“Are you teasing your poor mother again, monster?” he asked with a smile.
“She can’t catch me,” Selina said with a self-satisfaction that made him laugh. “Nobody can.”
“Then what are you doing in my clutches?”
She stared up at him, her black Thorne eyes alight with devilry. “I wanted you to catch me.”
“That makes all the difference,” he said solemnly.
“I should have married Desborough,” Marianne said breathlessly, reaching his side and leaning in for a kiss. “He’d have given me perfect children instead of these hellions.”
The boys stopped their game and watched their parents curiously. “Perfect children are boring,” Peter announced.
“I was a perfect child and I certainly wasn’t boring,” his mother told him, reaching out to ruffle his hair.
“None of the Thornes were perfect,” Elias said.
“And we’re all Thornes,” Michael said calmly.
“You are indeed,” Marianne said. “I blame your regrettable behavior entirely on your father.”
“What’s gettable?” Selina asked.
“It’s a barrel of fun,” Elias said.
His wife regarded him with an unimpressed expression. “See if you believe that after they’ve had you at their mercy all morning.”
Elias tightened one arm around his daughter’s slight weight and reached to touch his wife’s lovely face. “I could handle this lot with my eyes closed.”
“I’m sure you could,” she said drily. “And you’d only look around when the house collapsed on top of your head.”
He glanced down at his children and felt a familiar sensation, as if his heart was so overloaded with love it was likely to burst. “There are kittens in the stables.”
Michael, who loved animals above all things, dropped his wooden sword and started to wriggle with excitement. “Bella had her litter?”
“She did.”
Marianne looked with fond exasperation at her offspring. “Be gentle with Bella. Take it from me—she’s had a very long morning.”
“Can we go and see?” Peter asked.
“Yes. I want to talk to your mother.”
Michael grimaced with disgust. “That means you’re going to kiss her.”
Elias laughed. “It does indeed. So run away before you have to witness the horror.”
“Come on, Michael,” Peter said, taking to his heels and darting through the archway. Michael followed at a gallop.
“Papa, let me down,” Selina complained, squirming against him.
“Can I have a kiss first?” Elias asked. “You don’t want your mother to have all the fun, do you?”
Selina conquered her impatience long enough to suffer a kiss on the cheek. Usually her father was the most important object in her life, but the lure of Bella’s kittens outweighed even Elias’s charm. The moment her feet touched the ground, she zipped after her brothers.
“They are hellions, aren’t they?” Elias said.
“Don’t sound so proud of yourself.”