“Told you it wasn’t for the faint of heart.”

There was gruff humor in Mr. Charpentier’s voice, the first humor Sophie had detected from him that morning. “Now what do we do?”

“We play.”

He lowered his hand into the water and used his thumb and middle finger to flick the baby’s chest with water. The gleeful squealing stopped, and Kit stared at the large male hand that had produced such a startling new sensation.

“He wants you to do it again.”

“You do it.” Mr. Charpentier straightened and grabbed a cloth to dry his hand, the baby’s gaze on him the entire time.

Sophie regarded the baby making a happy tempest in the middle of the washtub. A duke’s daughter did not engage in tomfoolery… but she wasn’t a duke’s daughter at that moment. She was a woman with a baby to bathe.

“Kit.” She trailed a hand through the water. “You are having entirely too much fun in there. Perhaps it’s time we got down to business.” She dribbled water down the child’s chubby arm, and got heartily splashed as Kit expressed his approval of this new game. By damp fits and starts, Sophie got him bathed, got the entire front of her old dress wet, and only realized Mr. Charpentier was largely dry when the man handed her a clean blanket to wrap the wet, wiggling baby in.

“You were no help at all, Vim Charpentier. You left me stranded at sea.”

“You managed quite well with just your own oars, Sophie Windham. Kit looks to be considering a career in the Navy.” He tucked the blanket up over the child’s damp head. “Watch he doesn’t catch a chill now. Some people think bathing unhealthy, though I can’t agree. At Kit’s age, it’s fun too.”

“But somehow, as older children, we get the idea a bath is not fun.” She used the blanket to pat gently at Kit’s face and hands then laid him blanket and all on the worktable.

Vim stood back, watching her as she put a clean nappy on the baby, dodging little feet and hands as she worked. She’d had some practice with this through the night—more practice than any tired woman wanted.

“What’s not fun,” Vim said, trailing a finger down the baby’s cheek, “is being told what to do, whether it’s a bath, sums, or Latin vocabulary. You’re getting better at this.”

“You’re distracting him, which helps a great deal. Is someone telling you what to do?” She didn’t look at him as she posed the question. His mood had been a trifle distant, though he’d been perfectly polite since joining her in the kitchen more than an hour ago. Polite but preoccupied.

“This storm is telling me what to do. It’s telling me I won’t be making any progress toward my family seat today.”

She couldn’t help it. She smiled at him, letting both relief and pleasure show plainly. “I was rather hoping you’d reach that conclusion.”

His answering smile appeared reluctant, lifting one corner of his mouth then working its way to the other. “But you weren’t about to lecture or nag or bully me. You just fed me an enormous breakfast then let Master Kit work his wiles on me.” The smile faded. “I don’t like to think of you here alone with him in this weather. What if you should need a doctor? What if you should burn your hand?”

“Worrying is seldom productive,” she said, quoting her mother and sounding—to her horror—exactly like Her Grace. She sat Kit on the table amid his blankets and started working a clean dress over his head.

Vim tidied up the little makeshift bath, hanging the now damp towels on nails in the rafters near the hearth. “You didn’t worry every time you got up with Kit in the middle of the night?”

“How did you know we were awake?”

He shot her a peculiar look from across the kitchen then went back to hanging towels. “You have a pretty voice, Sophie.”

It made no sense, but his compliment had her blushing. She’d received compliments before, on her attire, her mare, her embroidery, but her voice wasn’t something she’d purchased or made, it was part of her.

“My mother thought we should all learn an instrument,” she said. “I tried piano, but my next oldest brother is so astoundingly good at it, I put him to use as my accompanist from time to time. My whole family likes to sing, except my father. He cannot, as they say, carry a tune in a bucket.”

She finished bundling the child up, her gaze drawn to the way muscles bunched and moved under the skin of Vim Charpentier’s forearms as he worked. “What awaits you at home, Mr. Charpentier?”

“Why do you ask?” He hung the last towel on a hook and crossed to the table. “Are we reusing this water, or should I dump it?”

“You can dump it in the laundry, and you’re avoiding my question by answering it with a question.”

The single glance he flicked at her confirmed Sophie’s suspicion in this regard. He wasn’t good at evasion or dissembling—something she had to approve of—and he did not want to make this journey down to Kent.

Did not want to even discuss it.

He came back into the kitchen, rolling his sleeves down as he did. Sophie found this mundane gesture on his part inordinately interesting.

“If you’d like to catch a nap, Sophie, I can watch His Highness for a bit.”

A generous—and distracting—offer. Sophie let the topic of his journey home ease away. He hadn’t pried regarding her status; she would return the consideration—for now. “I was hoping you would watch the baby for a just a little while, but not so I can sleep. I’d like to check on Higgins and Merriweather, bring in more milk and eggs, and take the grooms some cinnamon buns and butter.”

He blew out a breath, and Sophie prepared to be Reasoned With.

“Have you looked out the window, Sophie Windham?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“Then you comprehend there’s better than two feet of snow out there and more coming down?”

“I do comprehend this. I also comprehend Higgins and Merriweather shoveled out paths between the house and the mews. The least I can do is show my appreciation.”

She lifted Kit off the table and perched him on her hip. A discussion of this nature required patience and determination, nothing more.

Vim took two steps closer to her, until she had to lift her chin to meet his gaze. “You aren’t going to back down on this. What’s the real reason you want to make this outing, Sophie?”

“What’s the real reason you don’t want to go home?”

The question was out of her mouth before she could consider its rudeness, but he was right: she was determined on her outing.

