Sunday, February 23rd

Henry Devereaux Twyst, eighteenth Duke of Chellingworth, was terribly worried about his imminent nuptials. He was utterly convinced that Stephanie Timbers was the right woman for him, and absolutely delighted that in less than a week she'd be his wife. That wasn't what he was concerned about. No, the cause of his emotional discomfort could be summed up in one word – 'tradition'.

Henry suspected he might blow a gasket if he heard anyone mention it one more time. Precariously perched on a rickety chair set against a wall in the lower library at Chellingworth Hall, he felt he could reach out and touch the word, so many people were saying it to him about so many different things. The entire staff at the Chellingworth Estate had been in uproar since he and Stephanie had decided when they would marry. He should have known how things would turn out back then; even the announcement of the date came with its own 'tradition'.

They'd been reliably and quite forcefully informed by his mother, the indefatigable Dowager Duchess Althea, that they couldn't simply put a notice in The Times; they also had to find themselves a gwadhoddwr to make the announcement. Not a real gwadhoddwr, of course, because roving young male bards were pretty thin on the ground in twenty-first-century Wales, so Ian Cottesloe, his mother's general factotum, had been 'volunteered' for the job. Henry and his fiancé had sat down together to come up with a series of rhyming couplets that told of their love for each other, their engagement, the date and time of their wedding and the fact that all those who heard the announcement were invited to attend both the wedding itself and the festivities that would follow. Then, pretending to be enthusiastic about it, Ian had read the poem aloud in English and Welsh at both village pubs and on the village green, as well as in the Old Market Hall and St David's Church.

Henry and Stephanie had chosen January 25th, St Dynwen's Day, as the date for the announcement to be made – the Welsh patron saint of lovers enjoying a much higher standing in the area than St Valentine – with the wedding itself to take place on March 1st, St David's Day, the patron saint of Wales. The entire village had been vocal in their delight at the news, despite the fact most of them knew it already because the Reverend Ebenezer Roberts had let the word slip over a glass of sherry in the Lamb and Flag after communion the previous week.

And that was when the assault had begun in earnest. It seemed to Henry that everyone and their dog had an idea about some sort of tradition that had to be observed for the wedding and everything surrounding it. It was enough to drive a man to drink. Indeed, Henry had found himself racing through his after-dinner brandies rather more rapidly than usual since then.

'People will want to be involved, Henry,' his mother had told him. 'When I married your father he'd been the duke for some time, and, as you know, we merely had a small ceremony in Chelsea Town Hall, as befitting a second marriage. When he married his first wife, his own father was still alive, and the same was true for his father before him. This is the first time the village of Anwen-by-Wye has been able to celebrate the wedding of a sitting Duke of Chellingworth in almost a hundred years. There will be many traditions you'll be expected to follow. And I suggest you do. This is a