The Duke (50 page)
Authors: Gaelen Foley
“Papa!” Bel protested.
There were ripples of laughter at her mortification; people stomped their feet on the floor and cheered.
“Robert, you are making a fool of yourself!”
“Yes, my darling, that is the point. If we’re going to make a scandal, let’s make it a good one.”
“Oh, you maddening—!” she said, exasperated past the point of speech.
Bringing the horse nearer, he offered her his hand with a soft, beguiling smile. “Come away with me now. Don’t hesitate. You know that I love you. This is our chance.”
“Say yes!” someone in one of the nearby rows hollered. “Say yes to him!”
Others joined in.
“Don’t be daft, girl! He loves you!” a big Cockney woman shouted from the pit.
“Go!” they all started shouting, cheering Robert on.
“I’m sure it’s nobody’s business!” Bel exclaimed.
He flashed her a dashing grin. “The ayes have it. Come, Bel. What good is anything if we’re not together?”
Tears rushed into her eyes. His dark eyes shone with all the promise of the future he was offering. He waited faithfully, his hand outstretched, braving a very public rejection. God knew he deserved it, too, after all he had put her through.
She looked anxiously from the clamoring audience to her father. “Papa, what should I do?”
He gave her a teary-eyed smile. “Why, my dear, you should follow your heart, of course.”
“What about Mick?”
“He only wants your happiness, as do I. He’ll understand.”
“Oh, Papa!” She hugged her father hard. He chuckled fondly as he released her.
Then the noise built to a crescendo; the whole audience cheered as Bel daringly climbed over the railing with a scandalous show of ankle that would have surely made the brazen Georgiana Hawkscliffe laugh. She took Robert’s hand. He steadied her as she stepped down, gingerly lowering herself onto the horse behind him.
He drew her hands around his waist. “Put your arms around me,” he whispered, “and never let me go.”
“I love you!” At her joyous sob, she felt the rumble of his deep, tender laugh.
“Well, you’d better, bonny blue, because this time, our arrangement is permanent.”
He turned and gave her a light, lingering kiss full of velvet promise for the night to come. Tears brimmed under her lashes as he ended the kiss and held her gaze for a moment, love glowing in his dark eyes. “I missed you,” he whispered. Then he turned forward again, smiling more roguishly now.
“Hold on tight.”
She clasped her hands around his lean middle.
With that, he pressed his heels into the horse’s sides, and they galloped out of the theater and rode off into the stars.
Notice in The London Times Society Page 23rd September, 1814
After a private wedding ceremony in the chapel at Their Graces’ ancestral pile in Cumberland last week, the Duke and Duchess of Hawkscliffe embarked to Vienna to take their honeymoon amid the festivities of the Great Congress.
Lady Jacinda Knight and her companion, Miss Carlisle, also joined Their Graces for the Continental holiday.
Adding to the family’s happiness is the news that the decorated war hero Colonel Lord Damien Knight will be made a peer upon his arrival home from the Peninsula. We eagerly await the chance to express our thanks and congratulations to his lordship, who is expected to return before the month is out.
Elsewhere in Town, reports have reached us that the Duke of L
—
and the Marquess of W
—
were heard to exchange words in their longstanding rivalry for the favours of the notorious Harriette Wilson. . ..
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love, or the severity of my father, or the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble Lord, which induced me to leave my paternal roof and place myself under his protection, does not now much signify: or if it does, I am not in the humour to gratify curiosity in this matter.
So begins
The Lady and the Game,
the memoirs of Harriette Wilson. Her firsthand account of high life in the Regency demimonde was a primary source for this novel. The Cyprians’ house in York Place actually belonged to Amy, the eldest of the famous courtesan sisters—Harriette had her own house in the New Road in Marylebone and later, in Trevor Square, Knightsbridge—but I condensed locations for the sake of unity. In real life Amy and Harriette, fierce rivals, could not have lived civilly under the same roof. In 1815, the year following my story, Harriette, aged thirty-five, moved to Paris as her fame in London began to wane. Amy turned respectable; Fanny died young; Julia Johnstone bore a total of twelve children. The youngest Wilson sister, Sophia, landed a viscount.
Marguerite Gardiner, who is also mentioned in the story, started out in life as a poor Irish girl of great beauty and ended up the Countess of Blessington, as well as a famed writer and confidante to Lord Byron. It is hoped the reader will forgive the author for taking the liberty of placing Lord and Lady Blessington’s nuptials within the dates of this story; in actuality, they did not marry until 1818.
Politically the Tories’ only foray into reform was in removing the death penalty for minor offenses and working toward a more humane penal code. Greater change would have to wait until after 1831, but when it came, it was driven in part by the vision and ferocious energy of Henry Brougham (later Lord Chancellor and First Baron of Brougham and Vaux). “Wickedshifts,” as the diarist Creevy calls him, directed the attention of Parliament in 1816 to the whole question of charitable endowment and obtained a select committee to investigate the education of poor children; in 1820 Brougham became the defense lawyer in the trial of Queen Caroline. One wonders if his relationship with a free spirit like Harriette helped to shape his amazingly forward-thinking views on the rights of women.
The reactionary and repressive attitudes of the Tories, as exemplified by Sidmouth and Eldon, resulted in the government’s failure to take any positive steps to deal with the problems of postwar England and led to public protests, one of which ended in the “Peterloo Massacre” of 1819. A savage attack on the Tory magnates still exists in Shelley’s famous poem “The Mask of Anarchy.” Wellington did not seem to suffer as badly in public opinion as the others did and later became prime minister.
As for Viscount Castlereagh and his ongoing battle with depression, after all his brilliant service, especially as foreign secretary, he took his life in 1822, slitting his throat with a penknife in his dressing room.
Finally, those familiar with the history of Lady Oxford and her “Harleian Miscellany” will no doubt recognize her as the model for my scandalous and beautiful Georgiana, duchess of Hawkscliffe and her variously sired brood. This grand dame of the ton was, of course, the inspiration for my new series about the Knight brothers, the first installment of which you have just read—and which I sincerely hope you will continue to enjoy.
—G.F.
P.S. The twins are next!
Gaelen Foley
is an award-winning author of
The Pirate Prince, Princes,
and
Prince Charming.
She resides in Pennsylvania with her husband and two spoiled bichons frises, and is hard at work on her next novel. Readers can write to the author at: P.O. Box 522, Library, PA, 15129, or e-mail her via her Web site at
www.gaelenfoley.com
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An Ivy Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2000 by Gaelen Foley
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States
by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto
.
Ivy Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/BB/
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-191807
ISBN 0-449-00636-0
Manufactured in the
United States of America
First edition: December 2000
10 987654321
V1.0—July2004—Proofread and formatted.