She loved making love with him, as well, something Vim had come to appreciate in their few though passionate encounters. Sophie Windham was every inch a lady, but also every inch a bride in love with her prospective husband.

He sank slowly into her willing heat, the pleasure of it nigh causing his ears to roar.

“Stop that, Sophie.” He slowed down more to make his point, but this just allowed her to use internal muscles to greater advantage. “For God’s sake, you’ll unman me.”

“For about ten minutes maybe.” She set up a rhythm that had Vim’s resolve crumbling and the old bed creaking. When she started to make a telltale little whimper in the back of her throat, he gave up and let passion consume them both. It wasn’t his imagination, either. As they became more familiar with each other as lovers, as each learned the other’s sensitivities and preferences, the pleasure became greater and greater. He’d come to expect the roaring in his ears and the boiling pleasure that exploded out from his vitals and tore through his body each and every time they made love.

When he hung over her, panting and sated, when her fingernails had left an imprint on his backside, he lifted his head to peer around the room. “You really must stop accosting me like this, Sophie. I’m going to have to insist on a New Year’s wedding, lest our next child be born prematurely.”

“New Year’s is a lovely holiday—or Twelfth Night.” She sounded so satisfied, Vim had to smile.

“Stay put. I’m going to hold you to a date, my lady, if I have to be found sharing a bed with you to do it.” He eased from her body, knowing her eyes would be on him as he climbed from beneath the covers.

When he came back to the bed as naked as God had made him, his intended had considerately obeyed him—for once—and remained on her back, a rosy flush fading from her cheeks.

“You are tired,” he observed, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I do believe you were dozing during Vicar’s sermon too.”

“My eyes were closed the better to revere the wisdom he was imparting. Do not tickle me, else I shall have to seek revenge on you.”

He swabbed delicately at her intimate parts, wishing he’d lit more candles. “I love it when you seek revenge, and did I hear you mention that you must wait ten minutes while I regain my manly vigor? Surely that was an exaggeration intended to provoke me.”

“To inspire you.” She held the covers up so he could rejoin her in the bed.

“You’re going to love the place in Surrey, Sophie. We won’t be far from Westhaven, but if he presumes to call before February, I’m going to sign his blasted sweet shop back over to him.”

Vim would not allow her to miss her brothers. It was badly done of them to neglect her, but now she had a husband who knew all about traveling the realm, though of course he and Sophie would make Sidling their base.

“Hold me, please.” She pulled his arm around her middle to emphasize her point, and Vim had to wonder if any pleasure on earth compared with cuddling with his very own Sophie.

“Will you fall asleep on me now, Miss Windham?”

“No, but I will avail myself of this fifteen-minute interval to speak with you privately.”

“Five minutes.” He palmed her breasts—her marvelously sensitive breasts—and heard her sigh with the pleasure of it.

He was not alarmed that she had something on her mind to discuss. When she’d accepted his heart into her keeping, Sophie Windham had earned his trust, as well—but he was curious.

“Why do we need privacy, my love?” He levered up on his elbow to watch as a predictable softness came over her features at the endearment. He used it with shameless frequency for his own pleasure, but also for hers.

“I have some questions for you.”

Serious, indeed. He brushed her hair back from her forehead with his thumb. “I will answer to the best of my ability.”

“You know about changing nappies.”

“I do.”

“You know about feeding babies.”

“Generally, yes.”

“You know about bathing them.”

“It isn’t complicated.”

She fell silent, and Vim’s curiosity grew when Sophie rolled to her back to regard him almost solemnly. “I asked Papa to procure us a special license.”

He’d wondered why the banns hadn’t been cried but hadn’t questioned Sophie’s decision. “I assumed that was to allow your brothers to attend the ceremony.”

“Them? Yes, I suppose.”

She was in a quiet, Sophie-style taking over something, so he slid his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “Tell me, my love. If I can explain my youthful blunders to you over a glass of eggnog, then you can confide to me whatever is bothering you.”

She ducked her face against his shoulder. “Do you know the signs a woman is carrying?”

He tried to view it as a mere question, a factual inquiry. “Her menses likely cease, for one thing.”

Sophie took Vim’s hand and settled it over the wonderful fullness of her breast then shifted, arching into his touch. “What else?”

He thought back to his stepmother’s confinements, to what he’d learned on his travels. “From the outset, she might be tired at odd times,” he said slowly. “Her breasts might be tender, and she might have a need to visit the necessary more often than usual.”

She tucked her face against his chest and hooked her leg over his hips. “You are a very observant man, Mr. Charpentier.”

With a jolt of something like alarm—but not simply alarm—Vim thought back to Sophie’s dozing in church, her marvelously sensitive breasts, her abrupt departure from the room when they’d first gathered for dinner.

“And,” he said slowly, “some women are a bit queasy in the early weeks.”

She moved his hand, bringing it to her mouth to kiss his knuckles, then settling it low on her abdomen, over her womb. “A New Year’s wedding will serve quite nicely if we schedule it for the middle of the day. I’m told the queasiness passes in a few weeks, beloved.”

To Vim’s ears, there was a peculiar, awed quality to that single, soft endearment.

The feeling that came over him then was indescribable. Profound peace, profound awe, and profound gratitude coalesced into something so transcendent as to make “love”—even mad, passionate love—an inadequate description.

“If you are happy about this, Sophie, one tenth as happy about it as I am, then this will have been the best Christmas season anybody ever had, anywhere, at any time. I vow this to you as the father of your children, your affianced husband, and the man who loves you with his whole heart.”

She cupped his jaw with her hand and blinded him with her smile. “The best Christmas,” she said. “The best anybody has ever had, anywhere, at any time, until our Christmas, with our children, next year.”

It did not take Vim five minutes to commence celebrating their impending good fortune—it did not take him one minute, in fact. And Sophie was right: their family’s ensuing Christmases were the best anybody ever had, anywhere, at any time.