“She is, she is,” Peter moaned, starting to walk restlessly about the room. “She’s a dowdy, Quill, a veritable dowdy. It’s worse than that: She has no instinct, no sense of delicacy. I cannot bear the notion of being tied to her for my entire life. You must not have spent any length of time with her, whereas I escorted her about all evening. God, she talks. She talks like a spigot. I’ve never heard anyone talk so much. I swear to you that my friends Tiddlebend and Folger were silenced, absolutely silenced. Folger made a little joke after she left, told me her manners were absolutely unaffected.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It was clearly a hint to me,” Peter explained. “She’s a gabbleface, and he didn’t want to say it straight out. Thank God Folger wasn’t in the parlor when Gabby lost her bodice.” He broodingly walked over and kicked the burning log in the fireplace. Then he swore and jumped back, his voice rising. “Do you see? Do you see my boot?”

Quill didn’t answer. He never answered that sort of question from Peter.

“I do not wish to marry the woman,” Peter said. “I will not marry her. Father can’t make me marry her, you know.”

“Certainly not,” Quill observed, “given his current condition.”

Peter looked relieved. “I forgot for a moment.” Then he went back to kicking the log, regardless of the built-up soot on his shining boots. “I’ve been thinking about it since you took her home,” he said finally. “I know it shows a lack of propriety in a gentleman to break an engagement. But I am persuaded that I would not be judged too harshly under the circumstances. It’s not that I don’t like Gabby. She’s a pleasant person. Normally I would be quite taken by her. I would even enjoy bringing her in fashion.”

Quill waited.

Peter suddenly looked very young. “But I can’t bear the idea of marrying her. I simply can’t bear the idea of living with a woman like that forever!” His voice was rising again. “I will not marry her! And Father—” He broke off, clearly recalling the viscount’s state of health again.

“When are you going to grow up, Peter?” Quill asked in some disgust. “You act as if you are being sent off to the salt mines.”

“It may be amusing to you,” Peter flashed back, “but it’s hell for me. Fiend seize it, I don’t wish to marry. And now to marry such a fleshy—”

Quill cut him off. “Why don’t you wish to marry, Peter? You must have expected to wed at some point, didn’t you?”

Peter had turned back to the fireplace. He was leaning against the bricks, his head propped up by his arm. He seemed to be watching his shining boot as it grew more and more encrusted with black ash.