The Widow

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Newsletter and Social Media Links

  About the Author

  Other books by Carole Mortimer

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2022 Carole Mortimer

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  Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign

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  Editor: Linda Ingmanson

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  Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign

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  ISBN: 978-1-914336-06-5

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  All Rights Reserved.

  DEDICATION

  Peter,

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  Best thirty years of my life!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Crawtock, Cornwall

  Early Summer, 1816

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  “Will you stop dawdling and hurry along? I do not have all day to waste waiting for you.”

  Sterling Bishop, the Duke of Bristol, rarely, if ever, took note of what was occurring in other people’s lives. The omission wasn’t out of arrogance, but because he did not consider it any of his concern how other people chose to conduct themselves or their affairs.

  He would rather not concern himself with it today either, after days of traveling from London to one of his smaller ducal estates in this wild and craggy part of England.

  Unfortunately, it was impossible not to overhear the loud and querulous voice of the man currently just out of Sterling’s view around the next turn in the road in the small market town of Crawtock in Cornwall.

  Sterling’s ducal estate was situated a mere mile or so away, and it had been his intention to make his way straight to the house and immediately indulge in a bath to wash away the dust and accumulated discomfort from his long journey. He’d bathed at the inns he and his valet stopped at along the way, of course, but it was not the same as bathing in the privacy of his own home.

  He had no doubt Rogers, his valet, having traveled ahead earlier this morning in the coach containing Sterling’s clothes and other accessories, would already have organized the household so that it catered fully to Sterling’s needs when he arrived later that day.

  Unfortunately, Sterling’s steed, Rufus, had lost a shoe a quarter of a mile away, forcing Sterling to walk with him into Crawtock, and then linger here awhile longer as the local blacksmith replaced the missing shoe.

  Bored and in need of refreshment, Sterling had left the blacksmith’s to stroll about the small and untidy settlement that hardly merited being called a town. Besides the blacksmith’s, there was only a rough-looking drinking establishment and a row of thatched cottages, placed on one side of the small village green, with a butcher shop, a bakery, and a small haberdashery on the other.

  The latter Sterling had quickly walked away from when the customers inside, all ladies, turned their gazes toward him as he glanced in the window, without really seeing any of the display of ribbons and lace.

  He was further irritated when three young ladies, whom he would hazard were maids from the plainness of their gowns and hairstyles, had all watched him curiously as they stood beside the village well on the small green, where presumably the market was held once a month. Those young ladies had made no effort to hide the fact they were all staring at him as they whispered and giggled behind their workworn hands.

  Sterling knew that by nightfall, no doubt aided by the gossip of the servants in his own household, all in the small town and surrounding area would know of the Duke of Bristol’s presence.

  Being the focus of unwanted curiosity was not something Sterling enjoyed, so he had done what any self-respecting gentleman would do and retired to the local drinking establishment. An hour or so within its rough-looking walls, drinking cool ale, had restored Sterling’s equilibrium somewhat. The thatched roof of the inn might be sagging in places and in need of repair, there was an equally disreputable stable attached, and the inside of the inn was no better than the outside, but the beer had been of excellent quality and temperature on this early summer’s day.

  If it could be called such. The weather was cold and unseasonably lacking in sunshine for this time of year. Highly suitable for the long journey to Cornwall, of course, but it was miserable weather otherwise.

  All Sterling’s inner feelings of goodwill, created by the beer and the jovial good wishes of the landlord of the inn as he left that establishment, vanished the moment he overheard the unfortunate beast—possibly a dog?—under very loud and very public chastisement.

  “If you had not grown so fat while being here, perhaps you would walk rather than waddle, and so move along far more swiftly,” the bullying man, still just out of sight, continued to berate.

  It might not be in Sterling’s nature to interfere in the lives of others, but neither could he stand idly by and listen while an animal was being mistreated.

  “Will you get your lazy arse into this carriage immediately, or do I have to take my whip to you?”

  Sterling had heard enough.

  More than enough!

  “Sir, I really must protest—” Sterling, having rounded the corner to confront the bullying gentleman, instead came to an abrupt halt when he saw that it was a young woman being so roundly harangued, rather than the overweight and elderly dog he had imagined it to be.

  A young woman, possibly aged two or three and twenty, who was very slender despite her shortness of stature. She was also delicately lovely, in a long-sleeved velvet pelisse and a silk gown of the same dark violet hue. Her eyes, when she turned a curious face in Sterling’s direction, proved to be the exact same violet color. She wore lavender-colored leather gloves and ankle boots. Her hair was fair and swept up and confined beneath a bonnet of the same shade and material as her gown, although several unruly curls had escaped onto the nape of her slender neck and about the heart-shaped pallor of her face.

