A Duke for Christmas by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

poor dear! That’s why you told mother your furniture wasn’t worth taking to the secondhand shops.”
    “That’s why. Odd that so terrible a thing should have happened after so many quiet days, and just before I left. It’s as though fate were confirming my decision. I couldn’t have slept comfortably there ever again, not without hearing every creak as the criminals returning.”
    “Did they steal anything?”
    Sophie smiled a little bitterly. “I had nothing whatever worth the stealing. My landlady thought that was why they ran riot—out of disappointment.”
    “Thank heaven you weren’t at home when it happened.”
    “No, I was at home very little those last days. So much to be done.” Truthfully, the attack on her home had proved to be an attack on all her memories. She’d been able to treasure a few happy ones there, like roses under glass domes, but once she’d seen the devastation left by brutal thieves, even the few happy memories left after Broderick’s desertion had been smeared and blackened.
    After a moment, Maris spoke again, very quietly. “I only wish that you could have had a child or two. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could bring our children up together?”
    Sophie pressed her fingers against her eyes, hoping Maris would think she was feeling nothing more taxing than tiredness. Hard as she found it to be brave in the daytime, night brought a new kind of attack against her bastions. Then to have her sister throw a bombshell over the walls, breaking them all to pieces, brought tears to long-dry eyes.
    “Sophie? Oh, don’t.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said, sniffing, hoping she didn’t sound as pathetic as she felt. “I daresay Broderick would have felt even more tied down and worried if
we’d had a child than he did with just me to burden him. After all, a child needs prudence and consistency and he
believed that those things were death to the creative urge.”
    “I’m about to say something very rude.”
    “Don’t. He was what he was. If I’d had more sense, I wouldn’t have married him. Since I didn’t have any sense, I must take the consequences.”
    “But not for always. You’ll marry again. Then you’ll have a worthwhile man and children and happiness, all that you deserve.”
    “Of course,” Sophie said, only to comfort Maris. In her present state, she wouldn’t trouble her with the facts. Eventually, as the years passed, Maris would accept that her sister had no intention of taking that long leap in the dark a second time. By then, with luck, Maris would be so busy with a large family and all their troubles, in romance and without, that her eternally widowed sister would never impinge on her thoughts.
    With visible and vocal efforts, Maris leveraged herself off the bed. “I don’t know about you, but I simply crave some biscuits. There are some very special ones downstairs in the biscuit barrel. Mrs. Lemon might even make us cocoa, if we ask nicely. Want to come?” “Goodness, yes, I’m absolutely starving.”
     

Chapter Six
     
    The next morning, Sophie awoke to the perfect silence of a snowy morning. She knew, even before she went to the window, that a deep batting had fallen over all, muffling sound and lending all things a pristine beauty. She threw aside the covers and scurried across the frigid floor. Throwing open the drapes, she glanced out and saw that what she’d imagined had come true.
    Standing on one foot, warming the other against her goose-pimpled calf, she gazed out with affection upon the garden. The fountain in the middle of the court looked like a tiered wedding cake with meringue-like swathes of snow hanging from the edges in the stillness of a windless morning. The stone cupid on the top looked very cold, with no covering save wings. His arrow pointed directly toward her window. Suddenly, absurdly nervous of that symbolism, Sophie stepped back, out of sight.
    Quickly she skittered over the floor to the fireplace, the whitewashed