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Lord Archibald Winston Chamberlain sat in the groom’s room near the altar of St Paul’s Cathedral.

He had a little more than a half hour before he was tied to a woman he did not like, never mind respected.

The fact that he was about to be married by the Bishop of London did not make the upcoming ceremony any more palatable.

His mind wandered to the events which had brought him here.

“You will honour our agreement, will you not?” Father had demanded within days of returning from Ireland in October of 1792.

“I am not one to go back on my word, so yes, I will accept your choice,” he had replied.

“Who is the political connection I will need to marry?” As he stood there waiting for his pater to answer, the Marquess had thought about how close he had come to accepting an invitation from Colbath to be hosted by him and his family at Colbath Dale for a few months once he had known when Father would return.

It would not have changed the inevitable, only deferred it.

Hertford had decided to remain and not run away from his problems.

“You did not ask me who the future duchess is to be,” Father had noted.

“I am sure you will share the name when you are ready to,” he had responded, fighting to maintain his equanimity.

“It is indeed someone with whose father I need to make a political alliance. She is twenty and has a perfect pedigree. I have selected Lady Felicia Eggerton, the daughter of the powerful Earl of Gryffinwood. She will be just what you need in a society wife, and as there will be no love between you, you will never experience the pain connected to losing one you love.” Father had looked off into the distance when he said the last as if trying to see the spectre of his late wife.

What the Marquess wanted to say was that the way his father described the woman he was to marry, he could have been describing horseflesh at Tattersalls.

Next, his mind jumped to the first meeting between himself and the woman he was to marry. Hertford had signed the marriage articles along with his father a few days before the meeting. He was of age, so his father was not allowed to sign for him.

The Earl and Countess of Gryffinwood had called at Hertfordshire House a sennight after the marriage settlement had been signed.

With them they brought their only daughter.

Hertford fought to maintain a stoic visage because he had realised just how accurate his thoughts of horses had been when his father spoke of the woman.

She had teeth which made him think of his mount.

She was not what one would call comely, and when she spoke once they were introduced, she had a very grating voice.

The Marquess understood why it was that, even with Lady Felicia being the daughter of an earl with a dowry of five and twenty thousand pounds, she had not taken in three seasons.

He had requested an audience with the lady.

Even though the contracts were signed, she still deserved to be asked.

Father and the Eggerton parents had left the study. “Lady Felicia, before I ask for your hand in marriage, why do you desire to marry me, a man you have met for the first time today?” he had asked.

“I will be a duchess one day, and Papa told me you will be as rich as Croesus. Once we have produced an heir and a spare, then we may live our separate lives,” the lady he was to marry had said calculatingly.

“I do not care for you any more than you for me, so we will do our duty. I can only hope I will become with child soon after the wedding so I will be able to lock my door to you.” She had paused.

“We can anticipate our vows to speed up the process.”

“That will not occur, Madam!” Hertford had bitten out. “Let me warn you. Come to me on our wedding night no longer a maiden, and I will have the marriage annulled if it is the last thing I do.”

“I am, and will be a maiden on my wedding night,” Lady Felicia had replied indignantly.

“As we have no choice, do you need me to ask you to marry me?” he had enquired.

“It is superfluous,” his betrothed had averred.

The Eggertons had departed less than a half hour later.

And now here he was, about to marry a woman for whom he felt nothing. It was anathema to him, but Hertford’s honour would not allow him to do anything else.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Edward Gardiner had met the woman he knew he would spend the rest of his life with when she had been visiting relatives in London.

Her name was Madeline Lambert from the town of Lambton in Derbyshire.

He had asked for a courtship after knowing her for a few weeks, but then his father had passed away.

He had mourned his father for a full six months before continuing his courtship with the seventeen-year-old woman who held his heart.

By that time, Miss Lambert was returned to the parsonage in Lambton, where her father was the rector and her one and only brother, Adam, seven years her senior, was the curate.

Hence Gardiner had travelled north as soon as he was able and took a room at the Rose and Crown inn in the market town.

Having chosen not to go into the law, Gardiner had apprenticed himself to, and studied under a man who had an import-export concern in London.

The owner had no living family, so when he passed a year before Elias Gardiner, he had left all of his property and other worldly goods to Edward Gardiner.

A month after his benefactor passed away, Gardiner renamed the concern Gardiner and Associates.

