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“Is not the pride of winning enough for you lot?” Charlie pretended to be shocked.

In perfect unison, Colm, Toss, and Tobias shouted back, “No!”

Charlie turned to Artemis, a look of inquiry on his face.

But she shook her head. “This isyourscheme, Charlie. I’ll not rescue you from it.”

His grin firmly in place, he looked over at his mother. “Any brilliant ideas, Mater?”

“My most brilliant idea: to never side against Artemis.”

The Huntresses cheered that declaration. Eve’s shoulders shook with a laugh.

Charlie, good gun that he was, grinned through it all. “I may not know at the moment what the prize will be, but I will think of something. And that something will be well worth the effort to win.”

“Are we to choose teams, or will you be assigning them?” Scott asked.

“I propose that Mr. and Mrs. Greenberry be the head of one, M. and Mme Fortier will be the head of the second, with Mater the leader of the third. The... more experienced generation can undertake whatever machinations they deem necessary to create the team they each wish for.”

Aunt Penelope, standing near Duke, asked him a little under her breath. “‘More experienced generation’? By that, he means old, I assume.”

“I’d assume the same thing,” Eve said.

Duke nodded. “The Jonquils have a tendency to walk about with their foot permanently in their mouth.”

“Quite a trick, that.” Uncle Niles shook his head. “It must be brutally injurious to one’s back.”

With Duke’s parents and grandmother gone, there was so much more lightness to his aunt and uncle. To himself as well.

“I hope you will join our team, Nia,” Aunt Penelope said.

“If you’d like me to.”

Aunt Penelope put an arm around Nia exactly as a mother would a child who’d been ailing. “We’ll see you settled in our team’s wagon. And as we pass Colm, we’ll ask him to join our team. He knows Fairfield better than any of the other participants, other than his father and I. We will have a clear advantage.”

The two “more experienced” participants and Nia walked toward Colm, standing near the door.

“Unfair,” Duke called after them with a grin.

“Your aunt has been so attentive to Nia,” Eve said. “I’m so very grateful to her.”

“She lost two of her children to illness. I think she worries when other people are ill, but I think she also wants very much to help in any way she can.”

Eve leaned more fully into his one-armed embrace. “You are like your aunt and uncle in a lot of ways. You will fit into their household perfectly.”

“I always did feel more at home at Fairfield than at Writtlestone, though I made absolutely certain to never so much as hint at that in front of my parents.”

Teams were being organized all around them. But Duke was perfectly content standing with an arm around Eve. Outside of this group of dear friends, he would not have been permitted the show of affection. And in mere days, they would be counties apart for months. Even when he saw Eve again in London—Mater would be making the journey for a brief time during the Season—they would be among Society, and the rules of propriety would be far more strictly enforced. Duke meant to hold her while he could.

Mater, with Charlie and Artemis in tow, moved to join them. “Care to be on the third team?”

“I would be honored,” Duke said in the same moment Eve said, “That would be brilliant.”

“We tried to recruit Fennel,” Charlie said, “but he was too busy explaining to the Fortiers why he should be ontheirteam. Traitor!”

“Scott and Gillian would be a good addition to the third team,” Eve said.

Mater leaned a bit closer and lowered her voice. “You and I are proving shockingly well suited, my dear Eve. I had the same thought and already asked them.”