Page 59 of A Foolish Flirtation

Emmie flushed. “Of course! You are always impeccably turned out, my lord,” she said, embarrassed she had been caught staring.

Teddy tugged at Emmie’s sleeve. “Don’t you think, Mama, that it would have been better if Baby Heracles had tamed the snakes his stepmother sent instead of strangling them?”

“I do,” Emmie agreed at once, glad of the distraction. “Then he would have had pet snakes. Only think how impressive a baby with pet snakes would have been. I daresay his nurse would have fainted on the spot.”

Teddy nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve always thought so. I’ve named these two Fang and Fitz,” he said, stroking the stone snake heads. “Heracles could have given Fitz to his twin brother, Iphicles. Then they would have had a snake apiece.”

“Heracles had a twin brother?” Emmie asked with interest. “Why am I only just hearing of this, and why, pray, do you not have a statue of Baby Iphicles?”

“Because,” Jeremy interrupted, sounding amused, “Iphicles was a mere mortal child and not the son of a god. He cried when the snakes appeared and was entirely useless in subduing them.”

“But wouldn’t that have given the statue a pleasing asymmetry?” Emmie protested. “One baby laughing and playing with the serpents, the other crying and cringing away from them.”

“The baby did not play with the snakes until they were dead,” Jeremy pointed out dryly. “The two of you are creating a wholly new fiction around snake-taming babies.”

“A jolly fine fiction,” Teddy put in. “I’m going to pretend that’s what really happened from now on.”

“So am I,” Emmie decided. “It’s a far superior story. Perhaps the stepmother really sent the snakes to be their pets all along, and the gesture was simply misunderstood. Stepmothers are always doing rotten things in stories. I suspect they are much maligned.”

“Hera was not precisely Heracles’s stepmother, and she was nothing at all to Iphicles,” Jeremy objected, frowning faintly. “You two seem to be deliberately confusing the issue.”

“What do you mean, she was nothing to them?” Emmie asked. “Did she not nurse them at her breast? Did she not give Heracles his fantastic strength?”

“She did not nurse Iphicles,” Jeremy responded firmly. “And why are we loitering on these steps instead of proceeding into the hall?”

Hastily, Emmie descended the last few steps and Teddy slipped his hand into hers. “Let’s us two pretend that was so, Mama,” he whispered, giving her hand a squeeze. Emmie nodded in perfect agreement.

“You should not indulge him in these flights of fancy,” Jeremy groaned. “His knowledge of the classics is already sadly patchy.”

“I’m afraid it is too late,” Emmie said, lifting her chin. “For I have already decided to be a very encouraging sort of stepmother. Besides, I think his imaginings quite charming.”

“You just wait,” Jeremy warned but there was a smile playing about his mouth while Teddy looked smug.

Emmie turned about to cast her eye over the grandeur of the magnificent hall. The floor was of black and white marble and the ceiling, which she had noticed the previous night, illustrated with the pantheon of Mount Olympus. All about were strewn various treasures displayed on ormolu decorated tables with elaborately carved legs.

Feeling rather overwhelmed, Emmie turned instead to the nearest portrait. “And who is this imposing gentleman?” she asked.

“That,” said Jeremy, “is my father, the fourth viscount.”

Emmie’s interest increased. “He looks rather formidable,” she said, noticing the sitter’s dark good looks and sardonic expression.

“Papa looks nothing like him, does he?” Teddy chimed in.

“No,” she agreed, sneaking a look at Jeremy’s blond perfection. “Not at all.”

“You shall see who does when you meet my uncle Nye,” Teddy promised.

Emmie briefly wondered what this relationship was that Jeremy had promised to explain at some later point.

“Let me draw your attention to the first and third Lords of Faris,” Jeremy said, moving on and gesturing toward a couple of busts sat atop two Roman-style plinths. Emmie joined him and studied their profiles in thoughtful silence.

“That’s not what their hair was really like,” Teddy hastily explained. “They wore wigs in those days,” he added disapprovingly.

Emmie turned back to Jeremy. “I think you have inherited the third viscount’s nose, my lord.”

“Do you think so?” He stepped up to the plinth and turned his head obligingly so they could compare.

“The very nose!” Emmie pronounced and even Teddy looked impressed.