"What makes you so certain?"

"She volunteered the information," he said flatly, and when Helene still looked unconvinced, he added, "In the interest of putting an end to your concern and to this entire topic, I'll add that I already have a perfectly acceptable heir in my brother's son. Furthermore, I have no intention of adhering to custom, now or in future, by shackling myself to a wife for the sole purpose of begetting a legal heir of my own body."

As Stephen came to the end of that blunt speech, he watched her expression change from surprise to amused bafflement. Her next remark clarified the reason for her obvious quandary: "If not to beget an heir, what other possible reason could there be for a man such as you to wed at all?"

Stephen's disinterested shrug and brief smile dismissed all the other usual reasons for marriage as trivial, absurd, or imaginary. "For a man such as I," he replied with a mild amusement that failed to disguise his genuine contempt for the twin farces of wedded bliss and the sanctity of marriage-two illusions that flourished even in the brittle, sophisticated social world he inhabited, "there does not seem to be a single compelling reason to commit matrimony."

Helene studied him intently, her face alight with curiosity, caution, and the dawning of understanding. "I always wondered why you didn't marry Emily Lathrop. In addition to her acclaimed face and figure, she is also one of the few women in England who actually possesses the requirements of birth and breeding in enough abundance to make her worthy of marrying into the Westmoreland family and of producing your heir. Everyone knows you fought a duel with her husband because of her, yet you didn't kill him, nor did you marry her a year later, after old Lord Lathrop finally keeled over and cocked up his toes."