Flags they had captured in battle hung in the Great Hall and as a boy they were the first things he looked for when he came home in the holidays.
The pictures of the Dukes who had reigned before him and the Earl before them hung on the walls in the Great Hall, up the stairs and in the Picture Gallery, which filled one wing of the house.
Portraits of their Duchesses hung beside many of them.
They had faces that were beautiful and distinguished, sometimes unattractive, but none of them, the Duke thought to himself, had the craftiness or the self-scheming of Olive Brandon.
“I will not marry her! I will not!” he shouted aloud in the darkness and felt as if he could hear her laughing scornfully in that silvery contrived manner he once thought attractive.
He knew now it should have warned h
