Free Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish by Grace Burrowes

Charpentier’s disturbing presence just a few doors down the corridor.
    â€œI haven’t been good, young Kit. I’ve been perfect. My conduct is held up to the young debs as exemplary. The fellows all know it’s safe to escort me anywhere, my papa has been seen patting my cheek in public, and my mama is confident my portion of charity work will suffice for the entire family’s good name.”
    She paused with the brush and peered at the baby. “You know how tiresome it is to be good all the time.”
    Kit sighed around his thumb. Sophie took it for a sigh of commiseration.
    â€œExcept I’m not perfect. I watch Mr. Charpentier’s mouth when he speaks of the sun on the Caribbean waves being so bright it makes the eyes ache. He has a beautiful mouth and a gorgeous voice. It isn’t all pomp and circumstance, like His Grace holding forth on the Catholic question. It’s…”
    She let go a sigh. She’d sighed a lot since closing her bedroom door. To her ears, those sighs were the sound of a grown woman admitting she wasn’t nearly as done with wishes and dreams as she ought to be. “Vim’s voice is warm. He has the knack of making me feel like I’m the only person who has ever listened to him. Like I’m the person to whom he must tell his stories.”
    That was so fanciful, she fell silent. Not even a baby should be told of the shifting about going on in Sophie’s middle, from a woman of common sense to a woman who, for the first time in her life, understood what it was to be smitten.
    â€œAnd to think I wanted as much solitude as I could steal this Christmas.”
    It had been wicked and daring and very bad of her not to go with her family directly out to Morelands. Every year she dutifully participated in the exodus to Kent for the holidays, and Sophie saw decades of Yule seasons spent with her aging parents, sharing fond reminiscences of nieces and nephews as they grew to adulthood.
    â€œI want to be wicked, Kit. I want to crawl off my blankets and go exploring. I want to get into trouble, but I do not want to bring trouble to Mr. Charpentier.”
    Vim looked to her like a man who’d dealt with more than his share of trouble, as if beneath all the kindness and humor in his marvelous blue eyes, there was a weariness of spirit, a burden on his heart. She wanted to ease that burden, and she wanted to do it not just with polite, ladylike, kind words, she wanted to offer him the comfort of her very body.
    She should not be thinking of Mr. Charpentier and trouble in the same breath. Sophie knew so little about getting into trouble—much less getting into trouble without making trouble—that she lay awake for a long time, wondering just how a proper lady might go about it.
    A proper lady and a wonderful, unexpected gentleman with a beautiful mouth, a gorgeous voice, and an even lovelier heart.
    ***
    Vim had fallen into the luxurious bed, thinking sleep would follow immediately, and it did, only to depart a few hours later. The storm still raged outside, but his guest room was wonderfully cozy. There were several buckets of coal waiting to be added to the fire, the bed curtains were heavy enough to block out both cold and light, and the house was quiet in the way a solid structure could be even with a winter wind howling outside.
    And yet, something woke him… a sound, a shift, something.
    From down the hall he heard a faint, lilting melody. It came to Vim through the darkness, the tempo slow enough that a tired woman could walk the floor to it, a fussy baby in her arms.
    He considered getting up, but there was no strident bawling from the child to pierce the lullaby. There was only darkness and warmth and a sweetness with the erotic edge to it men didn’t speak of when considering a mother and baby.
    He’d slept naked, a pleasure not always practical when traveling economically. And as Sophie’s voice drifted to him