Chapter One

“Would you recommend leaving Goldfield House immediately, Mr. Ewett?” Joan asked, once she had led the lawyer to the drawing room and they had finished with the required pleasantries and condolences. “My friends wanted to take me back to London, but I prefer to stay and meet the new Duke when he arrives. It might look callous if I seem to have abandoned the place immediately, don’t you think?”

As she spoke, Joan was conscious of her dissimulation. The truth was that she did not really want to leave the estate. Despite the tragedy of Tobias’s death and the cold attitude of the staff, Goldfield House had always seemed light and welcoming to her. Even though she had married a stranger, she’d had a feeling of coming home upon her arrival, a sense of belonging.

The frock-coated lawyer sighed and gave a slight shrug, his shrewd eyes as gray as his hair, and his expression compassionate today. Mr. Ewett had seemed old to Joan even as a child on his visits to her father, but he also seemed not to have aged a day since then. Perhaps he had been born five-and-sixty and stayed that age ever since.

“You must use your own judgment on the social niceties, Your Grace,” he advised. “I’m sure you can’t be comfortable here after what happened last week. But then, it might not be any easier to face London Society yet.”

“No, that is true. I hear from my maid that I’m now being called ‘the Black Widow’ around the ton. I don’t suppose there’s a lot I can do about that, but it would be unpleasant to hear it with my own ears. I will have to get my weeds out again when I go back to town, too. Here, this suffices, at least indoors.”

She held up the arms of the muted gray walking dress that she was wearing in quasi-mourning for her late husband. Joan felt that she had spent most of her adult life in mourning clothes and was not keen to return to wearing them too quickly.

“It will all pass,” Mr. Ewett assured her. “There will be some other scandal before the end of the Season, and people will forget your misfortunes again, Your Grace.”

“I would still rather avoid the immediate muckraking if I can. So, I will remain at Goldfield House a little longer and give my condolences to the new heir in person before I depart.”

“The heir, Christian Turner, is only a second cousin, I believe. By all accounts, they barely knew one another.”

“Then we will have something in common,” Joan remarked sadly.

“As your lawyer, I must also advise you to consider your dower from the Goldfield estate. It might work in your favor to stay and discuss that directly with the new Duke. Given the short duration of the marriage, I recommend that a fair opening position would be a third of your husband’s funds but no property.”

“I want nothing but the property and money I brought into the marriage, Mr. Ewett,” Joan protested. “That’s another area where I need your professional advice. As my husband died before… before our wedding night, I believe that, technically, it was not legally valid. Might I petition for an annulment on those grounds as the quickest way of resolving matters?”

Joan blushed slightly as she asked this question, but she saw no way of avoiding it. She no longer had a father who could pursue such delicate matters on her behalf. Even though her cousin Edward had offered to deal with all legal matters, she had declined his offer, even less comfortable having such a conversation with a younger man.

Mr. Ewett gave a very long sigh as he considered his answer, probably also wishing that Joan’s father was still alive.

“The law is not so straightforward, Your Grace. You might petition for an annulment on grounds of non-consummation if your husband lived and had not done his duty to you, although I could not guess your chances of success. With his death, I believe the question is technically moot and I would not advise anything that challenges your advantageous status as the late Duke of Goldfield’s widow.”

“Could I not at least try?” Joan persisted. “I want nothing from Tobias’s estate.”

Think of your reputation, Your Grace, with your private life laid out to all and sundry before the courts. Your father did consult me on this very issue after both of your previous bereavements, although his perspective was different. I gave him the same advice.”

“Yes, my father was keen that I should keep the dower from both of my previous husbands despite the lack of… consummation.”

“The previous Lord Windham’s position was sound. There would have been nothing to gain from publicizing your continued… ah, virginity, if you will allow me to speak plainly, since few would believe in it. The claim would therefore not have benefited you in the marriage market. By allowing the marriages to be considered valid, however, you became a very rich woman.”

“But not a marriageable one,” Joan pointed out. “No one wants to marry a woman whose husbands keep dying on their wedding day. The Duke of Goldfield, God rest his soul, only married me because his father had been an old school friend of Father’s, and Father talked him into it.”

