Author: judeknight

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Tea with Angel Kelly

Tolly advised against the meeting. He would deal with Miss Kelly’s problem. He quite agreed with Her Grace that Haverford ought to do something to assist the opera dancer, given he was the immediate cause of the  young female losing her job and needing to spend all her savings. Haverford would not, so it was for Tolly and Her Grace to intervene, as they had before. Her Grace should not speak to such persons herself, however. Tolly was quite firm on the subject, which Eleanor found sad, since his mother had been another such person.

Eleanor had insisted, so here was Miss Kelly, sitting in one of the smaller parlours at Haverford House, a delicate tea cup cradled in both hands.

She was exceptionally pretty; slender, with a heart-shaped face framed by dark curly hair, and blue eyes that were currently wide with wonder as she looked around the parlour.

The duchess allowed her a few minutes, until she overcame her curiosity and remembered her manners. “I beg yer pardon, Your Grace. It’s rude, it is, to be staring at yer things like this. I can’t be telling ye how grateful I am that ye agreed to see me.”

“I must also admit to curiosity, Miss Kelly,” Eleanor replied. “The gentleman who brought you here advised against my seeing you, but I ignored him.”

The question, ‘and why was that?’ sparked in Miss Kelly’s expressive eyes, but she simply repeated, “I am grateful.”

Eleanor leaned forward to examine the unfortunate consequence of Miss Kelly’s association with the Duke of Haverford, currently asleep in a basket at Miss Kelly’s feet. The little girl was well wrapped against the cold, but the tiny face was adorable. Dark wisps of curl had escaped from the knitted bonnet, and a tiny hand clutched the blanket, pink dimples at the base of each chubby finger.

“My friend tells me that you seek a home for the baby,” Eleanor commented.

Miss Kelly heard the question. “I cannot be taking her home, you see. I have a chance… There’s a man. He wanted to wed me when my Ma and Pa died, but I had my head full o’ dreams. He went home without me, but he’ll take me yet. He knows how it is for girls like me. He’ll not blame me for not being a maid, but — Patrick is a proud man, Your Grace. He’ll not raise another man’s babe. Or if he does, he’ll make it no life for her, and we’d finish up hating one another and the poor wee girleen.”

Eleanor could see the point. “So you will leave her behind.”

Miss Kelly must have assumed a criticism in that. “I’d keep her if I could, Your Grace, but here in London? How can a girl like me earn enough to support her and keep her with me? I want a good home for her; somewhere safe where she can grow up to better than her Ma. Then what happens to me don’t matter, so I might as well take Patrick as not. Better than another protector. Leastwise, if I get another baby in my belly, I’ll have a man to stand by me.”

As Haverford had not. He had turned his pregnant mistress out of the house in which he’d installed her, with a few pounds to ‘get rid of the brat’. Miss Kelly did not have to tell Eleanor that part of the story. She knew it well enough from past liaisons. Tolly proposed to find a childless couple who wanted a daughter to love.

At that moment, the baby opened her eyes, looked around with apparent interest, then fixed her gaze on Eleanor, or — more probably — on the diamonds sparkling in Eleanor’s ear bobs. The little treasure smiled, and reached up her arms, babbling an incomprehensible phrase.

Eleanor was on her knees beside the basket, reaching for the dear child before she thought to look up and ask permission. “May I?”

When she called for her secretary, thirty minutes later, little Matilda was still in Eleanor’s arms. “Ah. Clara. This is Miss Kelly. She will be staying in the nursery for the next few days. I need you to hire me a wet nurse and a nanny to look after Matilda after Miss Kelly leaves. I also want to purchase a smallholding in — Kinvara, was it not? It shall be your dowry, Miss Kelly.”

It was nearly five months before the Duke of Haverford discovered that the nursery, recently vacated by his younger son Jonathan, was once again occupied. He was moved to challenge his wife on her presumption, but her only response was tell him the child’s full name — Matilda Angelica Kelly Grenford — and to add that the scandal of her presence was long past, but the scandal of her removal would be ongoing. As his duchess and a leading figure in Society, the woman had the power to make the outrageous threat stick. He dealt with the impertinence in his usual fashion. He left, and never mentioned the little girl’s existence again.

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Honour, selfishness, and social groups

 

On one of my author discussion groups, someone has asked whether honour is a lost virtue for today’s readers. Her general thesis was something to the effect: In today’s society, every one is out for themselves, without thinking of the impact on others. This makes for selfish heroes in romance, who pursue their own wants and needs without thinking of others.

