like a bombshell. Equally the Duke, when he thought it over, decided it could be a satisfactory solution to the problem that had been perturbing his mind for some time.
He remembered being told that Lady Caroline Allerton was indeed a great beauty and he thought, although he was not sure, that he had noticed her in the hunting field.
Tall, fair and blue-eyed, she would certainly look her best wearing the sapphires, which had been his mother’s favourite set of jewels, and he was sure she would grace the turquoises, which would doubtless match her eyes.
What was more important than anything was that the land called ‘Magnus Croft’ would come back into the possession of the Lynchester estate.
It had always infuriated the Duke that his father should have parted so foolishly with any of their land.
He had only to look at the map in the Estate Office to feel a surge of anger when he saw how the Magnus Croft acres, which dipped right into the estate in the shape of a teapot spout, were coloured green instead of the red that depicted all the rest of his land.
‘Now I am getting things exactly as they should be,’ the Duke told himself.
He wondered what Isobel would think when she heard that he was to be married.
The Countess of Walshingham was his current mistress and he was not yet bored with her.
She was far wittier than the other women he had been involved with in the past years. She made him laugh, which was unusual, even though he was aware that everything she said was at somebody else’s expense.
But the mere fact that she looked so lovely when she was being at her most spiteful and her blue eyes were glinting with venom really added to her charms.
He found too that her fiery response to his love-making was more intense and indeed more demanding than anything he had known for some time.
He knew that he had no wish for the moment to give up the Countess or resist her appeal.
Moreover he told himself that there was no reason now why marriage should interfere with his other interests as long as they were discreetly conducted.
He had every intention of treating his wife with respect and doing nothing to make her embarrassed or even aware that he was unfaithful.
As his wife and a Duchess she was entitled to her place by his side and he knew whether they were at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle or Chester House, he would see that she was received and treated as befitted her position.
‘She shall have no regrets on that score,’ the Duke decided.
The only difference therefore in his behaviour in the future from what it had been in the past would be that his meetings with Isobel or any other woman who took his fancy would have to be far more discreet.
He would have to be clever to deceive the sharp-eyed gossips who were always ready to make trouble, but he was sure that he could outwit them.
The Duke then sat down at his desk to inspect the pile of letters and invitations that his secretary had put there for his perusal.
As he did so, the door opened.
The Duke looked up with a smile.
“Hello, Harry. I am delighted to see you. I am glad you have arrived early before the rest of the party.”
He rose as he spoke and held out his hand and Harry Sheldon, who was one of his oldest friends, replied,
“I was intending to break your record getting here, but I have to concede my horses are not as good as yours.”
“How long did you take?”
“Two hours, twenty-three minutes.”
“Ten minutes too slow.”
“I know that,” Harry Sheldon replied, “there is no need to rub it in.”
He threw himself down in an armchair, saying as he did so,
“All the same I deserve a glass of champagne and I hope it is cool enough to drink.”
“You insult my household arrangements,” the Duke responded at once.
He walked towards the table in the corner of the room where there was an open bottle of champagne in a gold ice cooler.
“You missed a really good party last night, Silvanus,” Harry Sheldon said. “We dined at White’s and went on to a new ‘House of Pleasure’ that has just opened up in the Haymarket. There were some little lovebirds from France that are the prettiest things you have ever seen. All ‘Ooh-la-la’ and a lot of ‘Oui – Oui!’ I enjoyed myself.”
“You can take me there next week,” the Duke said as he walked across the room with a glass of champagne in his hand. “And by the way, Harry, I am going to be married!”
Harry Sheldon almost dropped the glass of champagne that his friend had just given him.
“Did you say – married?”
The Duke nodded.
“Good God!” Harry exclaimed. “So you have taken the plunge at last! But who the devil to? And why have I not met her?”
“I have not met her myself for that matter,” the Duke answered.
“Are you serious?”
“Completely!”
“Then what are you saying? And who is she?”
“She is the Duke of Northallerton’s daughter. He has just offered her to me together with the ten thousand acres of Magnus Croft.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“It is true.”
“Then you have won!” Harry Sheldon said. “You swore you would get back the land that your father threw away on the turn of a card.”
“Yes, I have won and I believe it is tied up with a rather pretty ribbon. I have been told that Caroline Allerton is a beauty.”
“Caroline Allerton? But you have never met her?”
“Of course not. The Lynchesters have not been on calling terms with the Northallertons since the Duke had refused to hand back the land when my father explained that owing to the influence of alcohol he was not in his right senses when he staked and lost it.”
“Who can blame him?” Harry Sheldon remarked. “A bet is a bet and a point of honour.”
“Exactly!” the Duke said. “At the same time my father thought that the Duke was being unreasonable and cut off all communications except on a strictly official basis.”
“And was it on a strictly official basis that you were offered his daughter?”
“Very strictly,” the Duke replied. “We have a common enemy in the fact that
