“Eleanor Winshire is a tiny wisp of a woman, not a dragon,” the Duke of Murnane told his cousin.  Fred Wheatly looked skeptical. “She may be small, Charles, but she’s terrifying.”

The duke chuckled at his cousin’s shudder. He stood a head shorter, but he made up in coiled strength what he may have lacked in the other man’s bulk. Red haired and blue eyed the both of them, no one who saw them standing side by side on the fashionable street could mistake their family resemblance.

“Remember the time she caught us doing battle in her garden?” Charles asked.

“You and Rand hid under the Wisteria and let me take the all the blame,” Fred remembered with a smile. They had been visiting with Fred’s brother-in-law who was also the duke’s uncle.

“Well it was your idea to have her favorite bushes represent the Lancastrian army,” the duke pointed out with a grin.

“They were red roses weren’t they? They took two years to recover. Will made me muck out her stables for three days over that,” Fred said ruefully. He looked up at the intimidating entrance to the Haverford Townhouse and grimaced.

“You best get it over with,” Charles said sympathetically, “And before you ask, no. I will not go with you to face her. I’m returning to Eversham Hall. Jonny needs me,” he added soberly.

Fred clamped one hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Then you best get home,” he said, sympathy cracking his voice. Word had come that the boy was ill again. “I’ll face the duchess alone. I wish I knew what she wanted.”

“I suspect it’s what she always wants,” Charles told him. “To manage the well-being of the kingdom by keeping its young men in line.”

Fred watched his cousin walk away, and muttered under his breath. “Easy for him to say. He isn’t a disgraced officer tossed home to make his way.” The duke’s accomplishments had been stellar, and his position in the government no doubt had the woman’s approval.

Half an hour later Fred faced his nemesis, standing with his hands clasped behind his back and head bowed as he had faced his uncle or headmasters a dozen times as a boy. The Duchess of Winshire had that effect on men.

“Oh do sit down Captain Wheatly,” the petite white haired woman snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Captain? I was Frederick the last time we met.”

“You were a boy the last time we met,” she pointed out, gesturing for her assistant to move a decanter closer to her table. “But you’re no longer in the army, I hear.”

“Your information is correct, as always, Your Grace.” He accepted a glass of brandy with thanks.

“Good,” the duchess said, pinning him with her piercing eyes.

“Good?” He expected a dressing down, not approval. He took a swallow and let it settle his nerves.

“Good,” she repeated. “Excellent in fact.” His shock must have shown because she went on. “Did you think I would agree with the fools on that court martial board in Calcutta? I saw Colonel Davis’s report. He’s the only one that got it right.” She leaned forward. “You’re needed here, Fred,” she said earnestly. “You must see that. Charles needs you.”

“You mean because his son is ill, and I am next in line? I would make a horrid duke. It isn’t—”

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand as if to wave that away.  “Yes, yes, there is that—and you would do your duty in the unlikely event it should it come to that—but he needs you now.”

“You heard about the sabotage?”

She nodded. “Someone wishes your family ill, Fred, and you are the one best equipped to protect them, especially with Charles so absorbed in the boy’s illness.”

“You have the danger part right. We came down to London in part to hire an enquiry agent,” Fred told her.

“Well done, but your involvement is crucial. It is a family problem, Fred, and family matters most of all.” She studied him carefully. “I don’t think you understood that when you were younger.”

“I’ve always loved my family,” he protested.

“Yes, in a distant kind of way. They need you nearby and involved. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I’m beginning to…” He glanced up to see her studying him. “I just don’t know how.”

“England needs Charles, and he needs your help. Go back to Eversham Hall and stay there. You’ll figure it out.”

When he didn’t answer right away she added, “That brilliant young woman you brought home with you may help.”

The conversation turned to inconsequential things, and soon enough he found himself on his way feeling oddly better. He had expected one more recounting of his failures, and yet he walked away buoyed up. Life, Fred thought, continued to surprise him. He went on his way with jaunty step.

About the Book

When all else fails, love succeeds…

Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. When he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him with no way to support his unexpected family. He’s already had enough failures in his life. The last thing he needs is an attractive, interfering woman bedeviling his steps, reminding him of his duties.

All widowed Clare Armbruster needs is her brother’s signature on a legal document to be free of her past. After a failed marriage, and still mourning the loss of a child, she’s had it up to her ears with the assumptions she doesn’t know how to take care of herself, that what she needs is a husband, and with a great lout of a captain who can’t figure out what to do with his daughters. If only the frightened little girls didn’t need her help so badly.

Clare has made mistakes in the past. Can she trust Fred now? Can she trust herself? Captain Wheatly isn’t ashamed of his aristocratic heritage, but he doesn’t need his family and they’ve certainly never needed him. But with no more military career and two half-caste daughters to support, Fred must turn once more—as a failure—to the family he let down so often in the past. Can two hearts rise above past failures to forge a future together?

It is available in Kindle format free with Kindle Unlimited or for purchase as ebook or in print:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

BooksAMillion

The Reluctant Wife is Book 2 in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire Series.

Three cousins, who grew up together in the English countryside, have been driven apart by deceit and lies. (You may guess a woman was involved!) Though they all escape to the outposts of The British Empire, they all make their way home to England, facing their demons and finding love and the support of women of character and backbone. They are:

• Randolph Baldwin Wheatly who has become a recluse, and lives in isolation in frontier Canada intent on becoming a timber baron, until a desperate woman invades his peace. (The Renegade Wife)
• Captain Frederick Arthur Wheatly, an officer in the Bengal army, who enjoys his comfortable life on the fringes until his mistress dies, and he’s forced to choose between honor and the army. (The Reluctant Wife)
• Charles, Duke of Murnane, tied to a miserable marriage, throws himself into government work to escape bad memories. He accepts a commission from the Queen that takes him to Canton and Macau, only to face his past there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Who are their ladies?

• Meggy Campeau, the daughter of a French trapper and Ojibwe mother who has made mistakes, but is fierce in protecting her children. (The Renegade Wife)
• Clare Armbruster, fiercely independent woman of means, who is determined to make her own way in life, but can’t resist helping a foolish captain sort out his responsibilities. (The Reluctant Wife)
• Zambak Hayden, eldest child of the Duke of Sudbury, knows she’d make a better heir than her feckless younger brother, but can’t help protecting the boy to the point of following him to China. She may just try to sort out the Empire’s entangled tea trade–and its ugly underpinning, opium, while she’s there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Book 3, The Unexpected Wife, will be released on July 25.

Here’s a short video about it:

https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7/videos/924791187669849/

For more about the series and all of Caroline’s books, look here:

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

About the Author

Caroline Warfield grew up in a peripatetic army family and had a varied career (largely around libraries and technology) before retiring to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, where divides her time between writing Regency and Victorian Romance, and seeking adventures with her grandson and the prince among men she married.