Charlotte frowned in concentration. “His what?”

“You know, his winkle.”

“His what?”

Caroline hushed her and looked nervously through the carriage windows before turning back to her friend. “His winkle. Dollymop. Dingle-dangle.”

Charlotte sat back against the cushioned seat and rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Caro, you’re a married woman. I can’t believe you have to come up with so many juvenile euphemisms for a commonplace object you must see every day. We are, after all, adults. You can say it in front of me without blushing or going to such lengths as dreaming up words like dingle-dangle!”

“I know.” Caroline looked abashed at her silliness. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. You are absolutely correct. We are both married women; we can talk about such things openly.”

Charlotte pulled out a tiny mirror and checked her reflection. “Exactly. As for the other, it’s utterly ridiculous. You must have read the passage wrong. No man with any amount of common sense would allow someone to snip off his dinky.”

***

Dare frowned at the pocket watch in his hand. His frown deepened as he glanced across the verger’s small, musty room to where a carriage clock sat on a battered desk. Mindful that it was his wedding day, he kept the frown from moving into a scowl as he strolled with a nonchalance he was far from feeling to where Batsfoam stood behind Captain David Woodwell, Patricia’s intended. He looked at the watch David was shaking next to his ear.

“Must get this fixed before Sunday.” David grinned. “Wouldn’t do to be late to my own…oh.”

Dare closed his eyes briefly and rubbed his forehead. The watches all told him the same thing. They all foretold the depressing truth that today marked the beginning of a life spent wasting interminable long hours waiting on a woman.

He opened his eyes and heaved a martyred sigh of the doomed.

“Most fashionable ladies are late for events,” David reassured him. “Patricia tells me it’s just not done to arrive anywhere on time, and with brides…well, everyone knows how late brides are. They like to make a dramatic entrance.”

Dare summoned a faint smile. He wished he had something pithy to say about the silliness of women and especially brides, but all he could think of was a strong recommendation to avoid the little darlings like they were plague-bearing lepers, and that was hardly the advice to be giving the man who was to marry his sister some five days hence.

“She’ll be here,” he predicted instead. “She worked too hard to snare me just to jilt me now. She’s just punishing me for not spending every last shilling I had on a big wedding.”

David smiled. “I know it must seem bad to you now, but Patricia is sure it’ll work out. She thinks Lady Charlotte has a tendresse for you, and that’s a good part of the battle, isn’t it?”

Dare allowed his lips to twist into a wry approximation of a smile, and punched David lightly in the shoulder by way of thanking him for the consolation. He resumed pacing the length of the small room, stopping occasionally to pinch the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache starting to come on, a headache made worse by the noise from the yard outside the church. A circus was in town to perform for Tsar Alexander’s visit, and it sounded like they’d decided to hold orchestra practice directly outside the church.