"Violet pulled a face. "Of course I have great ambition that my children marry well and happily, but I am not the sort who'd marry her daughter off to a seventy-year-old man just because he was a duke!" "Did the dowager countess do that?" Benedict couldn't recall any seventy-year-old dukes making recent trips to the altar. "No," Violet admitted, "but she would. Whereas I--" Benedict bit back a smile as his mother pointed to herself with great flourish. "I would allow my children to marry paupers if it would bring them happiness." Benedict raised a brow. "They would be well-principled and hardworking paupers, of course," Violet explained. "No gamblers need apply." Benedict didn't want to laugh at his mother, so instead he coughed discreetly into his handkerchief."