“Would a hundred miles bring us to dawn?” inquired the smaller lunatic. “Oh, I’d rather a dawn than a parade any day there is, though sleeping’s a grand thing, too.”
“When will you marry me?” demanded the duke.
“We must be that wise and cool we’ll put the stars to shame,” she said dreamily. “How many days would there be in a year? I’ve no head for figures at all.”
“A year?” protested the stricken duke fiercely. “Three hundred and sixty-five days? You couldn’t—you couldn’t——”
Biddy raised her hand to the silver laces above her heart with the strangest little look of wonder.
“Three hundred and sixty-five?” she whispered. “No more than that? No more than that—for sure?”
“No more?” he cried. “Why, it’s a lifetime—it’s eternity——”
“Ah, and so it is,” said his Biddy. “Well, then, let’s be wise as the stars—and wait till morning. Father Leary, he’s an old man, and he wakes at dawn; ’tis himself that says so. He’ll marry us then if I have to do penance for the rest of my days. Three hundred and sixty-five, you say? You’re right—oh, you’re right. ’Tis a lifetime!”
And so at dawn Biddy O’Rourke became the Duchess of Bolingham, and the greatest scandal of the century broke over a waking city. Things like that don’t happen, you say—no, things like that don’t happen, except in real life or in fairy tales. But if you had asked the duke or his duchess, they could have told you that this was real life—and a fairy tale.
They drove down to Gray Courts behind a pair of bright bays called Castor and Pollux that same day, in a high trap of black and scarlet, with fawn-coloured cushions. The duke drove, and the duchess sat perched beside him in a great red postillion’s coat from Redfern with a ruby ring as big as the Pope’s on her finger and a hat no larger than a poppy tilted over one eye. It had a little red feather in it that wagged violently every time the bays lifted a foot, and Her Grace’s tongue wagged more violently than the feather.