In Praise of Younger Men by Jaclyn Reding Page B

utter a single word. Devorgilla kept silent, sitting in the corner chair by the window. Her face, however, was openly ominous.
    “I have every intention of it, sir,” answered Tristan, setting his arm more closely about Harriet’s waist.
    Lady Harrington stood, her eyes fixed on Harriet as she crossed the room. Her face was a mask of non-expression.
    “Lady Harrington, I—”
    “Tut, tut, dear,” the viscountess said. “I am just relieved to see you are safe.” She smiled. “Everything else is just as it should be.” She turned to her nephew. “Come, Duncan, we must go home and inform Lord H. that our friend is safely home, and leave this family to their privacy.”
    Duncan shot Harriet a nervous glance as he crossed the room.
    “Duncan,” she said, stopping him, “I am sorry if I led you to thinking my feelings for you were more than those of friendship. I truly have enjoyed meeting you. I hope that this won’t mean an end to our acquaintance.”
    He shook his head. “Not at all, Harriet. Like a pair of gloves, a person knows when something doesn’t fit. We weren’t a right fit. We might have managed, as some people do with a pair of gloves where the fingers are just a little too long, but two people should never end up together because of desperate circumstances. It makes for a lifetime of regrets.”
    Harriet smiled at him, startled by his unusual wisdom. She realized then there was more to Sir Duncan Harrington than she’d ever allowed herself to see and she hoped, truly hoped, he would find his “right fit” someday.
    After they’d gone, Harriet turned to her father. “Father, I have something to tell you.”
    �And I have something to tell you, too, Harriet Macquair Drynan. I’ll have no more of this nonsense of younger husbands. Tristan is a good man. The only man good enough for my daughter. What does it matter if he was born February the twenty-eighth or not?”
    “If I may interject a moment . . .”
    Everyone turned at once to where Tristan’s godfather still stood at the window.
    “Right before you two arrived, moments before really, Harriet’s aunt was telling me the story of your family’s legend, of this curse prophesizing that Harriet must marry a younger man—”
    “It doesn’t matter, sir,” Harriet broke in. “I have every intention of spending my life with Tristan.” She looked at her aunt. “Please, Auntie Gill, you of all people must understand. What is life without love? Without happiness? It isn’t a life at all. Somehow I just know I am meant to be with Tristan. I know he isn’t younger than I am, but he’s close enough.”
    Devorgilla looked at her, tears filling her eyes. She nodded quietly as if to say what would be ... would be.
    “Truth be told, Miss Drynan,” Mr. Scott said, then, “Tristan really is younger than you are.”
    “What?” It was a collective response that came from everyone else in the room.
    “Tristan was born on February the twenty-ninth, a Leap Year Day. I know this well. I was there, and if you seek out the Ravenshall parish register, Tristan, you will see that I speak the truth. Your parents simply decided to celebrate the occasion on the twenty-eighth, to avoid the confusion that would come about with every fourth year.”
    Tristan stared at his godfather, clearly as stunned as the rest of them. “They never told me that.”
    Mr. Scott simply shrugged. “After a while, years of always celebrating the occasion on the twenty-eighth, no doubt they simply forgot about it. It wasn’t as if that one day was going to make any difference.” He chuckled. “Of course, they could never have foreseen these particular circumstances.”
    Harriet was grinning as she turned to face Tristan. “So you really are younger than I am.”
    “It would seem so, my love. By a day.”
    “So all this trouble was for nothing?”
    “No, not for nothing.” He took her into his embrace. “If anything, it proves that what is destined to be, will be. We