For a moment she rocked in silence, listening to the soft roar of the fire and the sound of the baby slurping on his fingers. “Bartholomew fought under Wellington. My brother Devlin went with him, though each had his own command. Still, they kept an eye on each other, and Dev was there when Bart died. The Iron Duke himself sent a note of condolence. He commended Bart’s bravery, his devotion to duty.”

“But you are a woman, a sister, and you wish your brother hadn’t been so brave.”

“I wish he hadn’t been such an idiot. My mother was spared the details, but Devlin was honest with his siblings: Bart approached a woman he thought was available for his pleasure. His command of the language was so poor he did not understand he was insulting a lady until pistols were drawn. It’s a surpassingly stupid way to die but entirely in keeping with Bart’s nature.”

“And you are angry with him for dying like that.”

Vim’s words, quietly spoken, no blame or censure in them at all, had the ring of truth. “I am angry with him for dying, simply for dying. Bart was the oldest, the one groomed for leadership, and he would have made a magnificent patriarch.”

“Was he a magnificent brother?”

Had he been? What was a magnificent brother?

“He was. He could be awful—he threatened to chase me around with earthworms until Maggie told me to threaten to put horse droppings in his favorite pair of riding boots. I have a deathly horror of slimy things.”

“All sisters do.” He slid off his seat and took the place on the floor beside Sophie’s rocking chair, sparing a glance for the baby. “He’s not getting to sleep as quickly as I thought he would.”

“Pondering the events of the day.”

“Pondering his next bowl of porridge. So what does a magnificent brother do, Sophie?”

“Bart could make you laugh. He could make fun of our parents without being vicious, and he could make fun of himself. He could also keep a secret. My mother did not want me riding out without a groom from the time I was ten or so, and Bart knew I often eluded the grooms. He’d mount up and take off in a different direction, but I knew he was there, a few hundred yards away, shadowing me. Devlin did the same thing.”

“And you let them look after you like that.”

“I wasn’t a complete ninnyhammer. One time my pony threw me—bolted at a rabbit or something—and I tore my riding habit when I fell. Bart caught the horse before it could go thundering back to the stables without me. Dev sneaked a sewing kit down the stables so I could repair the damage before anyone was the wiser.”

She did not see him shifting, but one moment he was sitting placidly on the floor next to the cradle, his knees drawn up, his hands linked around them. The next, he’d moved a few inches so his shoulder pressed against Sophie’s thigh.

“Just when I thought I was recovering from Bart’s death, I realized Victor wasn’t going to get better. Victor sensed it before we did, but he kept this unhappy truth to himself, letting each of us accept it at our own pace. My father never quite got around to acknowledging that his son would die, and if my mother did, she wasn’t about to contradict her husband.”

“Was it a wasting disease?”

“Consumption.”

With just her fingers, she stroked his hair. His queue had come loose—it often did around Kit—and Sophie felt an ache in her middle to think she wouldn’t have another night like this to speak quietly with him, to feast her eyes on his golden splendor, to hear his voice coaxing confidences from her.

“Bloody miserable way to go.” He tilted his head so his temple rested on her leg. “He fought it, I’m guessing.”

“He fought so hard… not to live exactly, but to keep us from seeing how awful it was, struggling for breath, not being free to laugh lest it mean he started coughing, not being free to run, to ride, to do anything really. I read to him by the hour.”

“What was he like as a younger man?”

“Full of the devil.” Sophie traced the shape of Vim’s ear, a delicate, curious part of man’s body she’d never considered before. “Victor got my father’s charm and my mother’s ability to smooth over an awkward moment. He was handsome—all my brothers have the audacity to be gorgeous men—urbane, witty, graceful on the dance floor and dashing in the saddle. Victor was…”

It hurt to recall all that Victor had been. It hurt awfully.

“And then he was ill,” Vim said. He turned and rose up on his knees, slipping his arms around Sophie’s waist. “He’s the one who died at the holidays?”

She nodded, the lump in her throat making words too difficult. Vim’s hand settled on her hair, gently pushing Sophie’s forehead to his shoulder.

“Cry, Sophie. When it hurts this badly, a woman needs to cry.”

