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children. My wife decided they must be boys, and she wasn't going to stop having them until she succeeded in that."
    Zachary cleared his throat. "So you're still…"
    "Good God, no. A man can only suffer so much in the world without resorting to suicide. One more infant of either sex, and I'd put a pistol to my skull."
    "I have two brothers and a sister, myself," Zachary commented. "At times I wish there were more of us." Though lately the idea of being an only child also had its appeal.
    "More siblings? You are either mad, or very lucky."
    "A little of both, I think."
    "Ha, ha. Well said, my lord. Port or brandy?"
    "Brandy, if you please."
    Mr. Witfeld poured two snifters of brandy. "I do prefer this to port."
    With a smile Zachary took one of the snifters. "As do I."
    The Witfeld patriarch took a long swallow of the amber liquid. "I hope Caro didn't offend you with her ear comments. She can be rather… direct. Gets that from me, I suppose."
    Zachary blinked. Apparently she had either used the sketching ruse before, or she had a known ear fetish. With what he'd seen of this family, he didn't care to lay odds over which it might be. "I wasn't offended at all," he returned belatedly.
    "Thank you for that. She's one of only two girls in the house who have any sense. The other ones are so silly I'm not certain what to make of them."
    "If I might ask, why are none of them married?"
    Witfeld laughed. "Didn't you notice how they practically tore you to shreds when they caught sight of you? Imagine being a fellow coming to court one of them. All bachelors run for the hills in under a minute."
    He could understand that. If not for Aunt Tremaine, he would have invented an excuse to be out of the house by sunrise tomorrow. And he wouldn't have looked back.
    "They were friendly," he said, remembering that he was a Griffin and that Griffins were unfailingly polite. "After the artifice of London, it's actually rather refreshing."
    "If you say so." Witfeld took another drink. "For me, I'm glad to have this tiny sanctuary."
    Taking what was probably the best opening he was likely to get, Zachary leaned over to touch the sphere that had occupied his chair. "Speaking of your sanctuary, you have a very… eclectic collection. What's this?"
    "It's not a collection. They're my inventions." Mr. Witfeld gave the room a fond glance.
    "Your inventions."
    "Yes, indeed. That one, for example, is an egg transporter."
    Zachary looked at it dubiously. "I see."
    "I know it doesn't look like much, but with some tinkering it could be very useful." Witfeld stood and picked it up, lifting a small hatch in the mesh wood top. "You see, there's a second, suspended sphere in the middle. A bit of a gyroscope, I suppose. The idea is to place the sphere beneath a chicken's nest, which has a hole in the bottom. When an egg is laid it drops inside, and then the weight causes the sphere to roll down a ramp to a basket below."
    "I see," Zachary repeated, not certain whether to be amused, impressed, or worried. "Does it work?"
    "Actually, yes. The problem is that unless you only have one chicken or unless they all lay their eggs in the correct order, the first-filled sphere knocks all the other waiting ones down the ramp, which is then peppered with broken eggs." Sighing, Witfeld set the sphere down again and nudged it with the toe of his Wellington boot.
    "One egg a day wouldn't be very profitable," Zachary ventured.
    "Exactly. Ah, well. I'm still working on a solution."
    "Are all of these works in progress?"
    "Some of them are prototypes. A few of the actual pieces are in use about the estate. I'll take you on a tour tomorrow, if you'd like."
    Well, that would be different, at any rate. "Certainly." Zachary looked down at the egg-catching sphere again. "Have you considered a line of short ramps all connecting to a main one? Then it wouldn't matter which chicken produced an egg first."
    Witfeld looked at him for a moment. Usually when one of Zachary's brothers eyed him