“You hold this,” he said, “and I’ll put the pieces inside it for you.”
“Yes!” she authorized, nodding briskly, making her golden curls bounce. Ned lifted a sour look to the other two men.
“So exactly who corrupted my child to this degree? It’s bad enough that Aunt Darlington has her testing everyone’s temperature, but this new mania fortidyingis simply not at all appropriate for a pirate.”
“Don’t blame me,” Alex said, raising his hands palm out. “I might have taught her how to use a screwdriver to jimmy open a cake tin—”
“What?!” Ned said.
“—but I still don’t know where our housemaid keeps the carpet sweeper, let alone how to use it.”
Daniel huffed a laugh. In his arms, William huffed too, mimicking him in a way that reached up, took his heart, and squeezed with a painhe’d come to love, perhaps even hunger for. He smiled gently at his son, entranced by the perfect measurements of his tiny face and the uncanny depths of his eyes, which defied any scientific explanation.Damn, he thought.Don’t cry.
Looking up resolutely, he found Alex grinning at him. Embarrassed, he clenched his jaw but got only sympathy in return, the pirate’s dark blue eyes filling with a sentiment that drew him away from the other men suddenly and across the room to gloat over the baby girls cuddled together in a fleece-lined basket near the hearth.
“Would you ever have guessed he’d become so soppy?” Ned whispered.
“When has he evernotbeen soppy?” Daniel answered, and Ned choked on a laugh.
They hastily settled their expressions as Alex returned. “Thank bloody God,” he said, dragging a hand through his dark hair. “Still asleep.”
“Pirate children learn to sleep through just about anything,” Ned said, then fell into discussing vase pieces with his daughter, whose suggestions as to their potential criminal purposes made him smile proudly—and grimace a little with trepidation at the same time.
“What did you break?” came a dry voice, and they looked up to see Charlotte enter the sitting room. With her high, spiky boots and Alex’s voluminous, long black coat, she looked more piratic than all of them put together. Hands on her hips, she directed the question to Alex like a knife to his throat.
“Excuse me,” he said, affronted. “Why do you thinkIbroke something? It could have been anyone.”
Charlotte huffed a laugh. “Because I just know you’ve been showing Ned that clever new move of yours that yesterday broke the crystal swan we acquired from Lady Espiner.”
She and Alex began to quarrel contentedly. Daniel did not listen,his attention caught by Alice walking into the room.She’s here, his heart sang, hugging itself.
She lives here, replied his brain with exasperation for such mawkishness—then sent a smile out along every nerve.
“This is in disarray again,” Daniel said to her quietly, touching her unraveling coiffure as she came up beside him.
“We have been dancing,” she said.
He leaned closer. “That explains why you look like starlight and dark horizons.”
“All tidy!” Evangeline announced, toddling over to Alice with the remnants. Alice smiled, bending down to take them from her.
“Sorry,” Alex said. “My fault. I’ll get you a new one.”
“Thank you, Evangeline,” Alice said. “And please don’t worry, Alex. I confess I hated that vase, but I know Daniel liked it. Mrs. Rotunder gave it to him.”
“Charlotte and I can take you shopping for a new one,” Cecilia suggested, and behind her back Ned rolled his eyes.
“You mean stealing,” Alice said disapprovingly.
Cecilia waved this interpretation away. “Not at all. We’ll sneak into Starkthorn Castle and select one of their vases. It’s not stealing when it’s family. Thursday, perhaps? We’ll take Evangeline along for the fun.”
“Fun!” Evangeline sang out, and pointed two fingers like a gun. “Bang! Bang!” Her parents smiled at her dotingly.
“Thursday,” Charlotte agreed. “And now, time to go home.” She wrapped her arms around herself, and Daniel recognized that her senses had abruptly reached the end of their endurance for the evening. “Alex, will you bring Elizabeth and Anne?”
“Sure,” he agreed, touching her shoulder gently as he crossed again to the basket.
“We must be on our way too,” Cecilia said. “Ned, remember we have that burglary at Twinkers’ jewelry store tomorrow morning.”
