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Leonard shook his head. “None taken. I remain in awe of Her Grace’s tireless dedication. She is, I admit, a better physician than me.”
“Nonsense,” Marina insisted. “If my uncle had suffered a broken bone, I fear I would have broken it a different way if I had tried to heal it.”
Laughter rippled around the table.
“How do you fix a broken bone?” William piped up, as he chewed heartily on a leg of chicken.
Anthony grimaced. “My boy, what have we said about talking with your mouth full?”
William swallowed pointedly. “That it is rude. But Grandpa Bernard is doing it.”
Having no grandfathers of his own, the boy had decided that Bernard would be his grandfather. Indeed, Marina was convinced that the accolade had given her uncle even more reason to live longer, for he adored William immensely.
“My fault again,” Bernard said, covering his mouth.
“What a terrible influence you are,” Harriet chided playfully, smacking Bernard in the arm. “Between the three of you, my poor William has no hope of having any manners.”
Marina raised a hand. “How, pray tell, am I guilty?”
“You ask me that when just yesterday I saw him hanging upside down from one of those trees over there?” Harriet replied, mirth shining in her blue eyes. “And he brings in all manner of plants, trailing dirt everywhere.”
“Indeed, young William, not everything can be made into a cordial,” Bernard teased, the two oldest members of the party giggling like children.
Octavia chuckled along with them. “I believe children should be half-wild. Whenever you come to visit us in Scotland, you might discover how wild children can be.”
“He will be bathing in streams and hunting for his own food in nay time, coming back with a face streaked with berries and dressed in rags. Simon can teach ye,” Malcolm said, flashing a wink at the boy.
William nodded eagerly. “I’d like that.”
As Octavia and Malcolm were only visiting for a week, they had left the children behind in Scotland, not wanting to put them through the tiresome journey there and back. But William was already talking about how excited he was to meet their children, eager to make friends.
“Perhaps next year there might be more of you to welcome at Highcastle,” Octavia said with a sly smile at Marina. “Of course, any new additions will not be climbing trees and fishing in the streams, but my girls are obsessed with babies.”
Marina almost choked on her elderflower cordial, while Anthony blinked through a mouthful of lamb and mint sauce.
“I should like a house full of great-grandchildren,” Harriet agreed.
Bernard seemed to notice his niece’s discomfort, chiming in, “Let them be. They have not been married for that long, and they are both exceptionally busy. Besides, they have William. If I have just him for a grandchild, I shall be quite content.”
The boy beamed under such praise, finishing his mouthful of chicken before he added his thoughts. “I would like siblings. Maybe… one brother and two sisters, to make it fair.”
Marina exchanged a look with her husband and rose to her feet. At the end of the table, Harriet’s hand clasped her chest, excitement rippling across her lined face.
I probably should have chosen a better moment to stand up, Marina realized, but she had done it now.
“Let us not think too much about the future, but about the present,” she said, her cheeks blazing with embarrassment. “Let us all raise our glasses and toast my uncle’s health. Let us celebrate him being well again, and let us all look forward to his long and healthy life!”
“But that is about the future,” William remarked, and gained a light poke in the ribs from his father.
Around the table, everyone else raised their glasses and smiled at Bernard, who had gone rather misty-eyed.
“To my Uncle Bernard,” Marina said.
“To Bernard,” came the chorused reply.
“To Grandpa!” William cried gleefully.
“To my niece,” Bernard said, with a fond smile.
