Free The Decadent Duke by Virginia Henley Page A

sleeping figure of his wife. She looked pale and ethereal, like a saint with her eyelids closed in gentle repose. The doctor suspects she is consumptive. He would never dream that such a respectable lady is an addict. John paced the room, debating what he should do.
    He considered asking his wife’s sisters for advice. Lucy, Baroness Bradford, might be persuaded to come for a short visit. He could send a note to Park Lane, but Lucy was most likely at Bradford-on-Avon this summer, rather than her London town house.
    Isabelle, her other sister, was the Marchioness of Bath. She was likely at Longleat for the summer. How could I confide my wife’s secret to her straitlaced sister Isabelle? She considers any hint of scandal worse than being buried alive.
    The only one I can confide in is my brother, Francis. There’s little that shocks him. I’ll take the boys to Woburn—it will get them away from here for a few days. I’ll get a nurse to watch over Elizabeth. It’s obvious Gertrude cannot stand up to her.
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"Good God, that carriage looks like it’s in a chariot race. Who the devil could be arriving at this hour of the morning?’’ Charlotte and Georgina were in the stillroom adjacent to the conservatory, making perfume from summer roses and jasmine.
    Georgina went to the door for a better look. "I’m afraid it’s Mother. Gird your loins, she looks as if she’s on the warpath.’’ The sisters hurried through the conservatory and made their way to the reception hall.
    Jane Gordon strode through the front door and brushed aside the footman. She needed no fool servant to announce her. She threw off her cloak, but kept on her beribboned bonnet, which now sat at a cockeyed angle due to her haste.
    "I’m ruined! I shall be a laughingstock! As the leading Tory hostess, I am being held up to ridicule by this jackanapes!’’
    "What? How? Who?’’ Charlotte followed her mother into the sitting room, and Georgina tried not to laugh at the comic scene.
    "This!’’ With a melodramatic flourish, she thrust a book at them. She was panting with outrage, and her face had turned a florid red that clashed alarmingly with the purple of her bonnet.
    Georgina took the book. "A Winter in London by T. S. Surr.’’
    "I willna’ stand fer it!’’ Jane screeched, lapsing into Scottish brogue.
    "Then sit, Mama,’’ Charlotte urged dryly.
    Jane paced across the room, turned and paced back. "I’ll ne’er sit again until the swine is brought to justice. Devil take the wretch. If I were a mon, I’d challenge him to a duel!’’
    Georgina opened the book and began to read aloud. "When the Duchess of Drinkwater appeared on the London scene, the Duchess of Belgrave was not amused.’’ She grasped immediately that it was a satirical novel. Mother recognizes herself as the Duchess of Drinkwater.
    "Go on ... read it!’’ Jane’s hat tilted over one eye.
    "The Duchess of Drinkwater appeared upon the field of fashion and threw down the gauntlet of defiance to Belgrave: an event which produced upon the fashionable world an effect precisely similar to that which the natural world sustains from the convulsion of an earthquake; or which the moral world experienced from the French revolution.
    â€™â€™Before this challenge was given, to have doubted that the will of Belgrave was the law of fashion would have been deemed an abrogation of loyalty itself. What, then, must have been the surprise, the horror of a people cherishing such sentiments when they beheld the Duchess of Drinkwater erecting her standard of revolt against the object of their allegiance and their worship, and promulgating with undaunted zeal a code and creed diametrically opposite to the principles of their former obedience and faith.”
    Jane snatched the book from her daughter and pushed her hat back from her eye. “Listen to this: The