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“She does. She told me you read to her every night when you’re home, that you make faces for the villain’s parts and deny it afterward, that you kept a litter of kittens in the stables once because you had told her no cats in the house.” She kept her eyes on the stage. “She volunteered all of it. I didn’t ask.”

“She volunteers everything.”

“I know.” Then, she spoke more quietly. “I think she is very glad to have someone to tell.”

He thought about that. He watched the acrobat descend from the other’s shoulders in a controlled, impossible movement, and the crowd around them released a collective gasp.

“So am I,” he said. He did not look at her when he said it, and she did not make him explain it.

Eloise, above his head, seized both fistfuls of his hair and forgot herself entirely.

The afternoon was drawing in by the time they found the carriage, and Eloise had begun telling them, for the third time—with great attention to the full sequence of events—about the acrobats.

She lasted six minutes into the return journey before her voice slowed and stopped mid-sentence, her head tipping sideways against the carriage panel. She was asleep with the boneless certainty of a child who has spent herself completely and sees no reason to resist it.

Adam leaned forward, pulled his coat from beside him, and reached across to settle it over Juliet’s shoulder. Glimpsing the flush of rosy red across her nape and ears made him want to throw all caution to the wind and pull her into his lap. Damn, if she kept tempting him like this, he really didn’t know how long he would last.

Juliet, oblivious to his inner turmoil, tucked the lapel in at her neck on the other side, without being asked. They both sat back.

The carriage moved through the evening, the river bronze and gold in the low sun behind them.

“She’s going to tell the staff every detail in the morning,” Juliet said.

“Every detail,” he agreed. “Including the juggler she said wasn’t as interesting.”

She smiled at the window. Then, after a moment, she asked, “When did you last take her somewhere like that?”

He thought about it honestly. “I’m not certain I have,” he said, and she turned to look at him. It wasn’t surprise that lit her gaze, but there was an urgency there that struck a match in his blood.

“I—I had to keep…things…safe.” He looked at Eloise sleeping across from him. “Taking her to places with color in them was not something I thought about.”

Juliet looked at Eloise, and then at the window, deigning not to speak in the moment.

“She told me today,” Adam said, “after the gingerbread woman, while you were reading that notice, that this was the best day she’d had since coming to London.”

There was a slight movement at Juliet’s throat. A small, controlled stillness before she exhaled. “Then we should do it again,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “We should.”

Eloise did not wake while he carried her up the stairs. She stirred once when Adam turned sideways to ease them through her bedroom door, made a low sound with her fingers tightening on his lapel, and went still again.

Adam stood at her bedside and waited while Juliet turned the coverlet back, then set her down.

They moved around the narrow bed without speaking. He drew the curtain to keep the corridor lamp from her face while Juliet tucked the coverlet in at her shoulder. The girl lay deeply asleep, her dark hair spread across the pillow, one hand curled loosely at her side, her face entirely at peace.

Adam watched Juliet on the other side of the bed. She was standing very still, looking at Eloise. He could not quantify it, but the love he saw shining in her gaze made his chest warm, and that warmth was slowly heating up his blood.

How…how could she love his daughter so openly like this? Surely…surely, it would have taken more time for her to get acquainted with Eloise…right?

When she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the top of the child’s head, Adam knew he was thinking nonsense in his head. He’d had the fortune of marrying a woman who actually loved his daughter.

She straightened, and when she turned, their eyes met because, by all that was holy, Adam couldn't look away from her.

He crossed to the door and held it for her, and she came through. Then it became incredibly awkward: they stood in the corridor, neither wanting to move first.

What was this?

The lamp at the far end was low. The house had the settled quiet of late evening, all its noise gone below stairs. She was looking at him. He was looking at her. Her hair had come half down from the afternoon, curling at her collar and her temple, and she stood with her hands at her sides and none of the composure she wore in crowded rooms.