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    Aristocrats tended to inbreed, and even line breed, particularly on the Continent. Prince Albert’s father, on the occasion of his second marriage, had chosen his niece for his bride, a common undertaking among the pumpernickel princes, for it kept land and wealth in the family.
    The English weren’t quite that medieval, but memorizing the intermarriages of the aristocracy was sufficiently narcotic that by the time Dante’s daughter came barreling into the parlor car, his chin was on his chest, and his eyes were closed in…thought.
    Marriage was a sort of diversification, or it could be. The titled and wealthy families understood that, as had the clan chiefs of old. The parallel hadn’t occurred to Dante previously, and he didn’t like it.
    “Papa!”
    “No need to yell, Charlene.” And no need to be fully awake to catch the child up in his arms as she scrambled onto his lap.
    “Lady Joan is showing Aunt some fancy stitches. It’s boring.”
    Sewing on board a swaying train could not be easy. “Is she stitching up her cuff, then?” The cuff Dante had torn.
    “She did that first.” Charlie made herself comfortable on her father’s lap, a conquest simplified by the fact that Dante had folded the table down and propped his feet on the opposite bench. “Why did you take the decorations down, Papa? Christmas is coming!”
    Christmas had been coming since Michaelmas, according to Charlie. Shortly after the Yuletide holidays had passed, Easter would approach, and May Day, too.
    “I took them down because anybody who would drape pine swags directly over a burning parlor stove is an idiot.”
    “The decorations could catch fire?”
    The girl was tempted to suck her thumb, Dante could feel it in her, though she’d never sucked her thumb until her mother had died.
    “Almost anything can catch fire.” He took her right hand in his and kissed little knuckles that tasted sweet—also a bit sticky. “If you could choose between four small Christmas presents and one big one, which one would you choose?”
    He asked, because a discussion of fire was not conducive to a small child’s peaceful dreams, and because he enjoyed the way his children’s minds were unburdened by adult preconceptions.
    “How small?”
    “Smaller than a kitten, larger than a ring.” Charlie cared nothing for rings, yet.
    “How big is the big one?”
    “You’re gathering your facts, which is smart. The big one is smaller than a pony.”
    “Not smaller than a dog?”
    Neatly done. “Not smaller than a dog, no.”
    “I’d want both. I’ve been very good, though not as good as Phillip. He and Lady Joan were talking about bad things happening or good things happening.”
    “They were talking about risk.” Why had Dante never thought to broach such a topic with his small son? The boy would take to the subject with relish—to the extent Phillip did anything with relish.
    Dante rose, Charlene affixed to him like a particularly large neckcloth. “Let’s join their discussion, shall we?”
    “Aunt said I was to fetch you.”
    Well, of course. Because Lady Joan was pretty and single, and Margs was determined to see Dante remarried—Margs was also oblivious to the ironclad rules of Polite Society.
    “Then you’ve completed your assignment,” Dante said, making his way from one car to another. The countryside was blanketed in white now, the pines on either side of the tracks bowing branch by branch with a burden of snow. “Pretty out here.”
    “Pretty, but cold, Papa.”
    A good description of most of the women Dante had met in those fancy ballrooms, though not of Lady Joan. He left the bracing air of the platform for the other parlor car, coming upon a scene of such domestic tranquillity, it might have been some cozy sitting room in Edinburgh.
    “Ladies.” Dante put Charlie down and bowed slightly, which folly made Margs’s eyes dance. “Charlene said I’d been summoned.”
    “Charlene misheard,” Margs