“As usual,” he replied, “Mimsy is correct.” Mimsy was the children’s nanny and nurse, and a candidate for sainthood if he’d ever met one.
“She did not know what their middle names might be.”
Gregory frowned. “I don’t think we got ’round to deciding upon that.”
Katharine looked at him with an unsettlingly direct gaze. “Before Mama needed her nap?”
“Er, yes,” Gregory replied, his gaze sliding from hers. He was not proud that he’d looked away, but it was his only choice if he wanted to keep from crying in front of his child.
“I think one of them ought to be named Hyacinth,” Katharine announced.
He nodded. “Eloise Hyacinth or Francesca Hyacinth?”
Katharine’s lips pressed together in thought, then she said, rather firmly, “Francesca Hyacinth. It has a lovely ring to it. Although . . .”
Gregory waited for her to finish her thought, and when she did not he prompted, “Although . . . ?”
“It is a little flowery.”
“I’m not certain how one can avoid that with a name like Hyacinth.”
“True,” Katharine said thoughtfully, “but what if she does not turn out to be sweet and delicate?”
“Like your Aunt Hyacinth?” he murmured. Some things really did beg to be said.
“She is rather fierce,” Katharine said, without an ounce of sarcasm.
“Fierce or fearsome?”
“Oh, only fierce. Aunt Hyacinth is not at all fearsome.”
“Don’t tell her that.”
Katharine blinked with incomprehension. “You think she wants to be fearsome?”
“And fierce.”
“How odd,” she murmured. Then she looked up with especially bright eyes. “I think Aunt Hyacinth is going to love having a baby named after her.”
Gregory felt himself smile. A real one, not something conjured to make his child feel safe. “Yes,” he said quietly, “she will.”
“She probably thought she wasn’t going to get one,” Katharine continued, “since you and Mama were going in order. We all knew it would be Eloise for a girl.”
“And who would have expected twins?”
“Even so,” Katharine said, “there is Aunt Francesca to consider. Mama would have had to have had triplets for one to be named after Aunt Hyacinth.”
Triplets. Gregory was not a Catholic, but it was difficult to suppress the urge to cross himself.
“And they would have all had to have been girls,” Katharine added, “which does seem to be a mathematical improbability.”
“Indeed,” he murmured.
She smiled. And he smiled. And they held hands.
“I was thinking . . .” Katharine began.
“Yes, pet?”