Chapter 1

Georgiana sighed and leaned back in her corner of the luxurious Pendlebury travelling coach. Even this, the most modern of vehicles, sometimes struggled to cope with roads that were axle-deep in mud in many places. The lurching and jolting motion was wearisome.

The season was over – God knows she was glad of it – and in normal times she would by now be settling in to her brother Lord Irlam's house in Brighton, looking forward to all the fashionable amusements the summer there could offer. But these were not normal times; no al fresco entertainments or riding parties on the Downs could be expected when the weather continued so very inclement, and icy showers greeted every attempt to venture outside. The harvest was set to fail, or had already failed, and there was hunger in the towns and unrest in the air. It was not the time, serious-minded persons felt, for idle pleasures. Or at least, not public idle pleasures.

Though she knew it was selfish to think so when it was causing so much suffering, the disturbed, disturbing weather suited her mood. The events of a few weeks earlier, her visit to that house and its aftermath, had been a salutary shock to Lady Georgiana; she had looked at herself coldly in the light of them, and she had not liked any part of what she saw.

Last summer, when for pure love of excitement and attention she had entangled herself with the fortune-hunter Captain Hart and thought herself so clever, so adult, she had been in reality foolish, reckless, immature. She had hurt others who by no means deserved it – not least her brother Hal – and had been very lucky, she knew, to escape the imbroglio that she had created with her reputation and even her person intact. Hal had talked to her very seriously about her irresponsible, careless behaviour, as had her aunt, but she had not really been punished for her folly; she had instead been taken on a luxurious tour of Europe, and seen beautiful cities, ancient ruins and natural wonders few girls of her age were privileged to see. They'd spent months abroad, in Italy and elsewhere, and Hal had even trusted her to visit Venice with a friend's family, away from his supervision. She'd spent Christmas there, and had behaved well, self-consciously properly, still chastened by her brother's gentle reproaches – but look how she repaid his trust now.

She knew she was spoiled and over-indulged, as the only girl among her numerous orphaned siblings; last year she had apologised for her follies a dozen times, and cried, and promised to do better, and had thought she meant it, but once again she had allowed her impulsiveness, her thoughtlessness, that wild streak that she did not yet know how to control and sometimes feared she never would, to lead her into dangerous behaviour.

Much more dangerous behaviour. She had gone to that cursed house – perhaps that could be excused, as Mrs Aubrey was greatly to be censured for her mischievous and apparently pointlessly cruel deception – but when she, Georgie, had realised what manner of place it was, she had not instantly fled. She had stayed. She had watched, seen things it was not safe for her to see, and when escape had offered itself to her, she had not taken it. Instead…

Georgiana was resolved not to follow that thought to its conclusion. Her experiences in that house, in that room, which she was determined not to think about now, absolutely refused to think about now as they brought a fiery blush to her cheeks, had at last caused her to reflect seriously upon herself, as, she now recognised with pain, she had not truly done last summer. Her apologies, her tears last year, had been worthless, since they had not in truth caused her to alter her behaviour one jot.

It was all very well to scoff at stuffy, outmoded social restrictions, as she had done when she chose to make Mrs Aubrey her friend; to use all her ingenuity to evade chaperonage; to say airily that the restrictions placed upon young women – never young men – were monstrously unjust and should be overturned. No doubt all these things were true, but she was obliged to live in the world as she found it. She was the daughter and sister of earls, she would be wealthy in her own right as far as a woman could be, but that did not give her some special magic that would enable her to defy society and its rules with impunity. She knew that a young gentleman in her position of great privilege would be free to behave more or less as he chose, to toy with women, to sample any and all debaucheries that caught his wayward fancy. But she, struggling with the same impulses and desires, was not similarly free. She had only to examine the career of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, her mother's friend, for whom she had been named, to see the truth of that. The Duchess's husband had been constantly unfaithful, unfaithful even with her dearest friend, and his wife had been obliged to accept and even to raise the results of those irregular unions, but when she in her turn had strayed, had sought a little happiness and caused scandal because of it, her husband had been merciless and she had been forced to give up her dearly loved natural child.

The problem was not just society, Georgie had some while since admitted with a dull sort of a pain; no, she was torn over what she wanted. That was at the root of it all. The Duchess of Devonshire was not the only example set before her eyes. There were many other noble ladies who, after presenting their husbands with an heir or two, took lovers as they pleased, and left their complaisant husbands free to do the same. If these ladies were reasonably discreet, their social position did not seem to suffer. Their wild and reckless impulses could, it seemed, be indulged. She might, she supposed, marry suitably and then, a few years later, claim this very special, limited sort of freedom, though she would have to choose her husband carefully if this was the path she followed. If she wanted passion, if she courted danger – as it seemed she did – then a suitable marriage need not entirely close these possibilities to her. The idea simultaneously fascinated and appalled her, as if she stood on a cliff edge and toyed with jumping to her ruin.

