Vim wasn’t offering adult companionship at meals, complimenting Sophie’s pedestrian cooking as if it were the finest food he’d ever eaten.

He wasn’t there when Sophie contemplated and discarded the notion of lying down for a nap while Kit caught his midafternoon forty winks, there being memories to haunt her in both her own bed and Vim’s.

Vim wasn’t there, and he would never be there again.

“I have both brothers and sisters,” she told Kit as she laid him in the cradle near the kitchen hearth. “My oldest sister is named Maggie. She’s several years my senior and very much a comfort to me, though she’s technically a half sister.”

Would Kit have brothers and sisters? Did Joleen’s footman have other children he’d created with the same careless disregard for the child’s future? That Kit might have siblings and never know them, or not even know of them, made her chest ache.

“Maggie explained certain things to me when I made my come out,” she said, shifting the cradle to the worktable and putting it beside her baking ingredients. “Things no decent girl is supposed to know.” And how Maggie came upon the knowledge was something Sophie had wondered.

“She explained that people like you get conceived at certain times and are less likely to be conceived at other times.”

The baby kicked both feet and stuck the two middle fingers of his left hand in his mouth.

“I was hoping…”

She’d been hoping Vim would show her what the greatest intimacy between a man and a woman could be. She’d been hoping to be his lover, to know with him what she’d never know with any other man.

She’d been hoping a great deal more than that, actually, but hoping was as useless as wishing.

“I’ll deal with Valentine’s room tomorrow,” she assured the baby. “I’ll clean up the bathing chamber, and I’ll send along a cheery note to Their Graces.”

She wouldn’t lie, exactly, but she wouldn’t mention Vim Charpentier, either. Among her siblings, there was tacit acknowledgment of the occasional need to protect their parents from some unsavory detail or development. It was the kind thing to do, also the most practical, as some aspects of reality did not yield even in the face of ducal determination.

Like the reality that Vim was gone and Sophie would never see him again.

Tomorrow she’d tidy up Val’s room and set the bathing chamber to rights. She’d remove every possible piece of evidence indicating Vim had been in the house.

Just… not… yet.

She started mixing another batch of stollen, though she had to pause occasionally to swipe the stray tears from her cheeks.

“My dear, I’m afraid it’s gone.”

Essie Charpentier watched her husband rise slowly from where he’d knelt on the carpet. One foot on the floor, then while he braced himself, the second foot. A pause, then a hearty shove to gain him his feet, and another pause to recover from the effort.

“Perhaps it is simply misplaced,” she said as she’d said on an appalling number of other occasions. “Or maybe the servants have taken it downstairs for cleaning in anticipation of the holidays.”

He cast a glance at her, an indulgent glance laced with a little worry and a tinge of… pity. She hated the pity probably as much as he hated the ways she pitied him in recent years too.

“It was just an olive dish,” she said briskly. “We have several such, and the olives don’t taste any better or worse for being in an antique silver dish or a piece of the everyday.” She laced her arm through his. “It’s sunny today. I’m of a mind to visit the ancestors, if you’ll escort me?”

“Of course, my dear.” He patted her hand and led her from the family parlor where they’d stored various items of sentimental and commercial value for years—the heirloom parlor.

“Perhaps we should take to locking the doors of certain rooms,” Essie said. “You lock the billiards room when we’re not entertaining.”

“The gun cabinets are in there, my dear. I’m sure the dish will turn up, and it wouldn’t do to offend the staff by locking the place up like some medieval castle. Is there someone in particular you’d like to see?”

“Christopher, I think. We must tell him his son is coming for a visit.”

They made a slow, careful progress up the main stairs, a majestic cascade of oak whose grandeur was dimming in Essie’s eyes as her knees increasingly protested the effort of climbing it.

“We hope Wilhelm will grace us with his presence,” the viscount said, pausing at the top of the stairs. “There’s been no word, Essie, and he should have been here by now.”

She paused, as well, and surveyed the front hall below them. All was cheerfully laden with swags of pine. A wreath graced the inside of the front door, and a fat sprig of mistletoe wrapped with red ribbon was temporarily hanging from a coat rack in the corner.

“Kiss me, Rothgreb.”

He smiled down at her, a trace of his old devilment in his blue eyes. “Naughty girl.” But he bussed her cheek and patted her hand. “My lovely, naughty girl.”

“Vim will be here,” she said as they resumed their progress toward the portrait gallery. “He keeps his word.”

“He keeps his word, but his associations with Sidling are not cheerful, particularly not his associations with Sidling at Yuletide. Watch the carpet, my love.”

“His associations with Sidling are cheerful. He passed his early childhood here cheerfully enough.”

Rothgreb held the door to the portrait gallery open for her. Down the length of the room, some eighty feet, a fire was laid but not lit in a huge fieldstone hearth, and the cavernous space was chilly indeed.

“Shall I fetch you a shawl, Essie?”

He was not going to argue with her about Vim’s past, which was a small disappointment. Arguing warmed them both up.

At the rate they moved around the house lately, by the time he fetched the shawl, she’d be frozen to the spot she occupied. She smiled at him. “Bellow for Jack footman. Trotting around will keep him from freezing.”

“He won’t move any faster than I will, and you know it.” Nonetheless, Rothgreb strode off and could be heard yelling in the corridor. The man had a good set of lungs on him, always had, and no amount of years was going to take away from the broad shoulders favored by the Charpentier menfolk.

“He misses you,” Essie said to the portrait occupying the wall to the right. She let her eyes travel over blond hair, blue eyes, a teasing hint of a smile, and masculine features so attractive as to approach some standard of male beauty.

“Christopher was the best looking of us three boys,” Essie’s husband said, slipping his arm around her waist. “He would have made a wonderful viscount.”

“You make a wonderful viscount, and to my eyes you were and still are the pick of the litter.” She let her head rest on his shoulder, sending up a prayer of thanks that, for all their years, they still had each other and still had a reasonable degree of health.

“You need spectacles, my lady.” He smiled down at her then resumed perusing his brother’s portrait. “Vim never comes here, you know. When he visits, he doesn’t come say hello to his old papa, nor to his grandfather, either.”

“He will this time.” She decided this as she spoke, but really, Vim was not a boy any longer, and certain things needed to be put in the past.

“No scheming, Essie, not without including me in your plans.”

This was the best part of being married to Rothgreb for decades—though there were many, many good parts. Another man might have become indifferent to his wife, the wife who had been unable to provide him sons. Another man might have quietly or not so quietly indulged in all manner of peccadilloes when the novelty of marriage wore off.

Her husband had become her best friend, the person who knew her best and loved her best in the whole world, and Essie honestly believed she’d come to know him as well as she knew herself. It made up for advancing years, white lies, misplaced olive dishes, and all manner of other transgressions.