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“Your cousin?”
She nodded vaguely. “Her name is Patience.”
“I see.”
Caroline was afraid he really did.
The corners of his mouth quivered. “She must be quite a role model for you.”
“Not at all. Patience is quite a harridan,” she lied. Actually, Patience Merriwether was an irritating combination of reserve, piety, and decorum. Caroline had never met her in person, but her letters were always preachy beyond measure—or, in Caroline's opinion, politeness. But Caroline had kept writing to her over the years, since anyone's letters were a welcome diversion from her awful guardians.
“Hmmm,” he said noncommittally. “Rather cruel, I should think, saddling a child with a name like that.”
Caroline thought about that for a moment. “Yes. It's hard enough living up to one's parents. Can you imagine having to live up to oneself? I suppose it might have been worse to have been named Faith, Hope, or Charity.”
He shook his head. “No. For you, I think, Patience would have been the most difficult.”
She punched him playfully in the shoulder. “Speaking of peculiar names, how did you come by yours?”
“Blake, you mean?”
She nodded.
“It was my mother's maiden name. It's a custom in my family to give the second son his mother's maiden name.”
“The second son?”
Blake shrugged. “The firstborn usually gets something important from the father's side.”
Trent Ravenscroft, Caroline thought. It didn't sound half-bad. She smiled.
“What are you grinning about?” he asked.
“Me?” she gulped. “Nothing. Just that, well—”
“Spit it out, Caroline.”
She swallowed again, her brain whirring at triple-speed. There was no way she was going to admit to him that she was fantasizing about their off-spring. “What I was thinking,” she said slowly.
“Yes?”
Of course! “I was thinking,” she repeated, her voice growing a bit more confident, “that you're very lucky your mother didn't have one of those hyphenated surnames. Can you imagine if your name were something like Fortescue-Hamilton Ravenscroft?”
Blake grinned. “Do you think I'd be called Fort or Ham for short?”
“Or,” Caroline continued with a laugh, thoroughly enjoying herself now, “what if she were Welsh? You'd be completely without vowels.”
“Aberystwyth Ravenscroft,” he said, pulling the name from a famous castle. “It has a certain charm.”
“Ah, but then everyone should call you Stwyth, and we'd all sound as if we were lisping.”
Blake chuckled. “I had a mad crush on a girl named Sarah Wigglesworth once. But my brother convinced me that I must be a stoic and let her go.”
“Yes,” Caroline mused, “I can see where it might be difficult for a child to be named Wigglesworth Ravenscroft.”
“I rather think David just wanted her for himself. Not six months later they were engaged.”
“Oh, how perfect!” Caroline exclaimed with a hoot of laughter. “But now doesn't he have to name his child Wigglesworth?”
