She took her customary seat at the foot of the table, and Rex assumed what was usually Kathleen’s place at Mama’s left hand.

“Yes, I am thinking of marrying,” he said. “No, the recent tide of adoring bachelors has nothing to do with that.”

“A lady has caught your eye?” Oh, the hope in her question. The pure, human hope. “I do think you and Lady Francesca Honeycutt would suit. She’s a bit of an original, but not too original. Aren’t you having any tea?”

He’d poured the cup she held for himself, and Mama had assumed it was for her—an easy mistake to make when one was half asleep.

“I’ll have a tray when I go up to my room. Lady Francesca is all that is lovely, but she and I would not suit. I can barely call her to mind, though I’m sure when she happened purely by chance to come upon me in the park—again—I would recognize her easily enough.”

“You’re peckish,” Mama said, patting his hand. “Grab a cinnamon bun before you go upstairs, and please don’t let your sisters know you’ve been out prowling. That will not comport with the image they hold of you as the perfect fellow, though I do know a man has needs. Lady Francesca or Lady Joanna would be understanding about that. They grasp that perfection in a spouse is a hopeless objective.”

“No, it is not.”

Mama set down her currant bun. “You are now an authority on the married state?”

“I am an authority on who and what could make me happy. The women you mention are all lovely, and they deserve adoring swains of their own, but they will never interrupt me. They won’t call me to account when I’m being ridiculously ducal. They won’t tell me the truth when flattery is the easier course. They will play games with their pin money rather than admit to me when they are short of funds. If a duke is to have only one honest ally in life, one person with whom he can absolutely be himself, shouldn’t that person be his duchess?”

In the gloomy pre-dawn light, Mama’s expression became as wistful as a bride’s. “I was such a duchess once. Everybody was aghast that your papa married a mere baron’s daughter, everybody but the dowager duchess. She said new blood enlivens the line, and if you and your sisters are any indication, she was right. Her grandfather was a brewer.”

Rex had forgotten this aspect of his own heritage, but then, polite society didn’t exactly fling it in his face. They doubtless whispered about it behind his back.

“You would not object if I became engaged to a woman of questionable antecedents?” he asked.