No Ordinary Gentleman

“Well, you are no oil painting,” I murmur, looking up into the austere countenance of the portrait in the gilt frame. “But I respect your fashion choices.” He was probably rocking it back in the day with his baby blue silk embroidered coat and white satin high heels.

“I see you’re admiring one of our ancestors.”

I turn to Isla’s smiling words.

“One of the fam?” I throw my thumb in the painting’s direction. “I was just telling him Cher called. Apparently, she wants her wig back.”

Isla releases a surprised-sounding laugh as she comes to stand next to me. Shoulder to shoulder, we examine the painting together.

“He’s not exactly bringing sexy back.”

“This is Henry Algernon Benedict Talbart-Dalforth, otherwise known as the first Duke of Dalforth. And no, you’re right. He wasn’t very easy on the eyes. This is his wife, Isobel,” Isla adds, indicating a looker in a russet ball gown.

“He was punching above his weight.” Because Isobel was truly beautiful. Or at least, she was painted so. “I guess she got the raw end of the deal.”

“Well, no one married for love in those days. They married for money, for power, and for allegiances. The first duke was no exception. He married for money, and his wife married probably because she was told to.”

“Tough break, Isobel. I’m sorry for you.”

“It might’ve been worse,” she adds, pointing at another painting on the opposite wall. “She might’ve been born a generation later and ended up married to him. He was also a bit of a beast, by all accounts.” The fashions may have changed in this portrait, but the look of superiority has not. “He took another man to his bed and expected his wife to say nothing about it.”

“And did she?”

“What could she do? A woman was nothing more than a chattel. His lover was an earl, no less, who abandoned his wife and family for this strange three-way existence.”

“I thought that kind of behaviour was a big no-no back then.”

“Yes,” she says with a sad but brief smile. “For ordinary people. No matter the age, it seems if you’ve enough money, you can get away with almost anything. Take him, for example, the next of our illustrious ancestors. He wanted to divorce his wife, but that was frowned upon. So he pushed her down the stairs instead.”

“That’s one way to get rid of your wife, I guess.”

“Yes, quite an extreme way. He also went on to fatally wound his paramour’s husband in a duel after that. He fled the country and never returned. Then we have his grandson, who became a highwayman for kicks, was disowned, and then hanged. Next came an opium addict. Then we have my great-great-grandfather who married this beauty.”

We come to a stop in front of a portrait of a young woman in cornflower blue. With slim shoulders and a proud, haughty chin, she wears the kind of evening gown that would necessitate a dozen skirts underneath. Her skin is pale, her dark hair pinned simply in stark contrast to her extravagant clothing. The pearls at her throat and wrist and the jewelled fan she holds closed on her lap. But the most striking thing about her is her violet eyes. They seem to follow me as they move.

“She is stunning.” And kind of familiar, I think, as my gaze slips to Isla’s profile. They look like one another. I wonder if she realises. “Please don’t tell me hers was an unhappy marriage.”

Isla turns to me, her expression wry. “Aren’t you seeing a pattern?”

“What happened?” I ask, my heart sinking just a little.

“She tried to divorce him on the grounds of cruelty and desertion, but the petition failed. But she fell in love with another man, and they planned to run away together.” She turns back to the painting with a sigh. “He locked her in the castle’s highest tower. And she threw herself from it not long after.”

“Oh, my God. That’s terrible.”

“At least she didn’t see her son, my grandfather, live to grow into such infamy. He was indiscriminate in his affairs, from ladies of rank down to street sweepers. Men and women alike. By the time my father became the duke, the affairs of the estates were in a terrible mess.”

I don’t say anything because this is a tale Chrissy had already told.

“I see you’ve heard of him.” Turning to me again, she smiles properly this time.

“There must’ve been good dukes of Dalforth? Dukes without notoriety.”

“Oh, I’m sure there were. Those who died before reaching their majority.”

We walk a little farther along the hall, our voices echoing in the room more like a vast corridor.

“Here he is. Our illustrious father. The man who left his only son to sort out three hundred years of purgatory.”

The portrait features a man in his thirties, dressed in the uniform of the fox hunt. White pants, shirt and cravat, polished high-top boots and a scarlet jacket. Fair-haired and pleasant-looking, he has a twinkle in his blue eyes I almost recognise. He looks . . . friendly. Not like some ogre who ruined his children’s inheritance.