Nora could not recall the last time she’d had so much unbridled fun. Heath and his siblings had her in tears of laughter.

That she constantly confused the sixes with the nines did not matter. The object of the game seemed less about winning and more about tossing cards in one’s opponent’s face when they failed to match suit.

It was exactly the sort of game one might expect bored siblings to invent some drizzly afternoon when it was too wet to go outside. Indeed, the cards seemed more likely to be in the air than to be in any person’s possession.

Nora loved that the Grenvilles had never stopped playing it in favor of more grown-up games like Whist or Casino. This was no true competition, but rather an excuse for family to spend time with each other.

“Are you going to the balloon launch next month?” Camellia asked her siblings.

Dahlia shook her head. “Faith and Chris are going, which leaves me on boarding school duty.” She turned to Bryony. “Care to come play your violin for a few hours?”

“I’ve an engagement, but I’ll make it up to you,” Bryony promised. “New bonnets for all the girls.”

Dahlia’s eyes shone. “That will be a wonderful treat.”

Nora’s astonished gaze bounced between them as they conversed. How wonderful it must have been to grow up a Grenville! So much love, so much wealth, so many siblings. Their home seemed like heaven.

As the eldest—and beleaguered sole male—Heath could have adopted an authoritarian attitude toward his younger sisters, or ignored them completely. Instead the clan quite obviously were the best of friends.

“How goes the new dancing instructor?” he inquired.

Dahlia brightened anew. “Do you miss your post? One can always make room in the schedule for more dancing.”

Nora sighed at the obvious love they shared.

Of course Mr. Grenville would be amazing with his family. When wasn’t he splendid? She would not have fallen in love with the man if he were not.

Reality crept in from the shadows. As much as she would enjoy laughing around this table with them forever, the Grenvilles were not her family. This was not her home. She did not truly belong.

Their stories proved it.

“I despise soirées,” Bryony groaned. “Please don’t make me go.”

“You love soirées,” Dahlia corrected. “You hate being forced to submit to five hours of hot tongs before Mother concedes defeat to your inability to hold a ringlet.”

“Nora’s curls are the perfect compromise,” Camellia put in. “Neither stick-straight nor sausage curls.”

“We can’t all be as gorgeous as Nora,” Bryony grumbled. “Perhaps she could go in my place.”

“Or just teach you how to arrange your hair,” Dahlia said dryly, with a wink in Nora’s direction.

Her lungs froze. Since coming to London, Mr. Grenville had been the first non-relative to respect her as a person, and thus far the only person to treat her as if she were an equal.

Until today. Now there were three more people acting as though Nora were one of them.

She could scarcely believe her turn of fortune.

Her fingers shook as she clumsily shuffled the cards and set them back in the middle of the table. When the top half slid to the side, she quickly righted it.

No one mocked her. No one even noticed; the Grenvilles were too busy teasing one another.

“Do not go to that masquerade,” Camellia told Bryony emphatically. “Look what happened to me.”

“Or do.” Dahlia gave Bryony a conspiratorial grin. “Look what happened to Camellia.”

“Nora would never attend such a party,” Camellia scolded her sisters.

“Nora may have attended so many that she’s become bored with scandalous masquerades altogether,” Dahlia countered.

“What’s this?” Nora’s mouth dropped open in mock outrage. “When did I get dragged into your nonsense?”

“When you walked in the front door,” Bryony replied, eyes twinkling.

Dahlia offered Nora a commiserating pat on the shoulder. “It’s what we do.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Camellia added with a laugh. “It’s not like we ever change.”

“You ought to consider changing,” Mr. Grenville grumbled. “How’s a gentleman to uphold his sterling reputation with you three miscreants in the family?”

“Upholding reputations is your job, not ours,” Bryony pointed out with an innocent flutter of lashes. “My job is to make you work for it.”

“Mine, too,” said Dahlia with a grin.

“Mine, too,” Camellia agreed. “Now can we get back to the game?”

Mr. Grenville burst out laughing. “I think I won ten minutes ago.”

“Didn’t see it, so it didn’t happen.” Bryony lifted the top half of the newly shuffled deck and began to deal. “Double your wagers, ladies.”

Camellia widened her eyes. “Why, Miss Bryony Grenville. Ladies don’t wager.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Grenville said sternly.