“It isn’t home.” His mouth was a flat line, his eyes bleak. “If you’ll let me do some shoveling, I will escort you and My Lord Baby to the mews. If we bundle him up, he should enjoy the change of scene.”

She considered that this was a Male Tactic, designed to keep her indoors out of guilt and concern for the child, but the disgruntlement in Vim’s expression belied that notion. “You’re sure the weather won’t bother him?”

“No more than it’s bothering me.” He turned to leave, heading for the back hallway. She let him go, because their last exchange hadn’t been quite as polite as everything that had gone before.

Still, she sensed it had been honest. She liked that it had been honest.

* * *

Vim had heard a rumor regarding certain native peoples of far northern Canada. It was said to be an article of hospitality in those parts to offer a guest the intimate use of his host’s wife, or to trade wives with friends for purposes of sexual recreation.

As Vim shoveled out paths thoroughly drifted over, he considered the hypothesis that excessive winter weather affected the humors such that prurient activity became even more enticing than usual.

Not that it had been enticing in recent memory. Not until he’d decided Sophie Windham and her foundling needed some supervision to get a proper start with each other.

He should not have given in to the urge to gratify himself the previous night, but the temptation had been rare of late, and a man didn’t want to admit such a thing could be worrisome. He shoveled that thought off into the nearest drift.

He was getting old, and by God, he did not want to spend his holidays at Sidling.

He was clear enough on that to have a path reshoveled from the house to the stables in no time. The exertion had felt good, but another form of exertion wanted to crowd its way into his imagination, one involving naked bodies and cozy beds.

He could shovel his way to Kent in no time if he allowed his mind dwell there, so he put up the shovel and let himself into the mansion’s back hallway.

“We’re ready!” Sophie’s voice sang out from the kitchen, and then she appeared in the doorway, the baby all but rolled into a rug, so snugly was he covered.

“I’ll take Kit.” Vim held out his arms, and Sophie passed along her bundle without protest.

“Thank you. Let me fetch the buns, and we can be on our way.”

She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Vim to realize Sophie had been feeling housebound too. It put him a little more in charity with life, to think he was doing her a service just by seeing her across the alley.

The bundle in his arms cooed.

“It’s winter.” Vim peeled away just enough blankets to expose baby-blue eyes. “Cold is part of it, but we’re English, so we refer to this as fresh air. Repeat after me: fresh air.”

“Gah.”

“My sentiments, as well, truth be told, but there’s a steaming bowl of porridge in it for you if you keep your nappy clean for the next fifteen minutes.”

“Bah!”

Vim was still smiling when Sophie emerged from the kitchen. Her gaze went from Vim to Kit and back to Vim. “This looks like a conspiracy in progress. What have you two been up to?”

“Plotting a raid on the pantry. Shall we brave the elements?”

“Please.” She wrapped a scarf around her ears and neck and followed Vim out the back door. When she stood with him for a moment on the back terrace, her cheeks rosy and her breath puffing white in the winter air, Vim considered handing her the baby and plunging headfirst into the nearest snowdrift.

The impulse to kiss her was that strong.

* * *

Devlin St. Just, Colonel Lord Rosecroft, propped his stockinged feet on a scarred coffee table, took a sip of lovely rum punch, and listened to his younger brothers squabbling. It was a wonderful sound to a man who had only two younger brothers left.

“I say we wait another day.” Westhaven was getting quite ducal in his pronouncements, which was an understandable tactic, if poorly advised when dealing with their youngest brother.

“I say you’re full of shit,” Lord Valentine replied with a diffidence no doubt calculated to aggravate. “The snow isn’t that deep, we’ve already tarried here a day, and all we’ve seen is some flurries and a lot of low-hanging clouds. This is Sophie we’re talking about, need I remind you?”

“Sophie.” Westhaven pushed out of his wing chair and began to pace around the inn’s private parlor, making a credible impersonation of their mutual father, His Grace the Duke of Moreland. “Sophie, the paragon of probity. Sophie, the delight and comfort of our parents’ eyes. Sophie, the sensible. Sophie, named for wisdom herself. She isn’t clinging to a tree in some enormous snowdrift, her lips too frozen to call for help. She’s ensconced in Lady Chattell’s parlor, being plied with chocolate and marzipan.”

St. Just took another sip of his punch and exchanged a look with Val intended to limit the goading. Westhaven was worried. Worried enough to be counseling sense when sense wasn’t necessarily going to carry the day. As heir to the dukedom, he’d refined worrying to a high art, and his siblings all loved him for it.

Mostly.

“Sophie is sensible,” Val said, still affecting bored tones. “She’s sensible enough not to get caught when she’s visiting the Magdalene houses in the East End. She’s sensible enough to take in every stray animal that ever pissed in a back alley and to put the vagrant humans she finds there to work in the stables. She’s sensible enough to tat lace and embroider pillowcases while fomenting the rights of women with her pin money. The storm is reported to be worse in London, and I say we push on now.”

St. Just intervened before they started yelling in the ducal tradition. “Both of you have some punch. The spices are excellent, and it calms the humors. Seasonal cheer never hurt a fraternal congregation.”

Westhaven resumed his seat, running his hand through dark chestnut hair. They all shared height and green eyes, but St. Just and Val had darker hair. This plan to meet up in Cambridge had been Westhaven’s idea, and as usual with Westhaven’s plans, a sound notion. Val had been appraising some antique harpsichords in Peterborough, Westhaven lecturing at Cambridge, and St. Just traveling south from Yorkshire—and all of them had been cordially summoned by Her Grace to put in a holiday appearance at the ducal seat in Kent.