  No doubt the bully in the waiting carriage would shortly be chastising her for that too!

  Unfortunately, Sterling recognized this particular bully as being Lord Henry Marshall, the Earl of Whitlow.

  A recognition which, along with the color of mourning in which she was clothed, implied the young lady, whom Whitlow had been so vilely—and incorrectly—insulting in regard to her weight, was most probably his daughter-in-law, Lady Elizabeth Marshall.

  If that should prove to be the case then she was the widow of the earl’s only and deceased son, Lord Thomas Marshall, and the mother of Lord Christopher Marshall, a four-year-old boy who was now his grandfather’s heir.

  She was also, once Sterling learned that Lady Marshall was now spending some of her year of mourning for her husband at the Marshall estate in Cornwall, the very reason for him having made the long journey here from London.

  Indeed, Sterling rarely visited this small ducal estate, and he would not have done so now if he did not wish to discover whether Lady Elizabeth’s deceased husband was capable of, or in fact had been responsible for, the murder almost a year ago of one of Sterling’s closest friends.

  Spencer Granger, the Duke of Plymouth, had died during the noise and confusion of the battle at Waterloo. Only recently, Sterli
ng and the other four remaining gentlemen known in Society as the Ruthless Dukes had learned that Plymouth had been murdered by a fellow officer rather than dying during that battle, as they had previously believed to be the case. They were now determined to establish which of the other five officers, also present in their part of the arena of battle that day, was responsible for the murder.

  Alaric Montrose, the Duke of Melborne, and Grayson Vaughn, the Duke of Flint, had already eliminated two of those officers from suspicion.

  It was now Sterling’s turn to discover whether or not Lord Thomas Marshall, a man killed in a fall from his horse two months after the battle at Waterloo, was guilty of the heinous and unforgiveable crime of striking Plymouth down.

  Sterling had rarely bothered to attend Society events, even before he had ridden off five years ago to serve as an officer in Wellington’s army. Since leaving the army the previous year, he had preferred to spend his evenings either alone or occasionally in the company of the four remaining Ruthless Dukes. He would meet one or two of them, never all four nowadays, either at their club to dine and drink, or at one of London’s gambling establishments. Without ever talking on the subject, Sterling knew they all missed Plymouth too keenly to all be able to meet at the same time and so make their friend’s absence all the more noticeable from their number.

  Until now, Sterling hadn’t realized his avoidance of Society entertainments meant he had been completely unaware of Lady Elizabeth’s stunning beauty.

  Quite why Whitlow had dared to call her fat was beyond comprehension when Lady Elizabeth was slender as a reed, too much so in Sterling’s opinion. Her heart-shaped face was delicately lovely, with pale brows above those violet-colored eyes, a small straight nose between high cheekbones, and her full lips a perfect bow above a pointed chin.

  She wore no jewelry, as was the custom during mourning, except for a pair of pearl earbobs which perfectly complemented the unblemished luster of her skin. In truth, a fragile beauty such as hers did not need even that adornment.

  He frowned when he recalled she had not once attempted to verbally defend herself—which was why Sterling had believed the one being berated was a dog—against the earl’s insults.

  Sterling would hazard a guess on that being because Elizabeth had possibly tried to do so in the past and paid the price for it. Whatever the reason, she currently maintained a serene expression which revealed none of her inner feelings in regard to the earl’s viciousness or Sterling’s presence.

  And he, Sterling realized, had been staring at her for far longer than could be considered polite.

  Even less polite—and totally unprecedented—was the heat of his completely aroused cock inside his pantaloons, simply from being in the presence of this ethereally lovely creature. His pulse was also racing, his heart beating loudly and in the same rhythm as his cock throbbed.

  This physical reaction was not only unexpected but unacceptable for a man who prided himself on never allowing his actions to be fueled by the demands of his cock.

  To that end, he never dallied with the ladies of Society, young or old, married, unmarried, or widowed. He and his close friends were well aware of how the doyens of Society complained of the Ruthless Dukes’ aversion to spending time at social events, let alone in the company of women of matrimonial age or fortune.

  No doubt that would change when they were ready to marry and produce an heir. Indeed, Flint and Melborne had recently met and were now married to the two young women whom they both freely admitted to loving to distraction.

  Sterling was pleased for his two friends, but he in no way envied them. He had a nature that was both practical and cold, and he could not imagine himself loving any woman in the doting way that Flint and Melborne now did their respective wives. Sterling believed he was capable of feeling affection, but nothing like the all-consuming love his two friends so obviously felt for their brides.

  When Sterling felt it necessary to indulge in outside sexual stimulus, he preferred to pay for the services of a lady of the demimonde. It was far easier, once a physical need had been slaked, to walk away from such an encounter. He also made a point of never satisfying those urges with the same lady twice, having no wish to give the impression that he had a partiality for her.