“Let us take care of the present first and then look to the future,” Mr. Ewett said. “Please abandon all thoughts of an annulment and accept the dower rights in your marriage contract. Naturally, if the new Duke does not respect the contract or attempts to retain your assets, then we must be ready to sue him, including by challenging the validity of the marriage. But not until then.”

Joan exhaled heavily, feeling the heavy weight of her father’s opinion and Mr. Ewett’s on her supposed virtue and its market value. She had hoped to simply walk away from her husband’s estate this time without dirtying her hands. Her lawyer was pointing out the disadvantages and pitfalls she hadn’t wanted to consider.

“Neither of my previous husband’s families contested anything. They all just wanted to be rid of me.”

“When someone dies unexpectedly, it is often best to move on quickly once all loose ends are tied up,” Mr. Ewett interjected. “That is just the way of things. I expect the new Duke of Goldfield will have the same view. You should do the same as far as you can.”

“Very well, I will be ready to leave here as soon as the new Duke arrives. Do you have any idea of when that might be?”

“Having spoken to the agents of the Goldfield estate, I can tell you that they have sent a letter to Christian Turner informing him of his cousin’s demise and his accession to the dukedom,” the lawyer confirmed.

“Has he received the letter yet?” Joan asked. “It has been almost a week since Tobias died, and I have heard nothing. The agents assured me that they were in contact with you.”

“I doubt it has reached him yet,” Mr. Ewett said thoughtfully. “Christian Turner has been the Viscount Farbourne since his father’s demise, and he owns lands near the Scottish border. Even if he then sets off immediately upon receipt of the message, it could take another fortnight to reach Goldfield House, depending on the weather, the road and the horses. I imagine he will send a reply ahead and ride behind.”

“So long,” Joan commented, counting back to her latest disastrous wedding day, and ahead to Christian Turner’s arrival while sipping the tea that Harriet had laid out for them on the table in front of the long sofas. “But it can’t be helped.”

“If you send word to London once the Duke arrives, I will return here at your convenience to finalize legal matters or meet His Grace in London if he prefers. Ah, thank you…”

Harriet had returned with a fresh pot of tea and slices of cake. Having met Mr. Ewett many times over the years, she smiled briefly at him before taking the empty pot and leaving the room again.

“I’ve never seen your maid serving tea before,” Mr. Ewett observed, biting into the seed cake. “Although I suppose rank and seniority must always be negotiated among the servants in a big household like this.”

Joan shook her head and bit her lip before she answered. “Frankly, the servants here do not wish to serve me, Mr. Ewett, and I understand their feelings. The past week has not been easy here. Anyway, I would rather have Harriet around me now than anyone else.”

The old man frowned at this news. “What effrontery! Don’t wish to serve you? Who do they think they are? Your father would never have stood for such behavior. I have half a mind to?—”

“Please, Mr. Ewett,” Joan interjected. “Do nothing and say nothing. As you have said, this will all be over soon enough. Until then, Harriet is taking good care of me here, and my cousin is readying my departure all too impatiently. I have my own house in London, as you know, and Edward is opening it for me again.”

“As you wish, my dear,” he harrumphed, forgetting for a moment that she was now a thrice-married duchess and no longer the young daughter of one of his firm’s oldest clients. “Incidentally, did I see the carriage of Lord and Lady Linbridge outside?”

“Yes, Helena has come to call on me for the day. She and Colin—that is Lord Linbridge—are very much in agreement with my cousin about getting me out of here as soon as possible and keeping me company in the meantime.”

“I’m glad your friends have not forgotten you,” the lawyer said.

“Not the real ones, anyway,” Joan sighed. “I don’t think that ‘The Black Widow’ will be receiving many wider social calls here or anywhere else.”

“It will pass,” Mr. Ewett reassured her again, finishing the last of his seed cake. “Such things always do.”

Joan looked out of the window musingly. An elderly lawyer could know nothing of the ton’s vicious undertow of unspoken prejudice and social penalties. Mr. Ewett saw only the matters that went to solicitors and courts. He had no experience of how easy it was for someone to be cut off by Society and lose their reputation without trial or opportunity for defense.

