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Chapter One

Lindow Castle

Cheshire

October 7, 1766

The Duke of Lindow dropped into a chair behind his library desk, feeling as if he’d taken a sharp blow to the gut. His hand tightened into a fist, crumpling the parchment he held, the record of an “Act to dissolve the marriage of Hugo, Duke of Lindow, with Lady Yvette Mordant, and to enable the said Duke to marry again.”

That would be his second marriage, since he had lost his much-beloved wife Marie a decade earlier. His ill-advised marriage to Yvette was over.

A pulse of anger went through him, and he shoved it away. Yvette had fled with her Prussian lover a year ago, leaving behind their four children—not to mention Marie’s three and his young ward, Parth—with all the concern of a cat abandoning a litter of kittens.

Hearing voices in the entry, he dropped the document in a drawer just as his twin sister, Lady Knowe, strode into the room. She was dressed for riding, wearing a cream-colored habit in the newest style: a huge collar, a great many buttons on her sky-blue waistcoat, and easily twice as many on the jacket. Her wide-brimmed hat was made of the same sky-blue silk, trimmed with white fur.

“Did it arrive?” She pulled off her hat and threw it on a chair.

Hugo’s mouth quirked up. “Your wig, Louisa.”

“Bloody hell,” Louisa said crossly. She plucked up her hat and the attached wig, shook off a few pins, and plopped the wig back on top of her head, adjusting it in the glass that hung over the fireplace. “Don’t try to distract me. Prism says that you are brooding over the post, which can only mean one thing.”

There was no privacy in a castle, no matter how large.

“I’m a free man.”

His sister came over and gave him a whack on the back. “No rest for the weary, Hugo. You should be on the road to London before the end of the week. You need a new duchess—and those children of yours need a mother.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Louisa fell back, hand on her heart, looking as shocked as if he’d declared his intention to retreat to a monastery.

His first wife Marie’s death had torn a hole in Hugo’s chest. He hadn’t been able to summon more than mild affection for his second bride, Yvette, and even that had quickly withered in the face of her bottomless need for attention. She had turned to Count Yaraslov, a man distinguished only by his fatuous smirk and yellow hair.

The last thing he wanted was another discontented woman in his household. “No,” he stated, just managing to stop himself from growling it. “No, I am not taking another duchess.”

His sister shoved over a ledger and perched on his desk. “Feeling bruised?”

“Not particularly.”