His lordship kept his voice down when addressing the second oldest of those children. “I am not asking your brother to come home for Christmas. A man doesn’t need an invitation to come to his own home for the holidays, much less home to the estate he’s going to inherit ere long.”

Across the family parlor from where the gentlemen sat, Lady Charlotte Elizabette’s lips pursed in an expression that presaged a telling silence when her husband escorted her above stairs later. She never scolded, never ranted, and yet, the marchioness always made her opinions known.

“Perhaps I’ll invite him, then.” Joshua suggested this possibility with the casualness of a grown man who knew exactly how to taunt his aging papa. “Or maybe I’ll offer to join him in Town, and take Abner, Silas, Pru, and Solomon with me.”

And like a seasoned papa, his lordship leaned back in his chair and contemplated his drink rather than the prospect of the holidays in exclusively female company. “Any invitation to remove Prudholm from the premises has a strong appeal. Teaching your sisters how to smoke cigars was bad enough, but experimenting with fireworks should have seen him brought up before the assizes for the toll he’s taken on your mother’s nerves.”

At sixteen, Prudholm had spent one term at Cambridge and now considered himself quite the brilliant scientist. Thank God he was the youngest boy, and his older brothers mostly kept him in line.

“Don’t you miss Elijah, Papa?”

Joshua was the family barrister. He’d been arguing with all and sundry since he’d been in dresses, but this tactic—an agile descent into pleading and sentiment—was dastardly.

“I miss your brother every day, and I pray for his well-being every night, as does your mother, who will not thank you for pressing me on this.”

“She would thank me. Mama’s too soft-spoken by half.”

If the boy only knew… except Joshua wasn’t a boy. He was a respected member of the legal profession—to the extent any member of that gang of rogues could be respected—and he was going to raise the next Marquess of Flint if Elijah continued to turn his back on his patrimony.

“Your brother and I exchange regular letters in which he asks after and I report upon the well-being of each sibling and relation in our vast and busy family,” Flint said. “He also gets copies of the steward’s reports, though I’m not supposed to know about that, and neither are you. Elijah has had many opportunities to announce that he will join us for Christmas and has not indicated a willingness to do so. I must respect his wishes in this regard.”

Joshua took on the thoughtful expression that made him most closely resemble his older brother. “You, my lord, miss him until you’re cross-eyed with it. The girls hardly recall what he looks like, and if you make good on your perennial threats to die of exasperation with your offspring, he’ll become their guardian.”

“He is heir to the title. Of course he’ll become their guardian.”

Joshua crossed long booted legs and ran a hand through the dark wavy hair her ladyship had bequeathed to all the children. “Little Gwynn makes her bow this Season.”

A man who took stewardship of his acres seriously, a man who had no patience with the ordeal of the social Season, needed another sip of stout potation before he parsed out the ramifications of this half-yawned, diabolical aside.

“You’re saying Elijah will run into his sister at some Society gathering, and there will be awkwardness.”

And dear little Gwynn—all nearly six feet of her—would be mortified not to be recognized by her brother, which was a sorry, sorry possibility given how quickly and recently she’d acquired her statuesque proportions.

“I don’t foresee any difficulty, Papa, unless she recognizes him first, which grows increasingly unlikely when she hasn’t seen him to speak of for what… ten years?”

“Nine.” And eight months, except for some chance sightings or cordial visits in Town. Where in all of creation had Elijah come by such stubbornness?

Joshua eased to his feet and ambled over to the punch bowl. The twins had pleaded a cold and gone above stairs, there to no doubt devour a lurid novel provided by their indulgent elders. The older girls were playing cards over in the corner, cheating shamelessly and gambling like sailors on shore leave—for hairpins. Pru, Abner, Silas, and Solomon were drinking more punch than they ought to and playing their own version of whist for God knew what stakes, while her ladyship presided over the whole with a serene beauty that never dimmed in her husband’s eyes.

And yet, Charlotte was sad. Damn that stubborn boy; he was making his mama sad.

His lordship rose, snatched up his empty glass, and joined Joshua at the punch bowl. “You are a rapscallion and a pestilence, Joshua Harrison.”

Joshua took his father’s cup and ladled more of the Brew of Misrule into it. “Those qualities can be inherited, Papa. Excellent punch.”

“It’s my father’s recipe, and while I will not invite Elijah to join his own family at his own home over the holidays, where any proper fellow would know he’s welcome unconditionally at any time, I can hardly take exception to correspondence between siblings that extends felicitations of the season, can I?”

Her ladyship’s needle momentarily paused over her embroidery hoop then resumed stitching. She was a demon with her needle, was her ladyship. She could conjure any scene in fabric and thread, and some of her creations were quite fanciful. Even a man whose art was limited to pen-and-ink sketches could tell that much.

Joshua took a hefty swallow of a mixture that well deserved the appellation “punch.” He tossed it back so easily his lordship felt a spike of pride.

“Elijah has eleven siblings, your lordship. That would be a lot of felicitations, if I knew where to send them.”

“Include your mother’s, and it will be a veritable deluge. I always know where your brother is, and I always have.”

The barrister’s eyebrows rose, and his lordship had the satisfaction of seeing Joshua for once looking flummoxed. To eliminate any lingering confusion, the marquess touched his glass to Joshua’s and winked.

“Here’s to a happy Christmas, Joshua, for every member of my family.” His lordship offered the words not only as a toast, but also as a prayer, the same prayer he’d been sending up for nine long years.

People lied.

Jenny assured herself of this as she joined her sister and brother-in-law in the breakfast parlor. All the people who said sitting to Elijah Harrison was a pleasant experience were perishing liars.

Sophie beamed a smile from her place at Sindal’s elbow. “Good morning, Jenny! I hope you slept well.”

Jenny had tossed and turned for most of the night, wondering how—and why—a wish to see Paris had been announced to Elijah Harrison as something far more permanent and binding. “I slept splendidly, dearest, and you?”

“Well enough.” Sophie cast a speaking glance at her husband. “Sindal, be a love and fix Jenny a plate. We must fortify her against the ordeal of the holidays at Morelands.”

Sindal rose to his blond, golden height. “Jenny, prepare to be stuffed like a goose, though the boys would have me remind you that sanctuary always awaits you here. What is your pleasure?”

To be sketched the livelong day by Elijah Harrison, even if it did leave her feeling… emotionally ravished. Wonderfully, exhilaratingly, emotionally ravished. The things she’d said to him…

“Some toast will do.”

He set a plate before her laden with toast, omelet, crispy bacon, and several sections of a Spanish orange. “Sindal, I am not going a-Viking. If I eat all of this, I’ll have to let out my seams.”

Sindal paused to kiss his wife’s crown. “One can never have too much of a good thing, and you are going a-Viking. Sophie says you’ve agreed to help with the boys’ sittings, which I’m sure Sven Forkbeard himself would shudder to attempt.”