“Because you’re going to China?”

“I was supposed to go to Baltimore.” And she was going to Yorkshire, for God’s sake.

“Wherever. Children usually travel well, particularly when they’re as small as Kit. He can’t stay with the Harrads, though. They’re decent people, but it was foolish of me to think strangers would love him the way we do.”

“So you love Kit?”

She stopped at the foot of the Harrads’ steps. “I do. I think you love him too, though, and you’re in a position to provide for him. I am prepared to be stubborn about this.”

“Formidable threat, my dear, but I am prepared to be stubborn too. Do you know what your papa wanted to discuss with me so urgently?”

This time when she looked him up and down, Vim had the sense she might be seeing him. “Papa is prone to queer starts. He does not confide in anybody that I can tell, except possibly Her Grace.”

He believed her. He believed she’d no more notion of who and what had been involved in Vim’s great humiliation all those years ago than he had himself. To this extent, then, His Grace—and likely the ducal consequence, as well—had been guarding Vim’s back, not driving daggers into it.

“It is a night for revelations. Can we take a seat?”

There was nowhere to sit, except the Harrads’ humble wooden stoop. He lowered himself to it and patted the place beside him. “Cuddle up, Sophie. It’s too cold to stand on pride much longer, and we have a dilemma to solve.”

She sat, and he let out a sigh of relief.

“What is our dilemma?” She might have tucked herself just a bit closer to him, or she might have been trying to get comfortable on their hard wooden seat.

“If Kit is to have the best start possible in life, he needs two parents who love him and care for him.”

She focused on something in the distance, as if trying to see the notes her brother’s playing was casting into the chilly darkness. “I cannot be both mother and father to him; neither can you.”

“I suggest a somewhat more conventional arrangement. You be his mother, and I’ll be his father.”

The arrangement was conventional in the extreme: one baby, a mama, a papa. It was the most prosaic grouping in the history of the species. The slow pounding of Vim’s heart was extraordinary, though. He fought to speak steadily over it.

“I owe you an apology, Sophie Windham.”

She closed her eyes. “You are speaking in riddles, Mr. Charpentier.”

Not my lord, not baron, not Sindal. “Vim. I would be Vim to you, and I will start with the apology. When we were in Town—”

She shook her head. “That was then; this is now. That time was just a silly wish on my part, and we stole that time for ourselves despite all sound judgment to the contrary. If you are going to apologize to me for what took place there, I will not accept it.”

He thought she might get up and walk away, and that he could not bear. Not again, not ever again. Not for himself, and not for the child, either. He found her hand and took it in both of his.

“You took the notion I was offering you a sordid arrangement before we left Town.”

She ducked her face to her knees. “Must we speak of this?”

“I must.” It was his only real hope, to give her the truth and pray it was enough. “You were not wrong, Sophie.”

Her head came up. “I wasn’t?”

“I was offering you any arrangement you’d accept. Marriage, preferably, but also anything short of that. I was offering anything and everything I had to keep a place in your life.”

“No.” She wrestled her hand free and hunched in on herself. “You were being gallant or honorable or something no woman wants to have as the sole motivator of a man’s marriage proposal before she watches her husband go boarding a ship for the high seas. That wasn’t what I wished for. It wasn’t what I wished for, at all.”

He shifted so he was kneeling before her on the hard ground, as much to stop her from leaving as because it seemed the only thing left to do.

“Tell me what you wished for, Sophie. Tell me, please.”

“I wanted—” She paused and dashed the back of her hand against her cheek. “I wished for some Christmas of my own. I wished for a man who will care for me and stand by me no matter what inconvenient baby I’ve attached myself to. A man who will love me, love our children, and sojourn through life with me. I wished, and then you appeared, and I wished—”

“What did you wish, Sophie?”

“I wished you were my Christmas, wished you could be all my Christmases.”

He wondered if maybe those shepherds on that long ago, faraway hillside had heard not the beating wings of the heavenly hosts but nothing more celestial than the beating of their own hearts, thundering with hope, wonderment, and joy.

“Happy Christmas, Lady Sophie.” He framed her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly, reverently. “Be all my Christmases, mine and Kit’s, forever and ever.”

She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and tried to draw his hands away when he brushed his thumbs over her damp cheeks.

“I cannot,” she said. “It isn’t enough that we both care for the child or that I care for you.”

He kissed her, kissed to silence her, kissed her to gather his courage. “Then let it be enough that I love you, you and the child both, and I will always love you. Please, I pray you, let it be enough.”

She drew back and studied him, and he could not stop the words from forming. “I don’t want to go to Baltimore. I don’t want to leave my aunt and uncle to continue managing when I should have been here years ago. I don’t want to avoid my neighbors because of some sad contretemps a dozen years ago, but I have wishes too, Sophie Windham.”

“What do you wish for?”

“A place in your heart. A permanent place in your heart. I wish for my children to have you as their mother. I wish for your idiot brothers to be doting uncles to our children and your sisters to be the aunts who spoil them shamelessly. I wish to make a home with you for our children, where your parents can come inspect our situation and criticize us for being too lenient with our offspring. I want one present, Sophie Windham—a future with you. That is my Christmas wish. Will you grant it?”

Lord Valentine’s impromptu recital came to a close as Vim posed his question, and silence filled the air.

“Please, Sophie?”

Vim was on his knees in the freezing darkness, and he reached for her. He reached out his arms for her just as she—thank God and all the angels—reached for him.

