As they watched, Horton staggered a little, sloshing some of his drink on his wife’s sleeve. A silence spread and spread, underlain with the genial sounds of the party and a piano thumping out a Christmas tune somewhere in the house.

“I have been made a fool of, but not by you, Your Grace.” Sindal spoke quietly too. His Grace put the man’s drink back in his hand.

“No more so than most other young men can be made fools of. I had a few close calls myself before Her Grace took me in hand.”

But it appeared Sindal wasn’t even listening. He continued to watch as Horton’s lady tried to look like she was enjoying herself, though all the while, her expression was pinched with fatigue, anxiety, and what looked to His Grace like a suppressed fury at her lot in life.

“She looks at least ten years older than she should.”

“I don’t think her situation has been easy. She’s received—Her Grace saw to that—but her indiscretion is common knowledge. Some mathematical calculations are easy to recall. Your grandfather assured me the child could not have been yours.”

“How could he have known such a thing? I was devoted to that woman for a span of several months.” And still, Sindal did not take his eyes off the unfortunate woman and her sorry spouse.

“He knew you.” The duke spoke not as the wealthy, titled aristocrat he was, nor even as Sindal’s neighbor and a friend to his late grandfather. He spoke as a father, and most particularly as Sophie’s father.

“I owe you an apology, Your Grace.” Sindal extended his hand, and they shook, which put a curious little sense of unfinished business to rest in His Grace’s mind.

“None needed, to me at least. St. Just said something about you owing Sophie an apology, though. Might want to be about that posthaste, hmm?”

Sindal put his drink down, nodded once, and strode off like a man very determined on his mission, while His Grace went to the door of the small parlor. Across their crowded main hall, he found his wife’s gaze, noted the slight anxiety in her eyes, and eased it with a small, private smile intended just for her.

* * *

“He walked right past me.” Sophie turned before the harpsichord, skirts swishing, and paced back to Val’s side. “He barely looked at me, Valentine. Am I not even worth a glance?”

She veered off and marched over to the great harp. “Maggie offered to poison his drink. What has the blessed punch bowl got that I haven’t got? What is that?”

“Your cloak. Some fresh air will settle you down, Soph.”

“I don’t want to settle down !”

He held her gaze, thinking his wife would be proud of him. Only a brave—or perhaps very foolish man—tried to console a woman with a heart in the process of breaking. “I rather think you do want to settle down, preferably with Sindal and a brace of offspring.”

Her head came up, and Valentine was grateful he’d be leaving in a couple days. Much more of this drama, and he’d be swearing off family holidays for the next decade.

“I tossed aside a perfectly good baby. A wonderful baby,” she said. “Placed him with strangers.”

“That dratted baby has nothing to do with Sindal cutting you.” He draped her cloak over her shoulders, even risking a small hug while he did. “Let’s go for a little walk, Soph. It will put the roses back in your cheeks.”

When he pulled away, she clung. He felt the instant when her ire turned to sorrow, felt her spine sag with impending grief. “I tossed away the baby, but Valentine, I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t toss away the man, as well. I never really explained to him what I was about—I didn’t know what I was about.”

“And I’m not sure I want to know. Come along, Soph. We can amble down to the church and make sure the curmudgeon hasn’t gone rogue on me. The damned weather is hard on the old soldiers.”

“You and your blessed pianos.” But she let him tug her through the French doors to the terrace. St. Just was still keeping vigil by the windows, and he started when Val pulled Sophie along on the terrace. Val just shook his head when St. Just beckoned them back inside, all without Sophie noticing a thing in her increasing upset.

“He’s a good baby,” she was saying. “And the Harrads are good people, but Kit is special, he’s unique, and they’ve raised only girls.”

“You spent two weeks with the infant, and you know him better than an experienced mother of three would?”

She turned to glare at him in the moonlight. “You are a blockhead, Valentine Windham. Just wait until Ellen presents you with a baby. Vim knew exactly what to do with Kit. Exactly. It has nothing to do with time or experience.”

He knew he was taking a risk, but Val opted for goading her rather than comforting her. “Vim knew what he was doing with you too, sister dear. The question is, what are the two of you going to do about it now? I’m told he’s leaving for the Americas again, and that is some distance from merry olde England.”

“I hate you.”

“Dear heart, I know this.”

She stomped along beside him then stopped abruptly, dropped his arm and drew in a shuddery breath. Well, hell. He put his arms around her and silently vowed to give up his career as a charming escort. “What hurts the worst, Soph? Tell me.”

“You’ll bear tales to Her Grace and to our odious brothers.”

“I’m your only odious brother.”

She nodded. “You’re the worst of a bad lot.” She was stalling, but a lady was entitled when her heart was breaking. “I love him.”

“Sindal hasn’t earned that honor—” He fell abruptly silent when Sophie drew back and rolled her eyes at him.

“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 not retreating—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 she stood 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—Lady Sophia 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.”