What was he supposed to say? ‘Journalists chase me’? Or, ‘sometimes I invite a man home, get drunk enough to fuck him, and instead get drunk enough to realize I do not even want to fuck him’? Or, ‘I posed as a woman, was discovered as a man, and fell in love with ink on paper’?

None of those aspects of his life were especially flattering … and Ruth needed to think his life was even bigger than hers.

“I have a Carrington as a client, now,” he said instead, with an air of absolute haughtiness. “On retainer, at that. I cannot tell you the details of my work with him, but,” Zechariah settled back into his seat, gloating, “I can tell you the pay is quite handsome.”

Out of his league, even. God forbid Darius ever figure that out.

“The nieces and nephews will hear about it,” he said with an amused crinkle of the nose. “Well, see it.”

He was still … undecided, about where Abraham fell in that lineup. Penina’s children were Jewish … but Uriel’s wedding had actually been officiated by a rabbi.

Zechariah steepled his fingers and looked over at Ruth, with that smug smile he got when he was feeling better than someone else.

“Come, now,” Zechariah sighed, devious smile still at full strength. “Are you attempting to suggest that an age appropriate, nubile young European woman of wealth and proper courtship is a worse selection than some American cowgirl old enough to be our mother?”

‘She is a backstabbing cunt!’ he did not add … verbally.

“I assure you,” he said instead with a mean smile. “You two will get along swimmingly.”

His eyes shifted down again, then back to her gaze with all the placidity of the center of a tornado.

“Skirt,” he repeated, serenely.

A brow arched in open, judgmental skepticism.

“Ah, yes. Pure poetry. The subpar Landschaft of Deutschland,” he extolled with a dramatic sweep of his hand. “The rolling hills of schadenfreude!” He traced hills in the air with a dramatic frown, then the smirk was right back. “Has the land of sausage failed our mermaid?”