The Famous Heroine The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-10-25T05:00:00+00:00

ALISTAIR MUNRO, DUKE of Bridgwater, was on his way to London to take in the Season. His mother was already there, as was his sister-in-law, Lady George Munro. George was there too, of course, but his presence was without threat. And both of his sisters were there with their respective husbands. Bridgwater knew perfectly well what the presence of his female relatives in town during the Season was going to mean for him. He was going to be paraded to every ball, concert, soirée, and whatever other entertainment the ton could invent for its collective amusement, the ostensible reason being that they could not function without his escort—though presumably they had done very well for themselves during the first part of the Season, and all of them had husbands to be dragged about with them except his mother, who needed no escort at all. The real reason, of course, would be to expose him to the view of all the young beauties who were fresh on the market this year and of their mamas. His mother and his sisters—and his sister-in-law too—were determined to marry him off. He was, after all, four-and-thirty years old—alarmingly old for a duke with no heir of his own line.

The trouble was, he had been thinking gloomily before his thoughts had been happily diverted by the sight of a brightly flamboyant ladybird standing beside the road, one arm outstretched—the trouble was that he was beginning to lose his resistance. He was very much afraid that he might allow himself to be married off soon. For no other reason than that he was filled to the brim with a huge ennui, a massive boredom with life. Why not get married if his mother was so set on his doing so? It was something that must be done sooner or later, he supposed. There was that dratted matter of a nursery to be set up.

He was horribly bored—and restless—and depressed by the knowledge that life and love were passing him by. He had used to be a romantic. He had dreamed of finding that one woman who had been created for him from the beginning of the world. He had not found her all through his hopeful twenties. And then he had become nervous. Some of his closest friends had been tricked or forced into marriages not of their choosing, and he had panicked. What if the same thing should happen to him? There was Gabriel, Earl of Thornhill, for example, who had become involved in a reckless scheme of revenge and had ended up snaring an unwanted bride for himself. There was his closest friend, Hartley, Marquess of Carew, reclusive and unsure of himself, who had married for love one of the loveliest ladies in the land and had then discovered that she had married him under false pretenses. And there was Francis Kneller, who had kindly taken the gauche and alarmingly reckless Miss Cora Downes under his wing despite her being a merchant’s daughter, and had ended up having to marry her after he had inadvertently compromised her.

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