Grace Burrowes - Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish

“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.