“I know I’m a trifle the worse for drink,” he said politely. “But I don’t think I resemble any sort of potato beetle, regardless of my uncle’s opinion.”

She laughed, showing very white teeth. Maybe she didn’t drink coffee …

“No, you don’t,” she assured him. “The dichotomy just reminded me of what Father Pardloe was saying—that you wanted to renounce your title, but couldn’t.”

He felt suddenly almost sober.

“Really. Did you happen to overhear the reason?”

“No,” she said. “And it’s not my business, is it?”

“Evidently you think it is,” he said. “Or why are you mentioning it?”

She bent and plucked a small bunch of grapes out of the trug, offering it to him. Moira, he noticed, had gone about her business.

“Well, I thought that if that’s truly the case … I might be able to suggest something.”

With an odd sense of exhilaration, he took the grapes and asked, “Such as?”

“Well,” she said, as reasonably as though she were describing the eating habits of a firefly, “it’s quite simple. You can’t renounce your title, but you could hand it on. Abdicate in favor of your heir, I mean.”

“I haven’t an heir. Are you suggesting—”

“Yes, exactly.” She nodded approvingly at him. “You marry me and as soon as I have a son, you can give him your title, and either retire into private life and breed dachshunds or perhaps pretend to commit suicide and go off to become anyone you like.”

“Leaving you—”

“Leaving me as the dowager countess of whatever your estate is called, I forget. That might be slightly better than being the Duke of Pardloe’s penurious daughter-in-law, mightn’t it?”

He took a deep breath. Coffee was indeed on the wind, and so was bacon, but he’d suddenly lost interest in food. He stared at her. She cocked one smooth blond eyebrow.

“And what if your next child is a daughter?” he said, to his own surprise. “And the one after that? It seems to me that I should be in substantial danger of ending with a—a—hareem of girls, all in need of dowries and marriages, and myself still a bloody earl.”

Her brow wrinkled slightly.

“What’s a hareem?”

“It’s what Arab sheiks do to leaven the monotony of marriage, or so I’m told. Polygamy, I mean.”

“Surely you don’t mean to imply that you think being married to me would be boring, William.” The shadow of a dimple flickered in her cheek. “But as for hareems, nonsense. You needn’t marry me straight off, you know. We’d give it a go, and if the result is male, then you marry me, acknowledge the child, and—” She gave a flick of her hand in a silent “voilà.”

“I don’t believe I am having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I really don’t. But for the sake of argument, just what the devil do you propose doing if the result, as you so casually put it, is female?”