Frustrated and depressed by this conversation, Joan gave no sign of this as she saw Mr. Ewett out through the hallway, where Owens, the butler, opened and closed the front door without once glancing in her direction.

“Mr. Ewett has gone now,” Joan announced, entering the morning room, where Helena was presently sketching a vase of flowers.

The roses and ferns in the vase had been wedding flowers. Now, almost a week later, they were starting to wilt and die.

How appropriate…

Helena too had chosen a functional gray dress for today’s call. Unlike Joan’s dull gray muslin gown, which was at odds with her dark red hair and emerald-green eyes, making her look washed out and ill, Helena’s outfit suited her well. The silvery gray silk brought out the slate-blue of her eyes and complemented the ash-blonde hair coiled and pinned atop her head.

“What did he say?” Lady Linbridge asked, putting down her sketching pad and pencils.

“He advised me to stay and speak to the new Duke about my dower. Like my father, he doesn’t see the value in seeking an annulment. He sees that only as a risk of further damaging my reputation.”

Helena sighed and shook her head. “These men! But what do you want, Joan? I keep hearing what all the men in your life would have wanted, whether it was your father, your dead husbands, Mr. Ewett, or even Edward, who is now trying to persuade you to return to London by opening your house. But what do you want?”

“I’m a woman,” Joan said, with an almost bitter weariness. “Aren’t I supposed to want what all women want? A husband, a home, children… Although I can’t even have that, apparently. It seems irrelevant what I want.”

Helena came over and embraced her friend. “I think what you want most is rest and distraction. When this is all over, I’d like you to come and stay with Colin and me for a while and not think about anything at all. You can eat good breakfasts, play with the children, and do nothing in particular for as long as you want.”

“But Edward is opening my London house already. I’ll have to go back and stay there at least for some time.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Helena declared firmly, with the kindly outspokenness that had attracted Joan in her first Season, and then Colin. “I’m sure Edward has your interests at heart, but if he wants the best for you, he’ll see that you must mourn in your own way.”

“Mourn? I hardly knew Tobias, Helena. We met five times, and two of those were with his mother and my father—both now dead, too.”

“Mourn for yourself, dear Joan. Mourn for the life you thought you were about to begin. Mourn again for your father, even. I know you still miss him.”

“I do,” Joan admitted, her father’s absence a dull ache she still felt inside every day even after more than a year.

The two ladies sat down together on a sofa.

“Shall we ring for tea?” Helena asked.

Joan gave a laconic smile and tugged on the bell pull. “We can try. Harriet will happily bring us refreshments even if no one else here wants to. I do hope they’re not too hard on her down there in the servants’ hall. Whatever they think of me, this isn’t Harriet’s fault.”

“It’s not your fault either, Joan. You mustn’t start imagining otherwise.”

“Three husbands, all dead on their wedding day. It does look awful, doesn’t it? If people don’t think I’m a murderer, they probably think I’m cursed. I should see a priest when I get back to London. I don’t think Reverend Hooton wishes to talk to me any more than the servants here…”

“Joan, this is madness,” Helena protested. “You’re not a murderer, and you’re not cursed. You’re simply very, very unlucky.”

“Am I?” Joan laughed mirthlessly. “Having one middle-aged husband expire after our wedding ceremony was enough to make me the hottest topic of gossip for months.”

Poor Harriet had found the Earl of Danmouth in what was intended to be Joan’s suite. At first, thinking that he had simply fallen asleep in a chair with a drink at his side while waiting for his new wife, Harriet had apparently tried to shake him awake and then raised the house with her screams.

“On the fringes, yes, there was some nastiness. But generally, Society put Lord Danmouth’s sudden death down to his over-fondness for port, cigars, and fast living. You did have a lucky escape there in many ways, even though your father liked the man. Colin agrees with me.”

“Perhaps,” Joan conceded.

She had never really had the chance to get to know either the man or his reputation. Still, inheriting a comfortable portion of the Danmouth fortune and the income from industrial holdings in the north of England, as well as the return of her dowry, she could not deny that once the initial shock had passed, her first widowhood had been a relief.

“Then, what happened with Lord Lowburgh was partly your father’s fault. If he had let you choose your own husband, I’m sure none of this would have happened. But he did insist on marrying you off to the old man the minute you were out of mourning clothes.”