Dahlia tossed a gold sovereign onto the table. “I’ll wager Heath loses.”

Bryony’s grin widened as she tossed an extra coin to the table. “I’ll wager Miss Winfield is the only one who walks out of this room a winner.”

Nora couldn’t agree more. She already felt richer.

“I’m afraid my reticule hasn’t any coin.” She cast a sideways glance at Mr. Grenville. “I wager Mr. Grenville’s cravat.”

“You cannot wager a fellow gambler’s cravat,” he protested.

“And you can’t call him Mr. Grenville,” Bryony put in with a laugh. “He’s Heath, I’m Bryony, this is Dahlia, and that’s Camellia.”

Nora’s cheeks flushed with pleasure at the unexpected honor of first-naming them so quickly. “And I’m Eleanora, but friends call me Nora.”

“You consider it friendly to wager an innocent bystander’s cravat?” Mr. Grenville—er, Heath—said with faux hurt.

“You don’t know how to tie them anyway,” she replied sweetly, to the delight of his siblings.

The next quarter hour passed in a blur of flying cards, sibling rivalry, and tears of laughter on all sides. Being with the Grenvilles was just like being at home with her own family. Nora gazed at them in contentment. Her brother Carter would fit in perfectly with a crowd like this.

The Grenvilles were utterly mad and rowdy and fun and breathtakingly genuine without airs of any sort. For the first time in weeks, Nora was among a group of people with whom she felt like she could finally be herself.

Almost herself.

Her happiness faltered. She would have to remain the Nora she presented to the world, rather than the artist she was in private. The Grenvilles were the last people she could confess her secret identity to, particularly since all of them were sworn enemies of the caricaturist.

Yet she yearned to belong more than anything. She wished she could have moments like this, a tribe like this, a life like this. Her stomach churned. She hated that she could not tell them the truth and still be welcome at the table.

“What do you think?” asked Dahlia as the latest storm of playing cards rained down about them. “Should we do it?”

“Absolutely.” Camellia beamed at Nora. “It’s time.”

Nora’s heart skipped. “Time for what?”

“Time to make it official,” Heath said gruffly. “No escaping now.”

Her pulse thrummed. “Make what official?”

Dahlia climbed up on her chair and affected a regal stance. “Miss Eleanora Winfield, known to her friends and family—”

“And us,” whispered Bryony.

“She’s getting there,” Camellia hissed back.

“—and us as Nora,” Dahlia continued from high atop her makeshift throne. “I now pronounce you—”

Camellia and Bryony quickly gathered the loose cards from the table top.

“—an honorary Grenville!” Dahlia finished with a crescendo.

Bryony and Camellia baptized Nora with a deluge of fluttering cards. “An honorary Grenville!”

The garbled sound in Nora’s throat was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She turned wide eyes toward Heath in question.

He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a warm kiss to the back of her fingers. “You’ve been sworn in. Like it or not, you’re one of us now.”

The backs of Nora’s eyes stung. She stared back at all of them speechlessly.

“Don’t think you’re special,” Bryony teased. “You’re the fourth.”

Nora felt incredibly special. She gave a wobbly smile. Nothing could lessen this moment. “Who was first?”

“Faith Digby,” Heath answered. “Dahlia’s partner in crime.”

“In charity,” Dahlia corrected him. “Faith has been my bosom friend since we were small. Now we run a boarding school together.”

“Very Grenville of her,” Camellia agreed.

Nora could only imagine. “And the second?”

“Simon Spaulding,” everyone but Dahlia answered in a singsong voice.

Though she didn’t speak a word, the bright red of her cheeks spoke volumes.

“Oh, and Lord Wainwright, of course,” Bryony said. “Everyone needs a Lord of Pleasure in the family.”

Camellia’s cheeks pinkened in mortification.

Nora suddenly wanted to sink through the floor.

“Thus, it was past time for my turn.” Heath gazed at her warmly. “Welcome to the family, Nora.”

Her breaths were shallow as she forced herself to smile back.

“I hope we haven’t frightened her off,” Dahlia whispered to Bryony.

“I won’t allow you to.” Heath lifted Nora’s fingers to his lips for a second kiss. “I am hoping to make her presence permanent.”

Her heart stopped. Heath hadn’t been planning on making her an offer to become his mistress. He wanted her to be his wife.

