"I ought to have turned you out then without a penny," his grandfather told him. He had not been invited to sit down, Duncan noticed. "But I allowed you to continue drawing on the rents and income of Woodbine Park so that you would have the wherewithal to stay far away out of my sight – and out of the sight of all decent, respectable people. But now the woman is gone, unmourned, and you may go to the devil for all I care. You promised solemnly on my seventieth birthday that you would marry by your thirtieth and have a son in your nursery before your thirty-first. You abandoned Miss Turner at the altar five years ago, and you turned thirty six weeks ago." /Had/ he promised something so rash? Of course, he would have been a mere puppy at the time. Was /this/ the explanation for the sudden cutting off of his funds? That his thirtieth birthday had come and gone and he was still a single man? He had been with Laura until four months ago, for the love of God. But not married to her, of course. Turner had steadfastly refused to divorce her. His grandfather had expected him to find a bride within the past four months, then, and marry her just to honor a promise made many years ago – by a boy who knew nothing of life? "There is still time to produce an heir before my thirty-first birthday," he pointed out – a rather asinine thing to say, as his grandfather's reaction demonstrated. He snorted. It was not a pleasant sound. "Besides," Duncan continued, "I believe you must have misremembered the promise I made, sir. I seem to recall promising that I would marry before your eightieth birthday." Which was… when? Next year? The year after? "Which happens to be sixteen days from now," his grandfather said with brows of thunder again. "Where is your bride, Sheringford?" /Sixteen days/? Damn it all!

Duncan strode across the room to the window in order to delay his answer, and stood looking down on the square, his hands clasped at his back. Could he pretend now that it was the eighty-/fifth/ birthday he had named? He could not even remember the promise, for God's sake.