am not engaged!” she flashed. “I don’t want to be married. I’m perfectly happy living here with you and the dogs.”
“You don’t look happy,” Dickon observed.
“That’s because I’m miserable,” Viola explained. “I am not accustomed to the yoke of tyranny. Fathers should not be allowed to dictate to their children from beyond the grave.”
“But he’s nabbed you a marquis!” Dickon exclaimed in astonishment.
“Who asked him to?” she demanded in a rather surly tone.
“But why not marry Bamph?” Dickon wanted to know. “You’ll have to marry somebody someday, young Viola. It might as well be a marquis.”
“Why?” she demanded, her frown deepening.
Dickon gaped at her. “Why? Be sensible! There ain’t any dukes out at the moment, and you wouldn’t want to lower yourself with an earl.”
“But why must I marry at all?” she demanded. “I have a home here with you. I’m not poor. I’m not bored. I’m not lonely. I don’t need or want a husband.”
“It’s to do with the succession,” he answered evasively. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You mean you need an heir,” she said scornfully. “Why can’t you do it yourself?”
Dickon blushed hotly. “Because I can’t, that’s why,” he snapped. “Cheeky madam! Now eat your fish like a good girl. There are babies starving in Ireland.”
“What happens if I refuse to marry Lord Bamph?” Viola inquired haughtily.
Dickon was shocked. “Viola! You are bound by a father’s promise. I know it’s a cursed, shabby trick and all that, but you’ll just have to make the best of it. If it’s too beastly for you, you can always come home—after my nephew is born, of course. It’s the only way to get your money, I’m afraid,” he added.
“What about my money?” Viola said sharply.
“You should have listened to the attorneys before you lost your temper,” he admonished her. “It’s ironclad. If you don’t marry Lord Bamph, you don’t get your money.”
There followed a long silence, in which Viola tried to imagine a life without money. To her, such a life hardly seemed worth living. “What sort of man is he?” she asked presently.
“Who?” Dickon asked blankly.
“Bamph, of course,” she said impatiently. “Is he handsome at least?”
Dickon shrugged. “How should I know? I’ve never met the man.”
“You mean you know nothing of him?” she cried.
Dickon bristled. “I know he’s a marquis. That’s not nothing. We’ll know more when we meet him,” he predicted. “You might even like him.”
“No, I won’t,” she said crossly. “I shall make it a particular point not to like him.”
“Come, now,” he cajoled her. “Don’t be so gloomy. He’s sent you a letter. Wasn’t that good of him? Wasn’t that thoughtful?”
“That would depend on the letter,” she replied. “What does he have to say for himself?”
“I hope you don’t think I read your letters, young Viola,” Dickon said indignantly. “I didn’t even read the letter he sent me. Fetch the letters, Jem,” he commanded the footman.
The footman quickly returned with two letters on his silver tray. Viola’s was only a page folded in half and sealed with a wafer, but the duke had been honored with a large envelope.
“I can find no fault in his handwriting,” Viola murmured, placing her letter on the table and lifting the wax seal with her knife. “But his spelling—! Someone should tell him there’s no E in my name.”
“There is so an E in ‘my name,’” Dickon pointed out. “It’s silent, that’s all.”
“Well, there’s not an E in Viola Gambol,” she snapped. “We’re in DeBrett’s. He could look us up! Or can’t this person read?”
“Bah,” said Dickon. “It was probably his secretary. None of them can spell.”
“And listen to this!” Viola said, her eyes fixed on her letter, her cheeks growing pink with indignation. “‘For many years now, dear madam, I have lived in breathless anticipation of the happy event which is upon us at last.’”
She stopped reading to give an exclamation of disgust.
“He can’t really have gone without breath for years,” Dickon scoffed. “He’d have died.”
“He admits that he has known of this ridiculous, medieval arrangement for—and I quote—‘many years’! And yet,” Viola went on angrily, “this is his first letter. He has never deigned to visit me. He’s never sent me a present. As a gentleman, he should have come to Yorkshire in person and applied for my hand. He is a man without courtesy,” she decided. “I can’t marry a man without courtesy! I shall have to be poor! I don’t want to be poor!”
Shoving back his chair, Dickon ambled over to the sideboard and helped himself to the ham, bacon, and kippers that always came after his steak and eggs. “I don’t see why a man should apply for something he’s already been given free of charge,” he said reasonably as he waded back to the table through a sea of Great Danes, Dalmatians, Pomeranians, and pugs.
“Don’t you?” Viola said, shocked.
“No,” he said simply, licking his fingers. “Do you suppose that Adam asked for Eve’s hand in marriage after God gave her to him? No, of course not. The same principle applies here. Now, don’t be angry, young Viola,” he went on soothingly. “Read your letter. Ten to one it’s chock-full of red-hot lovemaking, all the way from London.”
“You’re mistaken,” she said coldly. “There is no lovemaking, thank God. His lordship merely writes to summon me. I’m to go to London at once! He seems to think I’m some sort of traveling exhibit! Oh, and he will condescend to marry me the first week of June at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London—by special license, no less!”
“The first week of June? But that’s our holidays,” the duke objected. “Then there’s the grouse shooting when we get back. You couldn’t possibly marry him until October at least.”
“If then,” said Viola, tossing her letter to the dogs. “As for St George, stuff and nonsense! I shall be married at York Minster, where I was baptized, and there will be no need whatever for such a vulgar, unnatural thing as a special license. I’d sooner elope! It’s as if his design is to humiliate me—and we’re not even married yet!”
Calming herself, she picked up her cup of chocolate and asked, with forced pleasantry, “And what, pray tell, has Lord Bamph to say to you?”
Dickon obligingly cracked the seal on his envelope. Inside was a thick sheaf of papers
