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hours, twenty-three minutes.”

      “Ten minutes too slow.”

      “I know that,” Harry Sheldon replied, “there is no need to rub it in.”

      He threw himself down in an armchair, saying as he did so,

      “All the same I deserve a glass of champagne and I hope it is cool enough to drink.”

      “You insult my household arrangements,” the Duke responded at once.

      He walked towards the table in the corner of the room where there was an open bottle of champagne in a gold ice cooler.

      “You missed a really good party last night, Silvanus,” Harry Sheldon said. “We dined at White’s and went on to a new ‘House of Pleasure’ that has just opened up in the Haymarket. There were some little lovebirds from France that are the prettiest things you have ever seen. All ‘Ooh-la-la’ and a lot of ‘Oui – Oui!’ I enjoyed myself.”

      “You can take me there next week,” the Duke said as he walked across the room with a glass of champagne in his hand. “And by the way, Harry, I am going to be married!”

      Harry Sheldon almost dropped the glass of champagne that his friend had just given him.

      “Did you say – married?”

      The Duke nodded.

      “Good God!” Harry exclaimed. “So you have taken the plunge at last! But who the devil to? And why have I not met her?”

      “I have not met her myself for that matter,” the Duke answered.

      “Are you serious?”

      “Completely!”

      “Then what are you saying? And who is she?”

      “She is the Duke of Northallerton’s daughter. He has just offered her to me together with the ten thousand acres of Magnus Croft.”

      “I don’t believe it!”

      “It is true.”

      “Then you have won!” Harry Sheldon said. “You swore you would get back the land that your father threw away on the turn of a card.”

      “Yes, I have won and I believe it is tied up with a rather pretty ribbon. I have been told that Caroline Allerton is a beauty.”

      “Caroline Allerton? But you have never met her?”

      “Of course not. The Lynchesters have not been on calling terms with the Northallertons since the Duke had refused to hand back the land when my father explained that owing to the influence of alcohol he was not in his right senses when he staked and lost it.”

      “Who can blame him?” Harry Sheldon remarked. “A bet is a bet and a point of honour.”

      “Exactly!” the Duke said. “At the same time my father thought that the Duke was being unreasonable and cut off all communications except on a strictly official basis.”

      “And was it on a strictly official basis that you were offered his daughter?”

      “Very strictly,” the Duke replied. “We have a common enemy in the fact that an outsider is attempting to introduce a new pack of foxhounds into the County. There are two packs already, one of which I own, the other in which the Duke of Northallerton has an interest, so you see we had to combine to put the bounder back in the kennels he had emerged from.”

      “And the end result of this peculiar partnership is that you decided to marry the Duke’s daughter.”

      “He suggested it and, as it seemed to me a sensible arrangement, I agreed.”

      Harry threw back his head and laughed.

      “Sensible!” he exclaimed. “My dear Silvanus, how can it be sensible to marry a girl you have never seen just because she can bring you some land, which, like Naboth’s vineyard, you have always coveted?”

      “And justifiably since the vineyard in question has always belonged to the Lynchester Estate,” the Duke pointed out loftily.

      “Damn it all, think of taking a wife on such terms!”

      “Why not? She is well-bred, nobody can dispute that, I am told she is a beauty and quite frankly, Harry, I think it is time I married.”

      “I have thought that for the last five years,” his friend commented. “It is time you settled down and most of all you need an heir.”

      “You might be my grandmother speaking.”

      “Your grandmother has a lot of sense, but as an old friend I must warn you that this is not the right way to go about marriage.”

      “You speak as an authority of course,” the Duke said mockingly.

      “No, but I can tell you one thing, I shall never tie myself to a woman unless I am quite certain I am fond of her and that I can stand her conversation at breakfast.”

      “There is no law to say you have to breakfast with your wife,” the Duke protested.

      “There is no law that says you have to listen to her,” Harry replied, “but it is something which is inevitable when marriage is concerned.”

      The Duke then stood with his back to the fireplace and an expression on his face told his friend that he was being obstinate.

      “It is all very well, Harry,” he said, “to carp and find fault, but you and Grandmama are united with a dozen of my other relatives in saying that I should be married.”

      “As you should,” Harry murmured.

      “But I am not a callow boy who is so likely to fall in love with a pretty face,” the Duke went on, “and I am not so half-baked as to think that a girl straight out of the schoolroom is likely to be amusing or know anything about the subjects that interest me.”

      Harry started to speak, but the Duke put out his hand to stop him.

      “Let me finish,” he said. “I have thought this out carefully. As I have no wish to have a wife who is promiscuous, I am obliged to marry somebody young. I shall hope that she is intelligent enough to make herself pleasant not only to me but to my friends and, if she has been well brought up, she will grace the end of my table and learn with few mistakes to be a good hostess.”

      “I accept all that,” Harry said, “but what about when you are alone together?”

      There was a faint smile on the Duke’s face as he replied,

      “There, I admit, you do have a point. But why should I be alone except on very rare occasions?”

      He walked across the room before he went on,

      “In the old days, as you are well aware, in a house of this size there lived not only the Duke and the Duchess or before my great-grandfather received the title, the Marquis and the Marchioness of Chester.”

      He smiled slightly as he continued,

      “There were their children, relatives, grandmothers, great-aunts, cousins, old friends, a Chaplain, Nannies, Governesses and Tutors. In fact the house was always filled with people, apart from the guests who one learns from the diaries of the time were entertained with lavish hospitality all through the year.”

      Harry laughed.

      “So that is the sort of life you are planning, that of a Paterfamilias or should I say a King in a Court of his own? I hope I shall be invited to be the Court Jester.”

      “Could you be anything else?” the Duke asked. “But seriously, Harry, you see the idea?”

      “Of course I see it and I hope your cardboard Duchess is exactly what you expect her to be, a puppet on strings that you pull and that, when you pull them, she will dance until you walk away and ignore her.”

      “Stop

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