And yet again, irrelevantly, he blessed the kindness of fate that had made him, the third child, a boy. Not that he craved the titles, which of course he would not have received had he been a girl, but he would have detested having to go through life as Charity. His mother, he had heard since, had been divided in her feelings at his birth. She was proud and relieved to have produced a son and heir at last, but she did regret the incomplete Biblical trio. They had called him Charles, but he had heard his mother lament the fact that Faith, Hope, and Charles had a decidedly anticlimactic ring to it. A third daughter never did arrive.

His grandmother had been the final straw. He had been in the habit of visiting the dowager duchess at least once every two weeks through all his boyhood and the years since, except when he was at school or university, of course. And he had always enjoyed a good relationship with the old girl, he had thought. She admired backbone in a man, but approved of his sowing his wild oats during his early manhood. He had always been remarkably open with her-far more open than with any other member of his family-about those oats. However, he had realized only within the past eight months that although she recognized the importance of wild oats, she also valued cultivated oats and believed that they were the ones that mattered and must take precedence over the weeds. She had ceased to chuckle over his exploits during those months and had developed the habit of harping on duty.

His duty! He must marry and impregnate his wife on his wedding night, it seemed. His grandmother did not put matters with quite such open vulgarity, of course, but that was what she meant, He had been evasive for months, but just three weeks before he had lost his good humor and pointed out to her in no uncertain terms that there was not a single lady of his acquaintance with whom he could possibly contemplate a life sentence. He would just have to gamble on living a few years longer yet and postponing that comfortable arrival of his heir.