She was coming to believe that it would be ruin for her. It must be so, because she must face the fact that this dangerous existence was simply not what she had been raised to expect her life to be. Those other ladies who gave their affections and their persons so casually and so frequently had perhaps grown up with parents who lived in this manner, who thought it entirely normal, when surely it was not. But her own parents, despite their milieu and some of their friends, had loved each other on sight, till death and beyond it, and, she believed, never thought to stray. Her brother Hal had married his Cassandra for love, and after initial misunderstandings was now blissfully happy. Had her mama been living still, and not lost to the grave these eight years, Georgie thought she would have been horrified to think that her daughter was so much as contemplating such an arrangement, even hypothetically. She would have counselled her, surely, to curb her impatient, passionate nature, to wait, to trust to time, to believe that one day she would meet and fall passionately in love with a man who loved her as deeply in return and could fulfil all her needs.

I must do so, Georgie resolved again now with a slightly watery sniff that she hastily suppressed. I must restrain my wild impulses – while recognising that they exist, for I have to be honest with myself from now on, or I will be lost – and be patient. Though it is very hard.

Because she had been so very lucky that night a few weeks ago. The man – she still did not know his name – had offered his carriage to take her home, eventually, and she had alighted from it just outside the elegant square in which she resided, so that his servants could not see her destination and thus learn her identity. She had to her astonishment entered her brother's house entirely undetected, climbing in through a first-floor window, assisted in her exertions by her male attire. Nobody seemed to have wondered where she was, as her brother and sister-in-law had not attended the masquerade she had gone to, but had spent the evening at home alone together and presumably gone to bed hours since. She was excessively glad that she was not obliged to face them in her state of dishevelment and confusion. Her maid, who must have perceived her absence, she had bribed, as she had done on many occasions the summer before.

The next day she had written to Mrs Aubrey, telling her that she had left the house to which she had been brought as soon as she had realised its disreputable nature, and terminating their acquaintance. She could not know, for she dared not ask, why Caro Aubrey had effectively set out to ruin her. But it scarcely mattered now. Should Mrs Aubrey feel inclined to spread malicious rumours, she had told her in her letter, she ought to know that, if Lady Georgiana's reputation suffered the least hurt, the fact that she had been so shockingly tricked into visiting such a place and then abandoned there would be spread abroad. As would exactly what Georgie had observed of Mrs Aubrey's subsequent behaviour – she described it in great detail – and the fact that she was plainly a regular visitor. Lady Georgiana Pendlebury required no further communication from Mrs Aubrey, other than a credible assurance that her letter had been destroyed – and it was returned to her without delay, in fact, torn into dozens of tiny pieces but still, to its author, recognisable.

Other consequences had perforce been left to time, and there had been none. No gossip, not a whisper of scandal, no glances bright with malice, no laughter stifled behind gloved hands. Nothing save the memories that tormented her.

Georgie shook her head in unconscious denial and returned, with an effort, to the present. She had been excessively glad to leave London, glad to escape the risk of seeing him again. She had been run ragged, looking for him wherever she went, and her family had noticed the dark circles under her eyes, and pronounced her fagged to death by the demands of the season; she had perforce assented with what she was aware was a slightly wan smile.

Fresh air was what she needed, it was agreed by everyone. The family had always intended to visit Lady Irlam's childhood home in Yorkshire at some point this year, and had carried out the plan as dismal June ended, even persuading Hal and Georgie's aunt, Lady Louisa, normally the most indolent of women, to accompany them north, since her companion Miss Spry was keen to come and see more of the north country. Cassandra was plainly delighted to visit her old haunts, and to show them to her husband; Georgie was happy enough to wrap up in voluminous layers and accompany the pair on bracing walks across the moors when the weather allowed. She felt better now, she told herself, now that she knew she was safe – she could hardly imagine that he, that the man, would appear from behind a drystone wall or wind-blasted tree, striding across the wild moors towards her, though in truth he still haunted her dreams, some of which were nightmares and some of which were decidedly more pleasant, though still disturbing in their own way.

But the company of two such besotted lovers as Hal and Cassandra, not yet a year married, was bound to pall in the end, and so Lady Georgiana, Lady Louisa and Miss Spry had with alacrity accepted an invitation to visit Louisa's old friend, Lady Blanche FitzHenry, at her brother's home on the Yorkshire coast. They had spent a couple of nights in Harrogate to break the journey into easy stages – Lady Louisa was not a woman who could ever be hurried – and were now on its final leg, approaching Northriding Castle.

