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you’ve another on the way,” Val reminded him. “I suppose you want to leave your beloved offspring with me for a bit?”
    â€œHow did you guess?”
    â€œHe’s canny like that,” Darius said, munching on a chicken leg. “And desperately in need of free labor.”
    â€œDon’t kid yourself.” Belmont examined his hands while he spoke. “They will eat every bit as much as you would spend to hire such as them, but they do work hard, and Nick thought you might not mind some company.”
    â€œNick.” Val heaved a sigh. “He sent poor Lindsey here to be my duenna. He ought to be too busy with his new wife to meddle like this.”
    Val understood Axel Belmont was being polite, offering a way for Val to accept help—and dear Nicholas’s spies in his camp—without losing face. Well… there were worse things than taking on a pair of adolescent brothers.
    â€œI will be pleased to have the company of your sons,” Val said, opening his eyes and sitting up, “but we’d better cut that pie before they come charging back here, arguing over how to cut the thing in five exactly equal pieces.”
    â€œBetter make that six,” Darius murmured as his gaze went to the path through the woods.
    â€œSix is easy,” Val replied, but then he followed Darius’s line of vision to see Ellen FitzEngle emerging from the trees. “Six is the easiest thing in world,” he concluded, helpless to prevent a smile from spreading across his face.
    ***
    Ellen was wearing one of her comfortable old dresses and a straw hat. She was also wearing shoes, which Val found mildly disappointing. Since the day he’d first met her—barefoot, a floppy hat on her abundant, chestnut hair—he’d pictured her that way in his imagination. And though she was shod, today her hair was again down, confined in a single thick braid.
    â€œYou were drawn by the noise.” Val rose to his feet and greeted his newest guest. “Ellen FitzEngle, may I present to you Mr. Axel Belmont of Candlewick.”
    â€œMrs. Fitz.” Belmont bowed over her hand, smiling openly. “We’re acquainted. I am a botanist, and Mrs. FitzEngle has the most impressive flower gardens in the shire.”
    â€œYou flatter, Professor,” Ellen said, “but I’ll allow it. I came to see the massacre, or what surely sounded like one.”
    â€œYou heard my sons,” Belmont concluded dryly. “As soon as we cut the pie, you’ll have the pleasure, or the burden, of meeting them.”
    â€œWon’t you join us?” Val gestured toward the hamper. “Mrs. Belmont sent a picnic as a peace offering in exchange for suffering the company of her familiars.”
    â€œHow is your dear wife, Mr. Belmont?” Ellen asked, sinking onto a corner of the blanket.
    â€œProbably blissfully asleep as we speak. She will be eternally indebted to your neighbor here when I return without the boys.”
    Ellen smiled at Val. “You’re acquiring your own herd of boys. A sound strategy when the local variety could use some good influences. That looks like a delicious pie.”
    â€œStrawberries are good, no matter the setting,” Belmont rejoined. He drew Ellen into a conversation about her flowers, and Val was interested to see that while she conversed easily and knowledgeably about her craft, there was still a reserved quality in her speech and manners with Belmont. The professor was all that was gentlemanly, though he treated Ellen as an intellectual equal on matters pertaining to plants, but still, she would not be charmed past a certain point.
    And this pleased Val inordinately.
    Dayton galloped up, Phil beside him. “Did you see the springhouse? It is the keenest! You could practically live in there.”
    â€œKeenest isn’t a word,” Phil said. “It has pipes and conduits and baths and windows and all manner of