Chapter One
Dountry Park, Keswick Cumbria
Late February 1815.
“Nellie, you mustsee this article!” Nellie’s sister, Marian, her green eyes wide, rushed into Nellie’s bedchamber, clutching a newspaper. “It’s about the duke!”
“I don’t know why you have those scandal broths sent to you. Let me see.” Nellie almost snatched it. Thirsting for any information on the man she was to marry and had yet to meet, she quickly perused the item concerning the Duke of Shewsbury. “Oh, dear Lord!” She thrust the paper back into her sister’s hands as if it burned her.
“It shows Shewsbury is human.” A gleam of amusement and affection lit Marian’s eyes. She plopped down onto the sofa, waking Peter, Nellie’s beloved King Charles spaniel. He sleepily licked her hand.
“Does it? A brute and a rake, more likely.” Nellie picked it up from the table where her sister had cast it.“A certain duke whose estate is in Leicestershire, but shall remain nameless…”
“It may not be Shewsbury,” Marian interrupted as she fondled the dog’s silky ears.
“It’s hardly the Duke of Rutland, he has a brood of children and breeds racehorses.” Nellie continued to read,“…seems to have had some trouble with his French mistress. This writer was passing a certain elegant establishment in Mayfair when he sighted said duke, descending the steps to the road with a comely lady over his shoulder, one hand on an unmentionable part of her anatomy, the other holding a canary’s cage. Smoke could be seen wafting from an upstairs window. As I watched, captivated, the duke was addressed in voluble French as she pounded her fists on his back. He set her down none too gently to hail a passing hackney. Placing her and the canary’s cage in the carriage, he then gave the jarvy directions, and slammed the door, running back, apparently, to stifle the flames. Might their affair be at an end?
“This…” Nellie’s voice hitched, “…coming right on top of that other newspaper article describing how he took a member of the press outside Parliament by the scruff of the neck and savagely shook him.”
“Not a dull man by all accounts,” Marian observed.
She glared at her sister. Marian refused to take this seriously. Perhaps because her own husband could be relied on to behave badly on occasion. Nellie suspected Marian enjoyed it.
“Surely, Papa doesn’t expect me to marry a brute!”
“Papa needs an injection of funds after that stock exchange debacle, but I doubt he’d sacrifice you. He and the old duke were friends, so he must know the family well.”
“I must speak to Papa. Mama is talking of purchasing new liveries for the footman, hiring more staff, and having the drawing room and the guest bedchambers repainted. I can’t let them spend a fortune to make us look prosperous for the duke’s visit if I don’t intend to marry him.”
The newssheet clutched in her hand, she went downstairs and knocked on her father’s study door.
Papa hunched over a stack of letters on his desk, a glass of brandy beside him, while the smoke from his cigar drifted around the room.
He glanced up from a letter he held and smiled. “What do you have there, Nellie?”
She approached the desk and held the paper out. “This can only refer to Shewsbury.” He took it from her and read it while Nellie leaned against his desk and fidgeted with his silver pounce pot. “It must be the duke. He’s a rake, Papa. Surely you don’t wish me to marry such a man?”
He reached across and removed the pot from her nervous fingers. “This is little more than a scandal rag. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“But what about the item in the newspaper? The one that said Shewsbury attacked a journalist in the street?”
Her father tossed the paper down onto the desk and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t believe that, either. There will be a story behind it, mark my words.”
He gestured to a chair. “Sit down, Nellie. Stop hovering over me. I know Shewsbury. He’s a serious and thoughtful man, as his father was before him. I am confident you will make a fine match.”
She sank onto the chair. “But the mistress, Papa!”
“I dislike discussing a man’s mistress with my daughter.” He cleared his throat. “Men do, on occasion, take a mistress. Charles was heartbroken, and his father told me after he suffered a broken engagement. I imagine that was the reason. And it’s all I will say on the matter.”
In Nellie’s opinion, that only made things worse.
“Where would you be now, daughter, if I’d let you run away with that Irish poet without two pennies to rub together?” her father asked. “And what did the fellow do when I had words with him? He scurried off to Ireland. A fortune hunter. Good thing I discovered it in time and put a stop to it.” He frowned. “You weren’t thinking clearly, Nellie.”
While no actual plan of elopement had been in place, she had been left heartbroken and angry with her father. At eighteen, one’s first love carried a good deal of importance. And for a while, she continued to make excuses for Walsh, until she was finally forced to admit he was a coward, and his feelings for her did not run deep. He’d needed no prompting to leave her and return home. But the hurt remained and tore at her confidence. She would never trust her heart to another man again.
Her father smiled at her, pleased as punch with the arrangement. Shewsbury was a wealthy duke, after all. He pointedly picked up the letter he’d been reading when she came in.
Nellie left the chair. Unlike many fathers, he had given her the opportunity to find a husband of her choice. It was not his fault that she had failed to do so.
