Followers of Society news will be aware of the sad case of the marriage of Baron Frogmore. The baron, we are told, married in haste and regretted it at his leisure. He picked his bride for her beauty and overlooked the myriad ways in which she was unsuitable as the wife of any gentleman. This—or so the man’s brother and his wife assure us— is the reason that Lord Frogmore would not bring her ladyship to town. She was common, licentious, and stupid, they say. A strumpet plucked from poverty and set in high estate, but a pig in a tiara is still a pig.
Yet there is another story to be found. Some of our matrons remember Lady Frogmore as a young bride—a quiet and shy young woman with impeccable manners. Common born, yes. But born to an extremely wealthy merchant, and married with a rich dowry that the much older Lord Frogmore immediately set about spending. So she was not a strumpet, and not plucked from poverty.
Could it be, then, that the other claims made by Mr and Mrs Frogmore are equally false? Derived from a desire to keep their hands on the little heir, now baron since the death of his father? Some might think this a more likely motive than an honest desire to protect him and his sisters from a careless and unloving mother?
Society may judge for itself, for the powerful Versey family, led by the Duke and Duchess of Dellborough themselves, have taken up the widowed Lady Frogmore’s cause.
A little bird has whispered to this correspondent that the Verseys turned out in force in support of one of their own. Is the delightful Lord Lancelot Versey performing a disinterested charitable act in helping the widow to take her place in Society? Is it true that his involvement owes much to a careless wager with the Black Widow of Whitehall? Or has the consummate bachelor around town finally fallen in love?
The Teatime Tattler will leave you to be the judge.
***
The Talons of a Lyon
A Lyon’s Den Connected World novella
Lance Versey owes Mrs. Dove Lyon a promise. Fulfilling it will cost him the life he enjoys and win him the life he wants.
The death of Lady Frogmore’s neglectful and disloyal husband should have been a relief. But then her nasty brother-in-law seizes her three children and turns her out, telling the whole of Society that she is a crude, vulgar, and loose woman. Without allies or friends, Serafina, Lady Frogmore, turns to Mrs. Dove Lyon, also known as the Black Widow of Whitehall for help, paying her by promising to perform an unspecified favor at a time of the Mrs. Dove Lyon’s choice.
Lord Lancelot Versey has always tried to be a perfect gentleman, and a gentleman honors his debts, even when an unwise wager obliges him to escort a notorious widow into Society. But Lady Frogmore is not what he expects, and helping her becomes a quest worthy of the knight for whom he was named.
Except Mrs. Dove Lyon calls in Seraphina’s promise. The favor she asks might destroy all they have found together.
A man can learn a lot sitting in the shadows outside the gentlemen’s clubs that line Saint James Street. On a recent night an argument among three particularly drunken pinks of the ton raised some interesting questions. They were discussing a certain duke who had been most conspicuous for his absence during the previous season. Well into the summer no sign of him had been found in any of the usual chains of gossip. It was as I he had disappeared.
A foray among the rear doors of the clubs, discrete questions to servants, and a survey of some of the less savory gambling dens frequented by gentlemen brought the picture into focus to your reporter. Consensus among the fashionable of London is that the duke has met with a grisly end, and I must say that the stories became more gruesome with the telling. Many believe he has done away with himself, and the betting has shifted to how he died and where. Suicide is the leading bet. Some are even scouting the Thames for sign of a body but none has been found so far.
Gideon Kendrick grew up as the despised bastard son of the Duke of Glenmoor. Exiled to the mines by his father, he has not only survived but thrived and prospered. He lives apart, wanting nothing to do with the duke, the estate—or anything in his past, except his younger brother Phillip, the new duke.