  An only child, and orphaned at a young age, Sterling had then been taken into the household of an elderly uncle of his mother’s, Lord Edward Neville, until he was aged eight and could then be sent away to boarding school. He would come home for the holidays, but very often, his great-uncle would not be in residence at the same time, and Sterling would spend the time alone, apart from the servants. That lack of familial closeness was the reason Sterling hadn’t grieved particularly after that elderly gentleman died shortly after Sterling had reached the age of two and twenty.

  Another result of Sterling being brought up in such an emotionally distant way meant he did not make friends easily. Which was why he valued the friendship of the other five Ruthless Dukes, after the six of them had met at Oxford, above everything else. To learn that one of their number, specifically Plymouth, had been murdered, was unacceptable, deserving that retribution and justice be brought against the person responsible.

  Miraculously, he had discovered he had a cousin, a young lady named Gwen, after his great-uncle died. She was the daughter of Edward Neville’s own daughter, whom he had disowned after she had eloped with the local curate. That couple had one child together, Sterling’s cousin, Gwen. Gwen had also married a parson once she was of age. The two of them were now happily married, also with a young daughter, Emily.

  Sterling valued the young family, perhaps more so because until Gwen had visited him and introduced herself after her grandfather died, he had believed he had no family. He visited them as often as he was able, and often had them all to stay for several weeks at his ducal estates.

  But, Sterling realized, his thoughts had digressed.

  Deliberately so?

  Because he was delaying thinking of, minutely dissecting as he knew that he would, this unprecedented attraction he felt toward Lady Elizabeth Marshall, who was clearly not a lady of the demimonde but of Society.

  Sterling’s enquiries about the lady before he traveled to Cornwall had revealed that Miss Elizabeth Ames had been the eldest daughter of an impoverished lord, and so was considered unacceptable to be the wife of a future earl, most especially by the present earl. Something which Lord Thomas Marshall had resolved by eloping with the lady and presenting his father, and Society, with a fait accompli.

  Having now seen the lady, Sterling could understand the deceased man’s determination to claim the then Miss Elizabeth Ames for himself.

  Sterling understood, because he was now filled with a primitive desire to physically claim Lady Elizabeth Marshall, the other man’s widow.

  Elizabeth barely stopped herself from openly staring at the most haughtily handsome gentleman she had ever set eyes upon. She was unable to completely turn away because his looks really were far too compelling for her to be able to do that. Instead, she glanced at him from beneath the thick sweep of her lashes.

  He was possibly aged in his early to mid-thirties, and at least a foot taller than her own height of a little over five feet. His shoulders and chest were wide, tapering down to a narrow waist, and all shown to advantage in a perfectly tailored black riding jacket. His gray pantaloons molded to muscular thighs, brown-topped black Hessians doing the same to equally strong and defined calves.

  His hair was very dark and fashionably overlong beneath his tall hat. Despite his striking features, his face appeared harsh and unsmiling. His eyes, beneath thick dark brows, were a pale and icy green, and revealed absolutely nothing of what he was thinking or feeling as he looked coldly down the length of his nose at the world.

  The slight sneer upon his chiseled lips, when he turned to her father-in-law, appeared to be the exception. Possibly because he felt no need to disguise his obvious contempt for the older man?

  “Good God, i
s that you, Bristol?” Whitlow spoke as if he could hardly believe his own eyes.

  Elizabeth inwardly tensed at hearing the name by which her father-in-law referred to the other man.

  Could the earl possibly mean the Duke of Bristol?

  Elizabeth only knew of Sterling Bishop, had no idea what he looked like because the duke was rarely seen socially. Indeed, Elizabeth had not set eyes on him during the five years she had been out in Society, first as an eighteen-year-old debutante, then a little over three years as Thomas’s wife, and these past ten months as his widow. But that did not mean Bristol and his close ducal friends, known collectively as the Ruthless Dukes, were not a constant source of gossip and speculation amongst the ladies.

  Indeed, Elizabeth had received a letter just two days ago from one of her married friends telling her that two of the Ruthless Dukes had recently married. Elizabeth was sure Bristol had not been named as one of them.

  Having now set eyes upon him, it was not at all difficult for Elizabeth to understand why. Bristol might be handsome and extremely wealthy, but a single glance at this tall and imposing gentleman, recognizing the cynical sneer of his top lip and the cold and haughty manner in which he viewed the world in general, told Elizabeth that it would take an exceptional woman to meet the no doubt severe criteria of becoming this man’s duchess.

  Or perhaps one that was completely unexceptional, Elizabeth mused.

  Possibly a mousy little creature, and one who would never say a single word of dissent or give a look of criticism to her arrogantly toplofty husband.