“I didn’t really resist, though,” Joan reflected, not able to entirely blame her father. “Father told me that if I didn’t accept Lord Lowburgh, no one might ever ask for my hand again after what happened with Lord Danmouth. He wanted me to marry and have a son so badly.”

Arms folded, Helena shook her head, holding to her judgment on Joan’s father’s poor decision. “It was very foolish. As all the gossips said at the time, the elderly Viscount Lowburgh’s heart simply couldn’t stand his overexcitement at the prospect of a wife young enough to be his granddaughter.”

“Yes, I suppose they did say that,” Joan sighed.

After her second wedding, the bridegroom hadn’t even made it to the bedroom. Harriet found him in a small sitting room of Lowburgh Manor, with a small phial of “Percy Pratt’s Potency Potion” in his pocket and an empty glass beside him. Percy Pratt himself escaped prosecution when the phial’s contents were analyzed and found to be pure water, although this revelation also destroyed his business.

Dazed by finding herself a widow for the second time under such peculiar circumstances, Joan had only vaguely been aware of the ribald joking around the town at the circumstances of Lord Lowburgh’s demise. It was somewhat humiliating even in retrospect to have been the butt of such crude humor.

“The Duke of Goldfield is another matter entirely, though,” Helena added, her expression becoming more serious. “He led a quiet, abstemious life and was only in his twenties.”

“When the gossips say that I killed Tobias, everyone else will believe them, won’t they?” Joan said. “Then they will forget their joking about Lord Lowburgh and Lord Danmouth and assume I killed them, too. Are the ton saying that already, Helena? Will I be an outcast back in London? Harriet already told me that I’m being referred to as ‘The Black Widow.’”

“I wish she hadn’t told you that,” Helena remarked sharply but looked away. “Where is that tea?”

Lady Linbridge rang the bell again, and Harriet hurried into the room a few moments later, slightly flushed and out of breath.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace, My Lady. I was sorting out the rooms upstairs, and no one told me you’d already rung the bell. I’ll get you some tea now.”

“Thank you, Harriet,” Joan said, not wanting to make her maid’s life harder than it had to be. “You can bring what Mr. Ewett and I had and some fresh tea.” Once Harriet was gone again, she turned to Helena. “You didn’t answer me, Helena. These things are already being said, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Helena conceded, her brow creasing in vexation. “Although, I won’t have it said in front of me, and I’ve given a fair few society ladies the length of my tongue this week. Colin told me that he heard it at his gentlemen’s club too, although only among the drunken young bucks.”

“I see,” Joan registered dully, thinking that if her reputation were already so damaged, she could not really run the risk of tainting Helena and Colin by staying at their home. “Perhaps I should stay at my own house in London, after all.”

“It’s not fair that you should be punished for things that weren’t your fault,” Helena protested. “Colin and I have been so lucky, and you were a part of that. He’s so shy that he would never have plucked up the courage to propose to me if you hadn’t encouraged him and let him know that I felt the same way. Now, we want to help you.”

“I don’t know if anyone can help me,” Joan said distantly as Harriet returned with the tea tray, causing both her friend and her maid to look at her with concern.

Something inside Joan cracked as she spoke these words, a fissure that had perhaps begun in her meeting with Mr. Ewett and widened inexorably with Helena’s questioning of the life decisions her father had made for her. The recognition that the ton would likely blacken her name and reputation regardless of what she did next was a wedge that broke her old worldview entirely.

“I don’t know if anyone can help me, so I’ll have to help myself,” Joan finally finished, her voice growing stronger with this declaration. “I refuse to care what ignorant, prejudiced people think of me. I’m going to live my life however I want and wherever I wish, and I will never marry again. I’m finally going to be free!”

“Good!” Helena answered, embracing her again. “Colin and I will stand by you, whatever you decide.”

“As will I, Your Grace,” Harriet spoke up, unusual for her in the presence of a guest, but in keeping with the moment.

Joan thanked both of them and then smiled.

“Harriet, would you fetch us a bottle of champagne from the cellars? We’re going to mourn in our own way. If anyone asks what you’re doing, you can tell them I’ve finally lost my mind…”