In the back of Vim’s mind, he was recalling how very wonderfully snug Sophie’s body had been, how she’d bit his shoulder as he’d sunk into her damp heat, how artless her lovemaking had been. I didn’t know how it would be…

How virginal?

Twelve

It would change everything, if Sophie had been a virgin—and it would mean she’d misrepresented her circumstances.

“Are you sore this morning?” he asked, picking Kit up and holding the baby high above his head. “Good morning, My Lord Baby.”

“I am tired and hoping your journey to the countryside passes uneventfully.” She watched as he raised and lowered the baby, her expression a trifle guarded.

“Sophie, am I the first man you’ve allowed carnal intimacies?” He put the question casually, keeping his attention to appearances on the baby.

She frowned, just a flicker over her features. “I am not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking.” It was exactly what he’d been asking, though her wording was in the present tense. “Does that child need his nappy changed?”

“He does.” Vim lowered the baby, still dissatisfied with Sophie’s answer but not knowing quite how to clarify matters without interrogating her very directly.

He was still uncomfortable when less than an hour later they stood in the aisle of the stable, Sophie holding a bundled-up Kit in her arms.

“Goliath will see you safely to Kent,” she said, stroking a hand down the beast’s neck. “He delights in romping through the snow, and I know you will let no harm befall him.”

Vim’s pockets held piping hot potatoes; his traveling satchel sported a considerable quantity of bread, cheese, stollen, and even a stash of marzipan Sophie had produced from one of her pantries. His feet were warm and dry and likely to stay that way, as she’d insisted he keep a pair of her brother’s marvelous wool stockings, and she’d even tucked a bottle of fine brandy among his belongings, as well.

And for all these comforts, his heart, which he’d long since considered beyond such nonsense, was aching. For her, for himself, for what was not going to be.

“This is the price we pay for our pleasures,” he said, keeping his voice down so Higgins and Merriweather wouldn’t overhear. “We part, and it’s… difficult.”

She nodded, her lips thinning in telltale self-discipline. Vim glanced over his shoulder and saw both grooms had taken themselves elsewhere. “Come here, Sophie Windham.”

She went into his arms, a perfect bundle of woman and baby and warmth, and everything Vim’s sojourning heart had ever wanted to come home to. She was home, she was…

Not interested in a permanent position as his wife. He’d almost considered asking her to be his mistress, but Sophie was too dear, too worthy of his respect for him to proffer such an arrangement.

“I’ll send the horse back as soon as the roads clear.”

Her shoulders dropped on a sigh. “Just send him over to Morelands.”

“Morelands?” It was a large property less than four miles from Sidling. The Duke and Duchess of Moreland had been legendary for their hospitality even in his youth, though Vim had been in the family home only once and was at pains to recall the family name.

And wasn’t it just divine irony that Sophie would be employed by the very family who’d hosted the scene of Vim’s worst nightmares all those years ago?

“It lies in Kent,” she said, resting her cheek against his chest. “You’ll not overtax yourself today? You’ll warm your feet before you do lasting damage to them?”

“I will warm my feet.” He kissed her cheek and stepped back, lest he fall to his knees and start begging her to reconsider his proposal of marriage. She’d made her position gently but firmly clear, preferring the independence of her employment over what a stranger might offer her on appallingly short acquaintance.

“Sophie, if you need anything, anything for you or Kit, you’ll send to me?”

She nodded but did not give him her word.

He would never hear from her again.

He kissed the top of the baby’s fuzzy head and turned to check the girth on the makeshift saddle adorning the massive horse’s back.

“Thank you.” Sophie kept her voice low and her features from view by virtue of nuzzling the baby.

“For?”

“I made some Christmas wishes, foolish, extravagant wishes. You have made many of them come true.”

“Then I am content.”

It was the most resoundingly false lie he’d ever told.

Down the barn aisle, Miss Sophie was pretending to groom her remaining precious, the one-eyed Sampson. What she was really doing was crying, crying like her heart would break, crying on the great beast’s smelly neck, and hiding it like she always hid it.

“Don’t pay no mind, nipper.” Higgins grinned at the baby in his arms. “Lady Sophie is due a few tears, unlike some wee people who have their every need met before it needs meeting. She’s spoiling you proper, she is.”

“Miss Sophie said the nipper has taken to crawling already,” Merriweather observed from where he was cleaning a muddy girth across the snug little tack room. “Best day of the lad’s life was when that worthless Joleen went haring off.”

“Spare the girl a prayer. That Harry was none too steady.”

“Horny bastard. Bet he had her breeding again, and the nipper not even a year.”

Which would explain why Joleen had taken the desperate and shrewd step of abandoning her child in Miss Sophie’s care.

“Miss Sophie will do right by the lad.”

Merriweather glanced up from the girth. “Be a bit of a surprise when her brothers show up and find her sporting a bebby on her hip.”

Higgins used a gnarled finger to chuck the baby’s wee chin. “Be some surprises all around before the sun sets this day. Mark me on this, nipper.”

Merriweather winked, and they shared a grin while Kit chortled gleefully and grabbed for Higgins’s nose.

“You’ve grown ominously silent,” Val observed.

Westhaven rode to his brother’s left, because it was St. Just’s turn to break the trail ahead. The merchants along The Strand had done what they could to clear a path, but with so much snow on the ground, there was simply nowhere to put it all. Two horses could pass comfortably most places, but not all.

“I’m trying to decide which part of me is the most frozen,” Westhaven replied. “It’s a toss-up between my bum-fiddle and my nose.”

“I lost awareness of my nose before we hit London.”

Westhaven glanced at Val’s gloved hands. “Your fingers are not in jeopardy, I trust?”

“Heaven forfend! Ellen would be wroth, which I cannot allow.”

“I cannot allow much longer in this perishing saddle.”

“We’ve little enough light left.” Val glanced at the sky, which was turning a chilly sunset turquoise. “The Chattells will likely be sitting down to dinner, and didn’t Their Graces give the staff at the mansion holiday leave?”

“I gave them holiday leave.” Which was an idiot notion when compared with imposing on the neighbors for hospitality. “They get four weeks off, we pay them for two, and everybody has pleasant holidays. The crew at Morelands takes leave in late summer, before harvest.”

“I’ll have to implement something like it at Bel Canto, assuming I don’t turn into an icicle before spring. I don’t relish being Chattell’s uninvited guests.”

“You’re married,” Westhaven said, lips quirking up. “You’re safe, Valentine. Of no interest to the debutantes at all.”

“Yes, but they all come with mothers and aunts and older sisters… St. Just, halt if you please.”

St. Just twisted in his saddle, his horse coming to a stop without a visible cue. “We’re going to take in the fresh air, are we? It grows dark soon, in case you were too busy composing tunes in your head, Baby Brother.”

“I want to drop off this violin. The repair shop is just down that alley.” Val swung a leg over his horse’s back and climbed down into the snow. “I won’t be but a minute.”