“Chaotic.” Elizabeth’s tone was impressed. “I like it.”
“You threw your plate of biscuits across the room,” Viv pointed out.
“Everything in this house gets thrown across the room,” Elizabethsaid. “I was responding in keeping with the theme. Besides, we have more biscuits. Is your tarantula hungry?”
“She ate this morning.” Viv held out her hand for Sally. “I’m guessing your nephew rarely comes to visit. This house doesn’t seem particularly safe for children.”
“Dorian can’t even cross the threshold,” Elizabeth said with pride. “Our home is designed to be one thousand percent impervious to babies.”
“You don’t want children?” Viv asked in surprise.
“I would rather eat your personal defense tarantula alive,” Elizabeth answered cheerfully. “Stephen feels the same way.”
“I’m not eating a wolf spider,” said Stephen.
His wife smiled. “Not even if doing so would magically ward us from now until eternity against any possibility of spawning offspring?”
Stephen turned to Viv. “Can I borrow your spider?”
Viv tucked her reticule away protectively. “Not on your life.”
“Doyouwant children?” Elizabeth asked with curiosity. “Have you discussed how many to expect with Jacob?”
Viv set down her empty plate in haste. “I haven’t even kissed Jacob!”
“Yet,” came Jacob’s voice from the sofa behind her.
Viv spun around in mortification, her heart pounding.
No one was there.
Elizabeth cackled. “You were about to kiss him right then, weren’t you?”
“My wife loves to throw her voice,” Stephen said apologetically. “I can’t stop her.”
“Nothing and no one can stop me from anything,” said Elizabeth. “Except sometimes my hip. And my back.”
Stephen raised his brows. “You only ever admit that in front of family.”
Elizabeth waved a hand. “Miss Henry is clearly destined to—”
“Vivian,” Viv corrected as she sprang to her feet. “And if this is the way the conversation is headed, then I am going in the opposite direction.”
“Come here and kiss me,” called Jacob’s eerily accurate voice from behind the sofa. “If we make babies, you’ll never have to visit Elizabeth and Stephen’s home ever again.”
Viv didn’t look back.
Elizabeth’s delighted chortles followed her all the way out the door.
Only one more stop remained so that no one could claim Viv hadn’t given every single Wynchester a fair chance to display their true character.
“This is for you, Quentin,” she muttered under her breath.
As Viv approached the Duke of Faircliffe’s Mayfair terrace, a human butler opened the front door. She expected that her calling card—VIVIANHENRY,PLAYWRIGHT—would not be enough, and had mentally prepared several arguments to convince the butler to at least inform his mistress of her presence.
The butler didn’t even glance at her card. To her surprise, he smiled the moment she spoke her name and immediately welcomed her into the terraced home without even dashing inside to enquire whether his employers were receiving guests.
He led her into a dining room the size of her and Quentin’s entire home. In the center of the vast room was an equally oversize table, upon which cluttered a cornucopia of bits and bobs. There were flowers and ribbons and lace and pearls and feathers and odd fruits dipped in wax.
