hair, even as she felt Vim’s arms lashing more tightly around her.