“You take the baby,” he said quietly. “I’ll bank the fire and collect his cradle. We’ll have you both upstairs before he wakens.”

That hand caressing her neck was to be a tacit touching, then. Better than nothing but little more than a memory. A pleasurable memory but not quite a happy one.

Sophie stood and took the baby from Vim, making no effort to avoid the slide of her hand along his abdomen as she did. Vim was warm and muscular, and sitting in the circle of that warmth had been a gift Sophie could not openly acknowledge. She had the sense as she cradled the child to her chest she was going to miss Vim Charpentier’s warmth for a long time after she’d managed to wish him safe journey on the morrow.

He did a thorough job of banking the fire and securing the hearth screen, but he did it quietly too. He took the cradle under one arm, picked up a single candle in his free hand, and led Sophie through the cold house to the family wing.

“Let me light your candles,” he said, stepping back to follow her inside her bedroom. The room was wonderfully warm because Vim had kept the fire going all day.

“This is a nice room,” he said, glancing around. “It looks both well appointed and comfortable.”

Perhaps he was thinking it was a fancy room for a woman who had yet to acknowledge her relationship to the Duke of Moreland, but Sophie made no reply. When Vim set the cradle by the hearth, Sophie laid the sleeping baby down and tucked the blankets around him.

“He seems worn out,” she said. Vim lit the candle by her bed then came over to light the two on each end of her mantle.

“You seem worn out, Sophie Windham. Kit can stay with me tonight, if you like.”

“Not when you have to travel tomorrow. You need your rest, while I can nap when the baby does. Good night, Vim, and thank you.”

He set his candle on the mantle and peered down at her, moving close enough that his bergamot scent tickled her nose.

“What I said earlier?”

She nodded. He’d said a lot of things earlier, but she knew exactly which handful of words he referred to.

“I can’t offer you anything, Sophie. I’m dealing with problems in Kent I can’t easily describe, but it’s urgent that I tend to them. Even if I weren’t being pulled in that direction, I have obligations all over the empire, and you’re a woman who—”

She stopped him with two fingers to his mouth.

“I want to kiss you too, Vim Charpentier.”

He looked briefly surprised, then considering, then a slow, sweet smile graced his expression. He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

A kiss, then. She’d at least have a kiss to keep in her heart. Sophie rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around him while he slid his hands along her waist to steady her by the hips. His hold was careful, gentle even, and utterly secure. When she thought he meant for them to share something just a tad more than chaste, that hold shifted, bringing her flush up against his body.

She made a sound of longing in the back of her throat, and his hold shifted again. She realized a moment too late he was anchoring her for the real kiss, for the press of his open mouth over hers, for the startling warmth of his tongue insinuating itself against her mouth.

She’d heard of this kind of kissing, wondered about it. It hadn’t sounded nearly as lush and lovely as Vim Charpentier made it. He didn’t invade, he explored, he invited, he teased and soothed and sent an exotic sense of wanting to all quadrants of Sophie’s anatomy.

He made her, for the first time in her female life, bold. She ran her tongue along that plush, soft space between his bottom lip and his teeth.

He growled, a wonderful, encouraging sound that had her tongue foraging into his mouth again, even as she laughed a little against his lips. The kiss became a battle of tongues and lips and wills, with Vim trying to insist on gentleness and patience, and Sophie demanding a complete melee.

Her hands went questing over the muscles shifting and bunching along his spine then up into the abundance of his golden hair. Bergamot stole into her senses too, a smoky Eastern fragrance that made her want to seek out the places on Vim’s body where he’d applied the scent.

She undid his queue and winnowed her fingers through his hair, even as she felt Vim’s arms lashing more tightly around her.

Against her stomach she felt a rising column of male flesh, and it made her wild to think she’d done that, she’d inspired this man to passion.

“Vim Charpentier…” She breathed his name against his neck, finding the pulse at the base of his throat with her tongue.

“Sophie… Ah, Sophie.”

Her name, but spoken with such regret. It might as well have been a bucket of cold water.

The kiss was over. Just like that. She’d been devouring him with her mouth and her hands and her entire being, and now, not two deep breaths later, she was standing in his embrace, her heart beating hard in her chest, her wits cast to the wind.

“My dear, we cannot.”

Vim’s voice was a quiet rumble against her body. He at least did her the kindness of not stepping away, though his embrace became gentle again, and Sophie felt him rest his cheek against her hair. Her mind drunk and ponderous, she only slowly realized what he was saying. He’d contemplated taking her to bed—and rejected the notion. In her ignorance, she’d been so swept up in the moment she’d given no thought to what might follow.

What could have followed.

If only.

She tried to tell herself “if only” was a great deal closer to her wishes and desires than she’d been one kiss ago. There was “if only” in Vim’s voice and in the way he held her, as if she were precious. It was a shared “if only.”

It was better than nothing.

She realized he’d hold her until she broke the embrace, another kindness. So she lingered awhile in his arms, breathing in his scent, memorizing the way her body matched up against his much taller frame. She rested her cheek against his chest and focused on the feel of his hand moving over her back, on the glowing embers of desire slowly cooling in her vitals.

He’d experienced desire, as well—desire for her. His flesh was still tumescent against her belly. Before she stepped back and met his eyes, Sophie let herself feel that too.

If only.

* * *

Vim drifted to awareness with jubilant female voices singing in his head. “Arise! Shine! For thy light is come!”

Too much holiday decoration had infested his dreams with the strains of old Isaiah, courtesy of Handel.

Though somebody was most definitely unhappy.

He flopped the covers back and pulled on the luxurious brocade dressing gown before his mind was fully awake. In the dark he made his way down the frigid corridor and followed the yowling of a miserable infant to Sophie’s door.

“Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms.

“He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.”

Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality.

“Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.”

“Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.”

Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.”

She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room.

“None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.”

He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness.

Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving.

“Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.”

The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively.

Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby.

“This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.”

“Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.”

The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them.

“He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.”