Elinor’s father and uncle were in good spirits for the whole of it, which Hugh was beginning to sense was simply their way. He’d only been among them for a few days, but among his hosts he had yet to see anything but generosity of spirit and cheerful countenances. The extended family held a variety of expression and natures, as evidenced by Mr. Perry currently reciting some proverb or other quite loudly, but the brothers Asheley were never anything less than warm and content.

“Your family seems to be full of the best sort of spirit, Uncle Dough,” Hugh heard himself murmur with a smile.

“Feel free to just call me Dough,” the older man replied, exhaling a cloud of fog in the cold air. “Or Donald, even, if you want to know. I don’t think anybody in the family remembers that, as I have been Dough since the first of the children were little.”

Hugh laughed easily. “What a name to have earned!”

Dough shrugged his broad shoulders. “You earn all sorts of names from children, Sterling, as you will come to discover yourself one day.”

“Fairly soon, actually,” Hugh replied, finding himself smiling. “My brother’s wife is due to be delivered of the first of their children directly.”

“Prepare yourself for the creativity of children,” Dough told him as he turned with a broad smile. “It’s a marvelous source of amusement.”

Hugh nodded at that. “I will keep that in mind. Now, where do you fit in among the siblings?”

“I’m not.”

“Not what?” Hugh asked with a frown.

“A sibling,” Dough clarified, his eyes twinkling in the winter light. “I am not sibling to George, Howard, James, and Catherine. I’m a cousin, actually. And a rather obscure one. At least one time removed, and the exact family line is a bit muddled. We tend not to discuss it, as it only confuses the lot of us.”

Interesting, indeed. Elinor was rather fond of her uncle Dough, he could safely say, and for him to not only not be a direct uncle, but also a more obscure relative than could be explained easily?

Sounded rather like the mass of confusion that was the Sterling family, actually.

Hugh began to chuckle at memories, names, and faces he had not considered in months, if not years. Cousins and extended relations that had been part of his childhood, but rarely in his adulthood, all forming distinct impressions in his life. They’d never shared holidays together, he could say that safely, but every now and then, they would gather at the largest estate in the family, wherever that happened tobe at the time, and raise all manner of hell and confusion in the most enjoyable ways.

“Amused by us, are you?” Edmund Asheley asked as he came over, a polite smile on his face. “We are a comical gathering, I’ll allow.”