While the Baron Walked the Line, She Remained His Valentine

Public Valentine greetings are a depth of questionable taste I have never before plumbed. But as this is the first Valentine’s Day in eight years I have not spent either in or apprehending my unjust residence in an American prison for offenses I would not have dreamed in a thousand years of committing, I am throwing caution to the gentle breezes of Palm Beach, as they rustle the majestic royal palms. It will be 20 years this fall that I “set out my stall” as Barbara and I have agreed to call my marriage proposal, (since she did not, because of my complicated syntax and word-choice, recognize at first that that was what it was). And it will be 19 years this summer that we have been married. There have been no serious strains between us in all that time, and I feel the same or even greater romantic magnetism now as in that whirlwind courtship of such pleasant memory.