'Half-brother-in-law actually,' said Thomas Ham, out of a stubborn belief that pedantry and repetitiveness could through some alchemy be forged into wit. Pedantry because he was technically correct (he'd married Daniel's half-sister) and repetitive because he'd been making the same joke for as long as Daniel had been alive. Ham was more than sixty years old now, and he was one of those who is fat and skinny at the same time – a startling pot-belly suspended from a lanky armature, waggling jowls draped over a face like an edged weapon. He had been lucky to capture the fair Mayflower Waterhouse, or so he was encouraged to believe.