Page 1 of Wedded to the Cruel Duke
CHAPTER ONE
JUNE 1815, CARTWRIGHT HALL
Life as a spinster was generally not as bad as the rest of thetonmade it out to be.
Certainly, an enlightened male relative was necessary to provide a roof over one’s head, but compared to a married Lady of Quality, Phoebe Townsend decided that spinsterhood certainly afforded her far more privileges than if she had a husband who lorded himself over her by virtue of his being born male.
Besides, she could hardly feel any difference in her life from before she had been declared off the marriage market, for better or for worse. It was simply a matter of finding similar like-minded individuals with whom she could comfortably associate with, and the so-called Spinsters’ Club afforded her that rather nicely.
“It is rather pitiful how he has not chosen to marry,” Miss Cartwright shook her head with a rueful smile. “With a face like that, he could send the whole of London abuzz!”
“Not to mention that he is currently a Marquess and heir to one of the finest estates in all of England!” Miss Bradbury added. “The Duke of Cheshire has been ill for so long that it is only a matter of time before…”
It was rude to speculate on the imminent demise of a person, of course, so she did not finish her sentence. However, it was understood by everyone in the Club that the Duke of Cheshire had been on his deathbed for quite some time and his son, the Marquess of Wentworth, Lord Charles Montgomery, still had no intention of fulfilling his obligations to his line and finding a wife to sire him an heir.
“But he is so dreadfully handsome!” Miss Cartwright sighed dreamily. “It is such a waste of his heavenly looks, to be sure!”
Phoebe barely looked up from her diary as the other ladies around her continued to gossip about their favorite gentleman—the infamous Lord Charles Montgomery, the Marquess of Wentworth. Every Wednesday, without fail, their conversations would turn towards the Marquess, and they would sigh over his dashing good looks.
I daresay Lord Wentworth would not be so pleased to find himself the object of the fantasies of a gaggle of spinsters, she thought to herself, as she made another note in her diary.
It was one thing to have swathes of eligible young ladies falling over themselves for a gentleman, and anentirelydifferent thing for him to be secretly fawned over by a bunch of women who Society has collectively deemedwholly unsuitable for marriage.
“It is always the handsome ones who hide the darkest secrets,” she heard Miss Adeline Thomas scoff. “He hardly ever leaves his estate, and he never accepts callers. That should be enough to tell you all that there is more to Lord Wentworth than just his looks.”
“But that hardly means he is engaged in something nefarious,” Miss Bradbury shuddered. “Perhaps he just prefers to keep to himself most of the time…”
All the other members of the Club would generally agree that a gentleman had the privilege to be selective of the company he indulged in. After all, a good number of them did prefer to stay away from social affairs too.
But Miss Thomas had the most unfortunate character trait of one who never wanted to be told she was wrong. Before she had been declared a spinster by her beleaguered papa and hapless mama, she had been called a veritable termagant behind her back for her querulous nature.
“Of course, they would never say that out loud,” she told them all with a tone of derision. “After all, what villain would trumpet his misdeeds for all the world to hear? Mark my words—Lord Wentworth has probably murdered countless people and buried them in Wentworth Park!”
The idea of literal corpses becoming fertilizer for the vast and tangled gardens of Wentworth Park was so laughable that Phoebe had to pause from her scribbling to look up at her companions with a sigh.
“I certainly doubt the veracity of that particular claim,” she told them.
As one, their gazes all swiveled back to her, most of them confused and hopeful.
Miss Thomas regarded her with an icy glare. “And how would you know? Have you been to Wentworth Park?”
“Of course not,” she replied with an amiable smile at the quarrelsome lady. “But Townsend House is just near to Wentworth Park and one can clearly see the Marquess from my window if he ever deigned to go out and bury somebody in his own gardens. Besides,” she told the rest of the group, “if heisgoing about and murdering as much as Miss Thomas claims, then he certainly is not very punctual about it.”
She saw the twin spots of pink that colored Miss Thomas’s cheeks, but she felt that she must speak out of turn to defend the honor and reputation of a gentleman who was not himself present to stand up for himself in the face of such lies.
“What do you mean he is not at allpunctualabout it?” Miss Cartwright dared to ask, her eyes lit up with curiosity.
“Well, contrary to popular opinion, hedoescome out of his house,” Phoebe explained. “But it is always at around six in the evening and then, he proceeds to go about the rest of the estate…”
Miss Bradbury frowned. “Go about the rest of the estate doingwhatexactly?”
“Why, he inspects it, of course. Every inch of it, from what I could see.”
“But Wentworth Park is quite large! It would take himhoursto accomplish such a task.”
Phoebe smiled at them. “Precisely. Now, if someone were to go about doing all that day after day, that would leave only the daytime hours for him to go about murdering people and that is hardly ideal unless one were to become a prolific killer in broad daylight.”
The other ladies let out horrified giggles, for although as dark and horrific the idea of murder was, it was also quite ridiculous to engage in such an act in broad daylight, with most of the world being wide awake to witness the act.