He had a trustworthy minor partner who was more than competent to run the business while Gardiner went to secure his happiness.

A month after arriving in Lambton, Gardiner was engaged to his Maddie, and they married in February 1793. In the carriage on their way back to London, Gardiner told Maddie all about his younger sister and her rejection of two of her daughters because they were girls and not boys.

She was horrified that the girls had been sent out to the cottages because of their sex.

She could not believe that their brother-in-law Bennet was so indolent that he would not stand up to his wife and protect his two daughters.

She came to a decision as they travelled, and once she told her husband, and he agreed with her, the coachman was told to head for Meryton.

On arriving at Longbourn, they had the housekeeper show them into the master’s study. “Bennet, Maddie and I will take Lizzy and Mary to live with us in London,” Gardiner insisted. “Surely, as you do not seem to care what happens to them, you will not attempt to stop us?”

“Why would I interfere? It will be less for me to deal with here. Of course you may take them.” Bennet wrote that he was transferring custody of his first and second daughters to Gardiner, making him their guardian.

Both men knew he could change his mind and revoke the permission if he saw fit, but Gardiner doubted that would be the case.

Bennet signed the authority for his daughters to be removed from Longbourn, and when it was dry, handed it to Gardiner.

The Gardiners did not bother to seek Fanny out before they departed the house. They had a groom hitch up the cart to one of the horses and went with him to the cottage.

As the Bennets had not paid the woman for more than a year of caring for Lizzy and almost seven months with Mary as well, Gardiner paid them all they were owed.

They ascertained that Mary was beginning to transition to porridge, but she would still need milk for a few months.

When Gardiner requested to employ his wife, the farmer agreed, especially for the generous amount Gardiner agreed to pay, and his wife went to London for two to three months.

As the two Bennet girls had but the scant clothes their hostess had made them, there was nothing to pack. The cart was soon on the way back to the manor house.

Feeling great disgust for both Bennet parents, the Gardiners departed as soon as they were ready without saying another word to Bennet or Fanny.

Not too many minutes after they departed, Lizzy turned her large emerald-green eyes on the lady who had cared for her since birth. “Mama and Papa?” she asked the woman she knew as nurse.

“No, Lizzy dear, we are not your mama and papa,” Madeline explained. “I am your Aunt Maddie, and this,” she inclined her head to her beloved, “is your Uncle Edward. You will live with us now, and we will love you just like you should be loved. But no, you are not our children.”

The Gardiners did not miss Mrs Innes’s moist eyes. Other than from herself, she had never heard anyone related to the girls address them with the tenderness their aunt used before that moment.

“Aunt Maddie and Uncle Eddy,” Elizabeth said seriously. “I will like to have aunty and uncle.”

The Gardiners were surprised that their niece was so articulate at two. They looked at Mrs Innes questioningly.

“She be a very intelligent one that,” Mrs Innes reported. “Began to walk at eleven months, talk afore she were one, an’ were speaking so we could understand her four months ago. Very inquisitive lass that one.”

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

November 1793

Early on the morning of the ninth day of the month, there was pounding on the door of Hertford House in Portman Square. Greaves roused his master and told him there was an urgent message from Hertfordshire House.

Fifteen minutes later, Hertford was in his study and took the note from the man who was waiting for him.

“I must away now,” Hertford said when he read the note.

Not too many minutes later, he was on his stallion galloping the one mile to his father’s house.

The butler, who had served for well over thirty years, stood back as the Marquess ran into the house and took the stairs two at a time.

He burst into his father’s suite. He saw his father’s physician next to the prostrate form of his sire in the bed.

“Is he?...” The question hung in the air.

“No, my Lord, he still lives, but there is not much time,” the doctor stated. “It is his heart; he had some sort of attack.”

“I am here, Father,” Hertford said as he took his ailing pater’s hand.

“Was…mistaken…Archy. I should…not…have…forced…you. Will…you…forgive me?” the Duke rasped weakly.

“All is forgiven, Father. I love you; go to Mother now. I know she is waiting for you with open arms,” Hertford said as he squeezed his father’s hand. As he watched, his father calmed and just before he breathed his last, it seemed that he was able to relax.

Lord Winston Chamberlain was with his beloved wife, and Lord Archibald Chamberlain was the tenth Duke of Hertfordshire.