‘Have you ever been here before, Louisa?' Georgie asked idly now, as she gazed out of the carriage window, shaking off her lingering thoughts and looking about her. There was a change in the quality of light, even on such a grey day; it was plain that the sea was nearby, even though it was still unseen behind a low rise of wooded hills. They must be close, she thought.

‘I have not,' her aunt replied. She was a handsome, statuesque woman of a little more than forty, with a drily humorous, languid manner and a decided air of fashion. She was unmarried, but nobody had ever had the temerity to call her a spinster. ‘Blanche and I first became acquainted at school in London, and endured our first season together – well, I endured it; Blanche liked it, I think. She is a fearfully energetic creature; you will see soon enough. And then she married FitzHenry directly and went off to live in Ireland, and I have not set eyes on her for twenty years or more. But now, of course, she is a widow, and has brought her children to stay with her brother for a while.'

‘Her brother, the notorious Duke,' said Miss Spry wryly. ‘I confess I am all agog to meet him, and picture him very much as the villain in a Gothic tale. Montoni, perhaps. Is he as bad as he is painted, Louisa? Has he really seduced and left heart-broken quite half the ladies of Italy?' Miss Jane Spry did not in any sense conform to the picture held by most people of a lady companion; she was not a small, timid, retiring woman, dressed in drab, self-effacing garments, but was tall, blonde, cheerful and outspoken, dressing with careless flair and addressing Lady Louisa, her intimate friend, with no marked degree of deference. She came from a notable literary family, and herself wrote poems and learned articles that had been published in journals to some acclaim, but despite this Georgie liked her.

‘I have not the least idea how bad he truly is,' said Louisa. ‘He is eight or nine years younger than Blanche, and I was not at all acquainted him when he was a child. Odd to think of a famous rake once being a child, is it not, Jane? I know him by sight, of course; he is quite unnecessarily handsome, albeit in a sinister sort of a way that would quite fit your Gothic picture of him. You will not have set eyes on him, I suppose, Georgie, for you do not frequent the kind of parties he is rumoured to attend of late years, I am happy to say. But apart from gossip, I know as much or as little of him as you do.'

‘How disappointing.' The older ladies shared a smile.

Then Louisa said, with a brief burst of uncharacteristic animation, leaning forward urgently and tapping her niece on the knee with her lorgnette for emphasis, ‘I do not need to tell you, Georgiana, that you must never be alone with him. I know you have a long history of evading chaperonage, which it would be far too fatiguing to pick over again today, but whatever the truth behind it, his reputation is, as Jane says, atrocious. I should never have agreed to come here with you if I had not been given to understand that it will be quite a large party, containing several young ladies and their hopeful mamas, along, I trust, with more interesting people. But this time all the proprieties will be observed by you, do you understand me? Your good name would not survive an entanglement with him. And no, I do not propose to give you any more details of his exploits, so you need not think to ask me for them.'

Georgiana shuddered a little; thank God her aunt had no notion about her own latest and worst escapade. Long might it remain so! ‘I promise you, Louisa, I have learned my lesson long since and will not do anything to put you to the blush. No, truly, I mean it!' she said, when the response was an incredulous snort. She was grateful when Miss Spry turned the subject.

‘"Hopeful mamas"?' asked that lady thoughtfully. ‘Do I understand you to be implying that the Duke is contemplating matrimony at last? That young ladies have been gathered here expressly for that purpose? If so, this is the first I have heard of it!'

‘It may be so, I cannot say,' replied Lady Louisa airily. Then, ‘Do not look at me in that odiously quizzing way! I will not be accused of matchmaking! You both know I would never contemplate such a thing, least of all with a man whose reputation is as bad as his. I am here to see my old friend, my dears, and nothing more. I promise you, I have no sinister intention. Jane, Georgiana, come: you wrong me!'

‘Good!' said her companions in unison.

‘But,' pursued Lady Louisa with a twinkle in her fine blue eyes, ‘it might be amusing, might it not, to observe as disinterested outsiders the lengths that others go to in order to trap such a great prize?'

‘To see young women offered up as sacrificial lambs can hardly be considered amusing,' said Miss Spry with a little heat; it was an old debate between them, for she was known to harbour radical views on the condition of women.

Her companion was of a more cynical turn of mind, and said merely, ‘Well, we shall see, shall we not, dearest Jane, whether the innocent lambs are sacrificed, or run eagerly to the slaughter, jostling each other as they go? Presumably even a man as infamous as the Silver Duke cannot marry more than one of them at a time.'

‘The…?' Georgie began to ask, prey to a sudden ridiculous fear. But there was no time to question her aunt further.

‘We shall know soon enough,' said Louisa, ‘for I perceive that we have arrived.'