| Elisabeth Alexandra Hamilton, Lady Whitshire and by courtesy the Duchess of Arrondale, stood at the threshold between her father's expansive manorial estate and the smaller holdings of their neighbor, Lord Maxmillian Louchester. It was a brisk May morning, rain drizzling across the English moors. If it had been just slightly colder, snow would have fallen in its place. She had left the dry earthy warmth of Blalock Manor, the seat of the Arrondale duchy, to collect her thoughts in silence and solitude. It was her usual practice to slip out of the kitchen door, unescorted and saddle her horse and depart for the lone oak that marked the estate"s boundary. Her mind and wits had been in an unrelenting battle with her father's for some time. Lord Geoffrey Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Arrondale and 7th Baron of Whitshire, was leaving for the Scottish coast the following morning and would be sailing for Europe by weeks end. The Duke had pledge his sword to the Protestant cause in the war that raged through Europe, and he planned to be away for some time. The Duke was tying up his last bits of business concerning his estate before he left and he had one last piece of business, the arrangement of his only daughter's marriage to Lord Louchester. The betrothal had been set nearly a year prior when Louchester first arrived in County Hampshire and settled into Greavely Hall. At first meeting, the man seemed slick and refined and he was undeniably handsome but Elisabeth had felt something sinister about him from the beginning. She had parlayed any advancement to the altar at every turn, but now with the Duke's imminent departure, she had run out of time and excuses. Over the past few months she had come to learn that Louchester was an extremely ambitious man and let nothing get in his way of what he wanted or what he claimed to be his, rightful or not. And his means of acquiring what he wanted, nothing less than ruthless cunning. |
