CHAPTER ONE
1821The Marquis of Walstoke walked into the Boardroom.
It was eleven o’clock and Sir Hubert Bryan, who was sitting at the top of the conference table, said,
“You are very late!”
“I know,” the Marquis answered, “but I did not leave the Duchess’s party until two o’clock this morning.”
“Was it a good party?” Sir Hubert asked. “Very good!” the Marquis replied, walking down the table to sit in his usual place.
He was a handsome man of nearly sixty.
He carried himself with a pride and a dignity that made it obvious to everybody who met him that he was an aristocrat.
He was in fact extremely proud of his heritage, but he had, about ten years ago, been in deep water.
It was not entirely his fault.
The war with Napoleon had made a great number of landowners’ poverty stricken.
