Marriage is Murder

Abbey had behaved herself, but she caught sight of a carrot in Robert's salad that she wanted.

"Papa! Me?" she asked.

"What do you want, Sweetheart?" he smiled at her.

"Mine!" she pointed to his salad.

"You don't eat salad," he frowned.

"Peeeeze, Papa?" she asked. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Who taught her to say please at her age?" Robert frowned.

"Ah, well, Khaat and I have been working on please," Brian said. "We'll do thank you later. Dakota isn't into it. She thinks everything she wants is just automatically hers."

"That will pass," Robert laughed. He set his salad in front of Abbey who began picking out the carrots from it and eating them. That made him laugh.

"I'll get you another salad, Robert," Angus laughed.

"Perhaps you should get her some carrots," Robert suggested. Angus simply smiled and went back to the kitchen. He came back with a fresh salad for Robert and a little bowl of carrots for Abbey. "You all should be proud of all these little ones," he said. "They're going to grow up being completely surrounded by people who love them. Instead of one or two parents, they have a huge family of endless love around them all the time. That will teach them how to keep things in perspective when they go to Hogwarts and beyond that. I don't know of anything else I would want for any child."

"Thank you for asking, Andrew," Angus said. "I'll get you more right now." He got up and refilled Andrew's pasta bowl and gave it back to him.

"NooNoo!" Dakota shouted, dumping over her empty pasta bowl.

"If you want noo noos," Angus said to her gently, picking up the pasta bowl, "You need to stop yelling."

"Mine!" she scowled at him. "Noo Noo!!"

"As I said, she just thinks its all hers. And right now, the noodles are hers too" Brian said.

"Work harder, Junior," Michael said, taking a sip from his glass of red wine.

"She'll get it. She has a much wider stubborn streak than Abbey does," Robert said, watching Angus get more "noo noos" for Dakota. He gave Dakota the plate, and she began eating them eagerly with her fingers. Brian shook his head silently.

"Leave it alone. She's feeding herself. It could be worse," Kate said. "There could be tomato sauce on those. Then we'd have to take her down to the beach and toss her in to rinse her off."

"Abbey, do you want more noo noos too?" Robert asked.

"No," Abbey said proudly, always glad to be able to say no. She pointed to Robert's garlic bread.

"More bread?" he asked. She nodded. He took a piece of garlic toast and gave it to her. She liked the butter and the salt. Not so much the garlic, but it was mild enough that she liked holding the large piece of toast in her litle hand and gnawing on it.

When dinner was finished, Angus cleared the table with Kate's help. He cut the very large pies and served it, including little slivers for each of the kids. He served it with pots of fresh tea and fresh coffee.

"This is excellent," Robert told Angus. "It is entirely different with the fresh Italian lemons."

"Our family has always liked it," Angus smiled. "We don't get lemons this fresh and sweet back in England."

"What a lovely treat," Kate said, deciding on coffee with her pie. "You always know exactly the perfect pairiings. I don't know what we did before we had you."

"You cooked for us, Kate. Well, and I tried to," Brian laughed.

"You are a very good cook," Khaat defended him.

"There are many many people here that classify as good cooks, my darling," Brian laughed. "Miine is just usually edible." She rolled her eyes at Brian and shook her head.

"So what are you all planning on doing this evening?" Robert asked, feeding a bite of pie to Abbey.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it. But if you have nothing planned tonight," Angus said. "My grandfather sent a gift for you, Robert, one I think we all would enjoy."

"A gift? For me?" Robert frowned. "His friendship is already priceless."

"I'll get it." Angus went upstairs to his room and he brought back a very large wooden suitcase. He handed it to Robert. Robert simply frowned. Angus laid the case on the floor beside Robert. The wood was beautiful well varnished oak that had aged to a lovely color over the years. The fittings on the case were all of fine brass. The handle was handcarved wood. Robert leaned down and gently opened the suitcase. Inside was a collection of antique wood and brass telescopes and tripods. There were extra lenses, cleaning cloths--the entire kit to take care of them, all in a specially designed case."

"This belonged to a mariner," Robert frowned.

"Yes," Angus said. "My grandfather bought it in an antique shop in Venice on his honeymoon with my grandmother. He used it often. He feels it is time to pass it on to other family members, and he chooses you. Oh, and these two..." he pointed to the smallest ones. "Those are antique Venitian kalaidescopes. He thought we might enjoy them. And, by the looks of the sky, the view tonight from the terrace should be almost unlimited. It might be fun to get them all out and spend the evening looking at the stars . There is supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. It should be beautiful."

"What do you think?" Robert looked at them all. "We could put a fire in the firepit if it gets chilly. It might be fun."

Angus set up the other tripods and telescopes and set several up outside on the terrace while Brian let the firepit. He went over and looked out one of them. "Wow. That is amazing," He said, stunned by the beauty of what he was seeing. "You're right, Steven. And you know what? This is so peaceful. I'm not sure why we didn't try out a telescope years ago."

"Well, we did," Robert laughed. "But you and Khaat were immensely bored."

"I don't remember that," Khaat said, getting up.

"Me neither," Brian said.

"You were almost nine. You both were bored stiff," Robert told them.

"Well, we're not now," Khaat said, looking through one of the smaller ones. She went over and picked up Abbey and took her to the telescope Brian was at. She held Abbey and Brian adjusted it for her and coached her to look. Abbey made a small "ooooh" as she looked through it.

"Stars" Brian told her. She looked at him, curious. Khaat pointed up to the stars above them.

"Stars," she told Abbey. Abbey looked through the telescope again, as Robert came out to join them all.

"Mine!" she said, delighted with seeing them. Robert smiled and stroked Abbey's hair.

"If I could give you one, I would," he said lovingly to her, kissing the top of Abbey's head.