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“Did she like it? Playing?”

“Music was the thing she loved most,” he said. “She was happiest with it.”

Eloise absorbed this quietly, straightening the doll’s hair with two fingers. “I’m glad you told me,” she said. “About the gold in her eyes and the pianoforte.” She looked at him. “You never told me before.”

He did not have a ready answer for this. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

He looked at the burned-down candle. It was not a simple question, and Eloise had never been a child who accepted simple answers she could tell were wrong. “I think,” he said, “that I did not know how to speak of her without it being only sad. And I did not want the only thing you knew of her to be a sad thing.”

Eloise hummed, then looked up at him again. “But now you can?”

“A little better,” he said.

Now he could manage it for a little bit…because of Juliet. Because she’d listened to him without judgment, and now he thought, maybe Eloise wouldn’t blame him.

She did seem to think this was a fair answer, because she leaned sideways and put her head against his arm, the doll held to her chest, all without a word. Adam’s heart started to beat again, sending a flush up his cheeks, and he slowly put his arm around her.

“Papa?” she said after a while.

“Mm.”

She tipped her head up to look at him, her chin pressing into his arm. “Juliet makes you different.”

He looked down at her. “Different how?”

She thought about it, her brow creasing. “You used to look like you were waiting for something bad to happen,” she said. “You’d go very still when there was a noise at night. You looked like that a lot.” She smoothed the doll’s skirt once. “You don’t look like that when she’s in the room.”

He did not know what to say to this, which was perhaps the most accurate proof of the point.

“And you laugh now,” Eloise added.

He had no answer for this either. He put his hand over the top of her hair, and she pressed into it and closed her eyes.

The candle wavered. She had her arms loose around the doll, and he could feel her breathing slow toward sleep, then she opened her eyes again with the air of someone who had remembered something that couldn't wait.

“Papa?”

“Yes.”

“Are you and Juliet going to have a baby?”

Damnation. He looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall his patience. “Eloise.”

“I know you said we have to wait.” She sat up slightly, her chin lifted. “But Juliet said she would like a whole houseful. She said it to herself; she didn’t think I heard.”

“You hear everything.”

“I know.” She was entirely unrepentant about this. “She said a whole houseful. And she looked very happy when she said it.” She paused, watching his face closely. “I think she meant it.”

He said nothing, and she seemed to take his silence as enough, settling back against him and closing her eyes again.

He tucked her in. He straightened the coverlet and set the doll beside the pillow where she directed, and blew out the candle stub. He pressed his mouth to the crown of her head, her hair warm against his lips.

At the door, he stopped.

“Papa.” Her voice came again, but now it had blurred to the edge of sleep. “I’m glad you let her stay when she came.” There was a pause, her words going slower. “But I’m really, really glad that you’re my papa. I love you.”