“We could ask Baldwin,” Fernando said. “He is in Berlin, after all.”
“Not yet,” Matthew said.
“Does Diana know you’re looking for Benjamin?” Marcus asked.
“No,” Matthew said as he headed back to his wife with a plate of food from the Connaught.
“Not yet,” Andrew Hubbard muttered.
That evening it was difficult to determine who was more overjoyed at our reunion: Jack or Lobero. The pair got twisted in a tangle of legs and feet, but Jack finally managed to extricate himself from the beast, who nevertheless beat him to my chaise longue in the Chinese Room and leaped onto the cushion with a triumphant bark.
“Down, Lobero. You’ll make the thing collapse.” Jack stooped and kissed me respectfully on the cheek. “Grandmother.”
“Don’t you dare!” I warned, taking his hand in mine. “Save your grandmotherly endearments for Ysabeau.”
“I told you she wouldn’t like it,” Matthew said with a grin. He snapped his fingers at Lobero and pointed to the floor. The dog slid his forelegs off the chaise, leaving his backside planted firmly against me. It took another snap of the fingers for him to slide off entirely. “Madame Ysabeau said she has standards to maintain, and I will have to do two extremely wicked things before she will let me call her Grandmother,” Jack said.
“And yet you’re still calling her Madame Ysabeau?” I looked at him in amazement. “What’s keeping you? You’ve been back in London for days.”
Jack looked down, his lips curved at the prospect of more delicious mischief to come. “Well, I’ve been on my best behavior, madame.”
“Madame?” I groaned and threw a pillow at him. “That’s worse than calling me ‘Grandmother.’”
Jack let the pillow hit him square in the face.
“Fernando’s right,” Matthew said. “Your heart knows what to call Diana, even if your thick head and vampire propriety are telling you different. Now, help me bring in your mother’s present.”
Under Lobero’s careful supervision, Matthew and Jack carried in first one, then another cloth wrapped bundle. They were tall and seemingly rectangular in shape, rather like small bookcases.
Matthew had sent me a picture of a stack of wood and some tools. The two must have worked on the items together. I smiled at the sudden image of them, dark head and light bowed over a common project.
As Matthew and Jack gradually unwrapped the two objects, it became clear that they were not bookcases but cradles: two beautiful, identically carved and painted, wooden cradles. Their curved bases hung inside sturdy wooden stands that sat on level feet. This way the cradles could be rocked gently in the air or removed from their supports and put on the floor to be nudged with a foot. My eyes filled.
“We made them out of rowan wood. Ransome couldn’t figure out where the hell we were going to find Scottish wood in Louisiana, but he obviously doesn’t know Matthew.” Jack ran his fingers along one of the smooth edges.
“The cradles are rowan, but the stand is made from oak—strong American white oak.” Matthew regarded me with a touch of anxiety. “Do you like them?”
“I love them.” I looked up at my husband, hoping my expression would tell him just how much. It must have, for he cupped the side of my face tenderly and his own expression was happier than I’d seen since we returned to the present.
“Matthew designed them. He said it’s how cradles used to be made, so you could get them up off the floor and out of the way of the chickens,” Jack explained.
“And the carving?” A tree had been incised into the wood at the foot of each cradle, its roots and branches intertwined. Carefully applied silver and gold paint highlighted the leaves and bark.