“Yes. Yes, Mr. Charpentier, I will be your Christmas, and you shall be mine, and Kit shall belong to us, and we shall belong to him, and my bro—”

He growled as he hugged her to him, and now, over in the church, Valentine’s choice was an ebullient, thundering chorus from the old master’s oratorio:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given… unto us, a son is given.”

* * *

How long she stayed in Vim’s arms there on the miserable cold steps Sophie could not have said. Spring could have come and gone and still she’d be reeling with joy and relief and hope.

Most of all with hope.

“Are you bothering our sister?”

Sophie raised her head to peer over Vim’s shoulder. Valentine, Westhaven, and St. Just were standing not ten feet away, and she hadn’t even heard them. St. Just had posed the question in that particularly calm tone that meant his temper could soon make an appearance.

Vim helped her to her feet and yet he kept an arm around her shoulders too.

“He was not bothering me. If you three can’t tell the difference between a man bothering an unwilling woman and kissing his very own intended, then I pity your wives.”

St. Just’s expression didn’t change, though Valentine was grinning, and Westhaven was quietly beaming at her. “And what of the child?” St. Just asked. “Sindal, do your good intentions encompass the child, as well?”

Vim’s arm tightened around her marginally. “Of course they do.” There was such a combination of ferocity and joy in his tone, Sophie couldn’t help but smile.

“That’s fortunate,” St. Just said, sauntering toward them. “You’ll be wanting this, then.” He withdrew a piece of paper from his coat pocket and passed it to Vim, who didn’t even unfold it.

“What is it?”

St. Just’s teeth gleamed in the darkness. “It’s the bill of sale for the mare and her unborn progeny.”

Vim glanced at Sophie, but she had no idea what her brother was about and was quite frankly too happy to care.

“It’s for the boy,” St. Just said. “I can’t exactly take the mare north in her present condition, and I don’t want to have come back south for her next fall, do I?”

“I suppose you don’t.”

Valentine cleared his throat. “The last thing I need is another violin. Once it’s restored, talented people will pay for the use of it in concert. Or given his moniker, the dratted baby might grow up with some musical inclinations.”

Vim looked a little puzzled. “A violin?”

“That’s very sweet of you, Val.” Sophie wrapped her arm around Vim’s waist. “We accept on Kit’s behalf.”

“Don’t suppose you’d hold a sweet shop in trust for him?” Westhaven looked positively gleeful to be making the offer. “I will always be his favorite uncle, if you do, and his cousins will hold him in particular esteem. It might also stand him in good stead when it comes time for him to court—”

“That is diabolical,” Valentine expostulated, scowling ferociously.

“It’s ducal,” St. Just agreed. “Worthy of the old man himself, Westhaven, and not well done of you.”

“We accept,” Sophie said, smiling at the dearest brothers in the world. “Don’t we?”

“Of course, we do,” Vim said. “But before our son has more wealth than his parents, I think I’d best be having another little chat with His Grace.”

“Excuse me, my lords, my lady.” Mr. Harrad stood in the doorway to his home, his slender frame exuding a certain self-consciousness. “I heard voices, and as it happens, my wife and I were hoping to speak with Lady Sophia and Lord Sindal in the near future.”

“We’ll leave you,” Westhaven said, stepping forward to kiss Sophie’s forehead. “Don’t stay out too long in this weather. Sindal, welcome to the family.”

“Welcome,” Valentine said, “but if you so much as give Sophie reason to wince, I will delight in thrashing you.” He kissed Sophie’s cheek and stepped back.

“And then I’ll stand you to a round,” St. Just said, extending a hand to Vim then drawing Sophie forward into the hug. “You’ll send the boy to me when it’s time to learn how to ride.”

It wasn’t a request, but it was sufficiently controversial that as they walked off in the direction of Morelands, all three brothers could tear into a rousing good argument about who would teach the lad to ride, to dance, to flirt, to shoot…

With a particular ache in her chest, Sophie watched them disappear into the night but realized she had one more bit of business to conclude before she could bring Vim home to her family. “Mr. Harrad, would now be a good time to chat?”

He glanced from Sophie to Vim, looking sheepish and tired. “As good as any.”

* * *

“The boy got through the whole service without making a peep.”

Vim watched as His Grace, Percival, the Duke of Moreland, beamed at the baby in his arms. “Not one peep, my love! I cannot say the same for my own boys.”

“Nor for yourself,” Her Grace muttered from her place beside her husband in the ducal carriage.

Vim exchanged a look with Sophie, to which Their Graces—eyes riveted on Kit in his gorgeous little receiving blankets—were oblivious.

“I can tell you this, Sindal.” His Grace did not glance up from the child. “Your grandfather and I discussed a match between you and one of my girls. He’d approve. He’d approve of this little fellow too.”

Her Grace looked like a woman who would very much like a turn holding the baby, but she instead posed a question to Sophie. “How did you ever talk Mrs. Harrad into parting with him?”

“We didn’t have to.” Sophie slipped her hand into Vim’s, so he took over the explanations.

“Mrs. Harrad is again in expectation of a blessed event,” Vim said. “She had not told her husband when he agreed to foster Kit, and they had rather a lot of difficult discussions once Kit was put in their keeping.”

“So things worked out all around,” His Grace said, brushing the ducal nose along Kit’s cheek. “He has my eyes, Esther.”