A bolt of longing sharp enough to scald shot through her at the idea. Courted. By him. Her heart ached.

There was nothing she wanted more than to be Heath’s wife, to be part of this wonderful madcap family, to live happily ever after.

But she would lose him if she were honest with them. Lose all of them, all of this.

Nor could she wed him with such a secret hiding between them. He would never forgive such a betrayal. She would never forgive herself if she hurt any of them more than she already had.

Her skin prickled with cold sweat. It took all the courage she had to ruin a moment so perfect, but she forced herself to speak. “I think…”

A footman strode into the room. “Lady Grenville requests the honor of her children’s company.”

“Mother,” Camellia gasped. “I forgot all about tea.”

“I’ve never in my life forgotten tea,” Bryony said with feeling.

Heath leapt to his feet and offered his elbow to Nora. “Come, meet my mother in truth this time.”

Nora swallowed her protest. She had no choice but to take the arm of the man she loved and allow him to lead her to a mother she would never have. This was not the moment to make an uncomfortable scene for Heath. They could speak later, in private.

If such were even necessary.

More likely, Lady Grenville would put paid at once to the fantasy of her husband’s heir courting a sheep maiden from the West Midlands.

Nora’s heavy stomach churned at the idea of losing them all. She’d somehow fallen in love with Heath’s entire family in the space of an afternoon.

No wonder he would do anything in his power to protect them. Particularly from people like her.

Even if she had not involved his sister in one of her caricatures, a courtship with Nora would ruin more than Heath’s social standing. It would ruin his career. The name he had so painstakingly built for himself was as the man who kept the ton scandal-free.

She couldn’t ruin that for him.

“Is Father downstairs?” Heath asked one of the footmen in a low voice.

The footman shook his head. “No, my lord.”

Heath’s jaw tightened.

“It’s nothing to do with you,” Bryony whispered in Nora’s ear. “Father is never around.”

Heath stopped in his tracks and turned to face Nora.

She stared up at him in alarm.

“What my sister said is true.” He lifted Nora’s hands to his chest. “But it won’t happen to us. I want you to know that I am not a mercenary suitor in search of some cold alliance. I’m looking for a partner in all senses, now and forever. With you, I’ve found everything I’m looking for.”

“That’s… extremely romantic,” Dahlia whispered.

Bryony nodded, wide-eyed. “I don’t think we should be witnessing this part.”

Nora could not speak over the pounding of her heart.

“What part?” came a curious voice.

Nora’s pulse skipped.

They had stopped just outside the threshold to the front parlor, and its inhabitants had witnessed everything.

“Mother,” Heath said, releasing Nora’s hand with obvious reluctance. “I was just saying that I hope to see much more of Miss Winfield.”

He didn’t say marriage. He didn’t even say possible courtship. Yet the unspoken implication hung heavy in the suddenly thick air.

Lady Grenville blanched in obvious shock.

Good, Nora told her twisting stomach. This flight of imagination was about to come crashing down.

Heath led her and his entourage of sisters further into the room.

“You wish to court Lady Roundtree’s employee?” Lady Grenville asked in baffled horror, when at last she managed to speak.

Lady Roundtree’s voice boomed from the settee. “Miss Eleanora Winfield is my cousin.”

A palpable wave of surprise coursed through the room.

Nora was perhaps the most shocked among them. She had known the baroness had developed some level of affection for her, but had not expected public acknowledgment. Lady Roundtree must truly consider Nora family now.

Dahlia stared at her. “The two of you are cousins?”

Nora nodded jerkily, not trusting her voice.

“I just said so.” Lady Roundtree pulled out her quizzing glass. “Don’t tell me you need an ear horn already.”

Everyone’s gazes turned to the matriarch of the family.

After a long moment, Lady Grenville gave a delicate sniff. “I cannot imagine why you are all looking at me. My arms are open. It is Miss Winfield who must decide if she wishes to accept Heath’s hand.”

Open arms. An audible gasp strangled in Nora’s throat. Lady Grenville would make no objection?

“That settles it,” Bryony whispered to Nora. “‘Honorary’ is only temporary.”

Nora’s heart leaped—and almost immediately sank. She could easily imagine spending a happy life with a family like the Grenvilles. But she already had a family of her own.

Would Heath demand she choose between them?