“Dead?”

The letter slipped from Lady Rebecca Winterson’s hands and fluttered to the carpeted floor. “My dear Caroline, it simply cannot be so. The Duke has always been in such splendid health.”

The two ladies took turns reading aloud the morning letters, and in time, they could predict their contents. However, among today’s post was a note with Rebecca’s name scrawled on the front. Neither had been prepared for the heavy impact the words written in this note would have on them.

Miss Caroline Swanson’s large, dark eyes were fixed upon her friend with an expression of intense sorrow and commiseration. “It is so, dear Rebecca.” Caroline’s fingers made no break in their brisk work of her embroidery. Rebecca, however, was too shocked to notice.

“Poor Andrew,” Rebecca said softly to herself, staring into the fire that continued to crackle brightly in the grate in contradiction to the dark news. “Poor Charles.” She leaned forward, her heavy rope of auburn hair fell over her shoulders, framing her milky-white face and highlighting the sparkle of her green eyes illuminated by the fire.

The death of Ernest Godwin, the Duke of Leinster, had indeed come as a terrible shock to all in the county.

Over the next few days, Rebecca and Caroline watched as dresses were pressed, and trunks packed for the upcoming London season. To them, it seemed unthinkable that the kindly old Duke would not take his place seated in the corner of every ball, banging his walking stick on the floor in time to the music and demanding that the young people ‘keep their heels warm’ and continue with the dancing.

The Duke had been taken ill in a sudden attack, and his previously robust constitution had crumbled over the course of only a day or two. Charles, the elder son and heir to the dukedom, had been away in London on business for his father, leaving the younger Andrew to sit by his father’s bedside and witness his passing into the next world.

Rebecca noticed the note from Andrew had clearly been written in the throes of intense grief, so much so that his familiar handwriting was hardly recognizable.

Caroline kept her voice neutral. “So, Charles will inherit.” She was watching Rebecca carefully for any reaction to her observation, but all her friend did was brush a tear from her eye and respond with an absent-minded “Indeed.” She had picked up the letter and scanned it again, her tears falling onto it as if offering some comfort to its author.

Rebecca had never thought of the Godwin boys — at four-and-twenty and six-and-twenty, they were no longer boys — as the inheritors of one of the greatest titles in the country. To her, they were merely her lifelong playmates, her honorary brothers, and closest childhood friends. Though they had spent less time together in recent years, those feelings remained unchanged.

She thought about how much they must be suffering from the loss of their beloved father and closed her eyes in sorrow.

“Yes,” she said abruptly, now that she fully comprehended the enormity of Caroline’s words. “Yes, Charles will inherit.” She opened her eyes and looked at Caroline in incredulity.

“It scarcely seems possible. I always think of Charles as never having quite stopped being a boy, somehow. There is still something of the nursery in him, do you not think? The way that he expects to always have his own way about everything. Although I suppose that such is the privilege afforded to elder sons.”

Caroline did not react to this observation but merely remarked, “It scarcely matters what you or I think. He is now one of the most powerful men in all the country. Not to mention,” she added as an afterthought, “among the most eligible.”

“Yes.” Now that the shock of the Duke’s death sank in and she was able to think more clearly, the truth of Caroline’s observation struck Rebecca at its fullest. “Isn’t that a remarkable thought? I find the idea of Charles as a husband — to anyone -— impossible to consider. He will always be a child in my mind.”

She smiled at the memory of the many hours they’d spent together as children - all three of them. “Dear Charles. I am sure he will make a splendid Duke - though I will need some time to get used to the thought!”

It was true that Rebecca had not had reason to think of the Godwin boys — the Godwin brothers, she must learn to call them — as grown men, capable of assuming something as vast as a dukedom. However, she had not seen Andrew for the best part of a year, since the last London season, and Charles for longer still.

The liberty that allowed young men of their age to range about the country as they pleased was not afforded to women like her — not the least because her father was not the kind of man to let his daughter out of his sight for longer than he absolutely had to.

A daughter that does not obey her father, he would comment in his gruff, heavy voice, is not a daughter worth having.

It was this same sense of propriety that had led him to remind her several years ago that young men and women who were not betrothed had no business writing to one another, and at the time, his daughter had reluctantly agreed.

As far as Rebecca was concerned, there was no question of any impropriety between her and Andrew Godwin. He had always been her chief correspondent; it seemed to her as natural to write to him as it would have been to write to her brother — had she had one. However, she had always known that it was wise to carefully navigate her father’s iron fist.

Not that she and Andrew had stopped writing to each other, of course. They had merely gotten better at disguising their handwriting. There was nothing underhanded as far as either of them were concerned — why should they break the intimacy of a lifetime just because it might be misinterpreted by the rest of society? The relationship was innocent, and they both knew that they had nothing to be ashamed of.

Nonetheless, Andrew usually made some effort to disguise his hand on the envelope.

She read the letter again, noting the wild scrawl of his usually elegant hand, the jumbled sentences and tone of abject grief.

“Andrew is simply devastated,” she said aloud, but softly.

“He always was his father’s favorite,” Caroline added.

Caroline and Rebecca had been friends since they were fifteen years old. Both knew the Godwin boys well although Caroline did not share the same intimacy that the other three had enjoyed as childhood playmates. She never gave away any sense that this exclusion distressed her, but nonetheless, Rebecca had often wondered what her friend made of the Godwin boys.

“Andrew has always been the steadier of the two,” she agreed. She did not wish to imply anything unkind about Charles, but she knew that with Caroline she could always speak openly. “It is certainly a trait that their father holds — held, I mean — in very high esteem.”

Caroline wanted to say something but judiciously held back. Instead, she merely said, “Well, your father is sure to want you to write to the family and send your condolences.”

Caroline Swanson had the kind of face that often looked like it was holding something back. She had all the ingredients for beauty — an ivory complexion, fine dark eyes, masses of thick black hair — yet those qualities had never assembled themselves into a whole that was genuinely pleasing.

Perhaps it was the way that she always caught in her breath and shut her mouth sharply as if she was keeping back a secret, but she had never drawn anywhere near the level of attention that her friend seemed to command wherever she went.

As for Rebecca, the fact that the only daughter of the Earl of Sheffield had reached the age of twenty without having married seemed a miracle.

On the surface, she was everything that a young man could have wanted in a wife — beauty, but also was exceptionally clever and well-educated. Perhaps, indeed, she was more educated than a certain kind of man might want his wife to be. She was also kind and vivacious, and navigated high society with native ease.

And of course, as the only daughter, she was set to inherit a handsome fortune.

The gossips of high society held two possible theories as to why such a charming and accomplished woman had not yet married.

The first was that there was something somehow off-putting about her obvious independence of spirit. It manifested in everything about her in the way she walked and talked, the way that she met every man in the eye and was not afraid to show if she was not enjoying a gentleman’s attentions.

The other theory was that she had already been spoken for whether she knew it or not.