“I’d like to speak with your aunt in private.” Rothgreb’s tone was tired, quiet, and completely out of character.

“So the two of you can plot and scheme and get your stories straight?”

His aunt looked at him then. It took Vim a moment to decipher the emotion banked in her pale blue eyes: disappointment.

In him. He shifted his gaze back to Rothgreb.

“No, young man, I do not want to plot and scheme with your aunt. I want to apologize to her for trying to plot and scheme without her assistance.” The viscount aimed a small smile at Aunt Essie. “Though I suspect she was getting up to tricks quite nicely on her own, weren’t you, my dear?”

Aunt Esmerelda rose from her chair and began to stalk around the cozy parlor. “I was not managing quite nicely, but I was trying to do something to stop your nephew from charging off to God knows where yet again. Wilhelm, we have tried asking you to come home.”

Vim’s rejoinder was automatic, if a bit unkind. “Sidling is not my—”

“Not your home,” she interrupted him. “Oh, we know it’s not your home, except you were born here, you’re going to inherit the place, and except for three rackety half siblings, your entire family is here in Kent. Your father and mother are buried here, your grandfather and all four of his wives. Your uncle, and very likely you will be buried here, as well, but for some stupid, known-only-to-your-pigheaded-self reason, this is not your home. I have a question for you, Wilhelm Lucifer Charpentier.”

“My dear,” Rothgreb said softly from his wing chair.

“Not now, Aethelbert. I want to hear from your buffle-brained, stubborn, idiot, errant nephew just where his home might be if it isn’t here with the people who love him and pray for him every night? Where must you wander off to next, Wilhelm? I need to know where to send the letter that tells you you’ve missed the last opportunity to ride these acres with your uncle. I want to know what godforsaken heathen port you’ll be in when I have to run the death notice. Tell me, and then hope a merciful God sustains me in my grief long enough to post the blessed thing.”

She swished out of the parlor, the door latch closing with a definitive click in her wake.

And now it was Vim who didn’t want to meet his uncle’s gaze.

A silence started up while Rothgreb scooted to the edge of his chair, braced his hands on the padded arms, and pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t worry. At breakfast tomorrow she’ll be apologizing and cramming strawberry crepes down your gullet.” He knelt to poke up the fire while Vim stood there, his aunt’s tirade ringing in his ears.

“You did ask me to come home, didn’t you?”

His uncle paused, the poker across his bony knee where he genuflected before the hearth. “A time or two. I don’t want Essie to be alone if anything should happen to me. She’s probably reasoning along the same lines. Your cousins will be some comfort, but they won’t manage the place as it should be managed.”

Rothgreb rose, teetered, and caught the mantel to finish pulling himself erect. “Your aunt is a dear, dear woman, but she is protective of me.”

“Don’t apologize for her when she was merely stating a few home truths.”

“Apologize? I was explaining.” Rothgreb peered at him. “She has a knack for walloping a man between the eyes on those rare occasions when she gets her dander up. Makes marriage to her a lively proposition.”

Vim turned to stare out the window at the late afternoon landscape. “I don’t suppose you want to take that ride now?”

“Ah, youth. If you want to freeze your arse off tooling about the shire in this weather, be my guest. Talk to me about riding out come spring, and I might take you up on the offer. I’m going to find your aunt and assure her you’ll still speak to her when next she meets you.” He frowned. “You will, won’t you?”

Rothgreb was gruff, irascible, cantankerous, and sometimes even cussed, but in Vim’s experience, his uncle was never, ever uncertain.

“Of course I will, and if she’s not careful, I’ll be sure we meet up under the mistletoe.”

Rothgreb nodded slowly. “Not a bad approach. Puts the ladies in a fine humor when they get their regular share of kisses. Enjoy your ride.”

He shuffled out, looking to Vim for the first time like a very old man. A very old and very dear man.

Nineteen

“He’s not coming.” Valentine kept his voice down and his smile in place, even managing to nod at some little pretty across the room who apparently hadn’t gotten word he’d recently acquired a wife.

“He’ll be here.” Westhaven smiled, as well, as if Val had just said something amusing.

“I could always go fetch him.” St. Just wasn’t smiling. He was looking thoughtful, which generally did not bode well for somebody.

“We should send Her Grace,” Val said. “She’d sort the bugger out in a hurry.”

St. Just glanced at him. “She’s too busy dispensing good cheer to every yeoman and goodwife ever to pass through the village.”

“Sophie’s being even more gracious than our mother.” Westhaven did not sound happy about this in the least.

Maggie glided up to them, looking striking in a green velvet dress. “I thought you three said you had Sindal under control. Sophie’s smiling so hard her jaw must hurt, and he’s nowhere in sight.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Westhaven sounded most displeased. “Evie just switched her glass of wassail for Deene’s, and the idiot man didn’t even notice.”

Maggie’s brows knit. “Why does that matter?”

“Because,” St. Just said as Westhaven moved off, “Deene’s is spiked with a dose of the loveliest white rum ever to knock a grown man on his arse.”

Maggie took a little sip of her drink. “So’s mine.”

Val reached over and plucked her glass from her hand. “Then you’d better share, sister dear, or I’m going to go fetch Sindal here myself.”

A summer evening could be quiet, peaceful even, but it could never compete with the utter stillness of a winter night. No birds flitted from branch to branch; no insects sang to their mates; no soft breezes stirred leafy green boughs.

As Vim let his horse trot down the Sidling drive, all was still, and a fat moon was about to crest the horizon. The silence was as dense as the air was cold, but for the life of him, Vim could not have remained indoors with his silly young cousins, his fuming aunt, his oddly quiet uncle, and the aging retainers on every hand.

As the horse loosened up at a ground-eating trot beneath him, Vim started composing a note in his head to Lady Sophia Windham.

He was sorry—more sorry than he could say—that their paths were diverging.

Except that wasn’t an apology, and he owed her an apology. He’d leapt to convenient conclusions, made mad, passionate love for what felt like the first time in his life, then bungled the aftermath badly. He should have gone down on his damn bended knee, should have made her heart tremble, or whatever that word was Windham had used.

At the foot of the drive, he turned the horse toward the village and started his note over: Dear Sophie…

My dear Sophie…

Dearest Sophie…

Sophie, my love…

The horse’s ears swiveled forward, and Vim drew the beast up. The last thing he needed was to land on his arse on the cold, hard ground because some damned fox was out hunting his dinner.

“What is it?” He smoothed a hand down the gelding’s neck and let the horse walk on. “You hear some hound baying at the moon?”

But as they approached the village, Vim heard it too: a baby crying.

He halted the horse and simply listened. This was the sound that had drawn his path to Sophie’s, a purely unhappy, discontent sound, but unmistakably human.

Kit, and he wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t tired, either; this was his lonely cry, the lament he sent out when he needed to be held and cuddled and reassured. This was the simplest and most sincere form of a human being demanding to be loved.