She’d cried. She’d cried buckets every time she’d left Victor’s room because he was feigning sleep just to get rid of her. She’d cried after she chased the damned leeches from his bedside, as if bleeding was going to do anything in the face of consumption. She’d cried when she heard her father railing at Victor to quit malingering and get the hell out of that damned bed. She’d cried until she wished she couldn’t cry any more ever again.

“I never cried where Victor could catch me at it.”

“You never cried where anybody could catch you at it.” His hand made slow circles on her back; his chin rested against her hair. The simple comfort of it, the acceptance, was reason enough to start crying all over again.

“Men don’t cry.” What this had to do with losing her brothers, Sophie didn’t know. Another one of life’s injustices, she supposed.

“Have you asked the brother who came home from war about that?”

“Devlin doesn’t like to speak of his years of command.” She lifted her head. “I suppose I could ask him now—he’s doing better since he married.”

And she wished she hadn’t used that word—married.

“Ask him. Men have no corner on dignity. Women aren’t the only ones who cry, but I suspect fatigue has lowered your defenses, Sophie Windham. Get you to bed, and I’ll wait for this naughty boy to fall asleep.”

He wasn’t going to come to bed with her, and Sophie wasn’t going to beg him. She instead went about her routine as if he weren’t there by her rocking chair, the firelight gilding his hair and shadowing the planes and hollows of his face. She used her tooth powder behind the privacy screen, traded her house dress for a quilted dressing gown, and took her hair down.

“I don’t suppose the coaches will be running in the morning,” she observed as she took the brush to her hair.

“Likely not. I’ll hire a stout beast and make what progress I can toward Kent. We’re bound to get some melting once the storm moves on, and then it will be nothing but mud on the lanes.”

“I will miss you.” She spoke as casually as she could, though the lump was back in her throat. “Kit and I will miss you.”

“I’ll miss you both, as well.”

She could not find the resolve to view that as positive. As tired as she was, as bleak as the evening’s discourse had been, she couldn’t view much at all as positive.

She was certain of one thing, though: when next Christmas came around, as it inevitably would, she wasn’t going to be making any fool wishes about falling in love and living happily ever after.

* * *

“It’s late.” Valentine said, toeing off his boots. “Can’t you write letters some other night?”

Westhaven didn’t look up immediately, but finished whatever profundity he was penning at the desk and then shot Val a look. “Have you considered that for our parents, seeing all three of us married in little over a year must be a little like losing us?”

Val had long since given up trying to figure out the labyrinthine corridors of his brother’s mind. It was enough to conclude the man was quietly, sometimes very quietly, brilliant, and prevaricating with him would serve no purpose.

“It felt like I was losing you when you married Anna. There I was, happily quartered with both of my brothers for once, safe from the ducal eye, well supplied with whatever treats and blandishments a bachelor might desire, your excellent Broadwood grand available for my constant delectation, and then all of a sudden, you’re rusticating with your dear wife in Surrey, and Dev has gone clear to Yorkshire to brood. If seeing him off to the Peninsula and then Waterloo didn’t feel like losing him, watching him plod north to Yorkshire certainly did.”

Westhaven stared at his letter for a moment then sanded it. “You are saying you missed us.”

“Probably trying not to say it. Next you’ll have me admitting I miss our sisters.”

Westhaven, damn him, did not accept the comment as a flippant aside.

“Your wife will help with that.”

“Ellen? They aren’t her sisters.” And now that the topic of missing people had been raised, Val felt a low, lonely ache for his recently acquired wife.

“She’ll correspond with them, she’ll make you go visit, and she’ll invite them to visit. You’re going to be a papa, which means you’ll have offspring to show off. Might even get Their Graces to make a progress out to Oxfordshire.”

“Do I want them to?”

Westhaven’s version of a smile appeared, a little turning up at the corners of his mouth, accompanied by a softening of his gaze. That smile had been a great deal more in evidence since the man had taken a wife.

“You want them to visit at least once,” Westhaven said, pushing back in his chair and crossing his long legs at the ankle. “You want the memory of His Grace sizing up your entire operation in a sentence or two. You want to hear Her Grace’s voice in the breakfast room as you come in from your stables. You want to see how your wife can handle your parents without so much as raising her voice. You want to see Her Grace cry when she holds your firstborn and see His Grace pass her the ducal hanky while he swears at nothing in particular and tries not to look anxious.”