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CHAPTER ONE
Crawtock, Cornwall
Early Summer, 1816
“Will you stop dawdling and hurry along? I do not have all day to waste waiting for you.”
Sterling Bishop, the Duke of Bristol, rarely, if ever, took note of what was occurring in other people’s lives. The omission wasn’t out of arrogance, but because he did not consider it any of his concern how other people chose to conduct themselves or their affairs.
He would rather not concern himself with it today either, after days of traveling from London to one of his smaller ducal estates in this wild and craggy part of England.
Unfortunately, it was impossiblenotto overhear the loud and querulous voice of the man currently just out of Sterling’s view around the next turn in the road in the small market town of Crawtock in Cornwall.
Sterling’s ducal estate was situated a mere mile or so away, and it had been his intention to make his way straight to the house and immediately indulge in a bath to wash away the dustand accumulated discomfort from his long journey. He’d bathed at the inns he and his valet stopped at along the way, of course, but it was not the same as bathing in the privacy of his own home.
He had no doubt Rogers, his valet, having traveled ahead earlier this morning in the coach containing Sterling’s clothes and other accessories, would already have organized the household so that it catered fully to Sterling’s needs when he arrived later that day.
Unfortunately, Sterling’s steed, Rufus, had lost a shoe a quarter of a mile away, forcing Sterling to walk with him into Crawtock, and then linger here awhile longer as the local blacksmith replaced the missing shoe.
Bored and in need of refreshment, Sterling had left the blacksmith’s to stroll about the small and untidy settlement that hardly merited being called a town. Besides the blacksmith’s, there was only a rough-looking drinking establishment and a row of thatched cottages, placed on one side of the small village green, with a butcher shop, a bakery, and a small haberdashery on the other.
The latter Sterling had quickly walked away from when the customers inside, all ladies, turned their gazes toward him as he glanced in the window, without really seeing any of the display of ribbons and lace.
He was further irritated when three young ladies, whom he would hazard were maids from the plainness of their gowns and hairstyles, had all watched him curiously as they stood beside the village well on the small green, where presumably the market was held once a month. Those young ladies had made no effort to hide the fact they were all staring at him as they whispered and giggled behind their workworn hands.
Sterling knew that by nightfall, no doubt aided by the gossip of the servants in his own household, all in the small town and surrounding area would know of the Duke of Bristol’s presence.
Being the focus of unwanted curiosity was not something Sterling enjoyed, so he had done what any self-respecting gentleman would do and retired to the local drinking establishment. An hour or so within its rough-looking walls, drinking cool ale, had restored Sterling’s equilibrium somewhat. The thatched roof of the inn might be sagging in places and in need of repair, there was an equally disreputable stable attached, and the inside of the inn was no better than the outside, but the beer had been of excellent quality and temperature on this early summer’s day.
If it could be called such. The weather was cold and unseasonably lacking in sunshine for this time of year. Highly suitable for the long journey to Cornwall, of course, but it was miserable weather otherwise.
All Sterling’s inner feelings of goodwill, created by the beer and the jovial good wishes of the landlord of the inn as he left that establishment, vanished the moment he overheard the unfortunate beast—possibly a dog?—under very loud and very public chastisement.
“If you had not grown so fat while being here, perhaps you would walk rather than waddle, and so move along far more swiftly,” the bullying man, still just out of sight, continued to berate.
It might not be in Sterling’s nature to interfere in the lives of others, but neither could he stand idly by and listen while an animal was being mistreated.
“Will you get your lazy arse into this carriage immediately, or do I have to take my whip to you?”
Sterling had heard enough.
More than enough!
“Sir, I really must protest—” Sterling, having rounded the corner to confront the bullying gentleman, instead came to an abrupt halt when he saw that it was a youngwomanbeing so roundly harangued, rather than the overweight and elderly dog he had imagined it to be.
A young woman, possibly aged two or three and twenty, who was very slender despite her shortness of stature. She was also delicately lovely, in a long-sleeved velvet pelisse and a silk gown of the same dark violet hue. Her eyes, when she turned a curious face in Sterling’s direction, proved to be the exact same violet color. She wore lavender-colored leather gloves and ankle boots. Her hair was fair and swept up and confined beneath a bonnet of the same shade and material as her gown, although several unruly curls had escaped onto the nape of her slender neck and about the heart-shaped pallor of her face.
No doubt the bully in the waiting carriage would shortly be chastising her for that too!
Unfortunately, Sterling recognized this particular bully as being Lord Henry Marshall, the Earl of Whitlow.
A recognition which, along with the color of mourning in which she was clothed, implied the young lady, whom Whitlow had been so vilely—and incorrectly—insulting in regard to her weight, was most probably his daughter-in-law, Lady Elizabeth Marshall.
If that should prove to be the case then she was the widow of the earl’s only and deceased son, Lord Thomas Marshall, and the mother of Lord Christopher Marshall, a four-year-old boy who was now his grandfather’s heir.
She was also, once Sterling learned that Lady Marshall was now spending some of her year of mourning for her husband at the Marshall estate in Cornwall, the very reason for him having made the long journey here from London.
Indeed, Sterling rarely visited this small ducal estate, and he would not have done so now if he did not wish to discover whether Lady Elizabeth’s deceased husband was capable of, or in fact had been responsible for, the murder almost a year ago of one of Sterling’s closest friends.