Honour doesn’t have quite the same ring to it for me. It all depends what it drives people to do. Do we agree with Richard Lovelace, poet of the English Civil War, who wrote, in To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more”? To our ears, formed by the culture of our times, it sounds like he’s using honour as a convenient excuse to do what he wanted to do.

What about the touchy aristocrats of the eighteenth century, duelling — even killing — because of a perceived insult?

Or, in our own times, look at honour killings. A loved sister or daughter, murdered to restore the reputation of the family.

I’ve been thinking about this in the light of the hero I spent the last couple of days creating for a newsletter subscriber short story. I wanted someone almost ethereally beautiful and brimming over with charm and seeming confidence. He lives a life of hedonism, and appears to care for nothing and no-one, himself included. That isn’t the whole story, of course — he is a Jude Knight hero, and a fundamental decency is a given. But it got me thinking. He is not so much selfish as self-centred — an issue that afflicts some of my other heroes, and that they need to overcome for their lives to take a turn for the better.

I’ve long seen human behaviour in terms of care circles. People behave differently to those they regard as human (and for human, read ‘like them’). People will make tremendous sacrifices and do incredible tasks for those within their closest care circle. For most people, this is their partner, parents, and children. For others, it might be comrades-at-arms, or best friends. In the next circle out might be casual friends, and then (perhaps) work colleagues, or neighbours. Beyond that, depending on the person, are those of the same ethnicity, or belief system, or gender, or some other classification. Or, it might be, animals, or the amorphous network of life people most commonly mean when they say ‘the planet’. (The actual planet is not at risk from human activity, short of some as yet unknown technology for blowing it to smithereens — otherwise it will survive, even as a vaguely spherical inanimate object, with a crust of lichen covered rock and dead seas.)

Some poor unfortunates have a single care circle, and it comprises one person: them. But even those with an every increasing number of circles encompassing the universe still rank some circles closer than others.

In many historical novels, we leave the poor, people of colour, those with a different religion, even servants, outside of the care circles of our hero and heroine. Or, we include a single representative of those groups, or political action on behalf of those groups, as signs that the protagonist is morally responsible.

My protagonists do their best for others, but only because I have to make them that way. I don’t see it as a virtue, but as a part of being human ourselves. Virtue is stepping outside our care circles to look after those we don’t love. Those who ignore the problems of others just because they are not me or mine are a step closer to the other end of a continuum that leads to terrorism and genocide.

Thinking about honour has led to me to envisage another circle entirely. The brother who kills a sister for action that brings the family into dishonour (or the Regency father who claims to have thrown his daughter into the street for the same purpose) believes they are doing it out of care — care for other members of the family that overrides care for the ousted sister. Lovelace and the motor cycle gangs give me a different perspective. When we talk about honour, whether in the current day or the stories we love to read (and write), we see an ethic that transcends the care group.

I call it an ethic, but I’m not entirely sure it is ethical. At its base, honour is about being true to one’s sense of self — “I am the sort of person who…” the hero or heroine says, when they are impelled take a certain action, even if it hurts those close to them. Their honour circle includes those who agree with the value of being that sort of person, and who therefore support the actions.

So no, I don’t think honour is a lost virtue, because whether or not it is a virtue depends entirely on what it causes us to do.

What do you think?

 

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Courtship woes on WIP Wednesday

Cicely and Gwendoline put their would-be suitors through their paces in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde.

They met, they fell in love, they wed, they lived happily ever after. Where’s the story in that? We need conflict. We need challenges. In romance, we need courtships to go wrong.

So that’s the theme of this week’s invitation. Share an excerpt from your romance where a courtship is failing to take off, or is taking a wrong turn. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady.

When the other guests went up to change for dinner, James met Lady Sophia by the stables. He drove her over to the far corner of the estate, nearly a mile by the lanes, happily filling in the time by telling her the history of the Turkmen horse breed.

She asked interested and intelligent questions, which pleased him enormously. He’d love for his own passion for horse breeding to be something they could share. From his observation, couples who had at least some interests in common had better marriages and happier lives.

Should he hint at his desire to make her his wife? She must suspect by now, surely. He’d been careful to stay within the boundaries of an English courtship, as explained to him by his aunt: no more than one dance an evening, no steering straight to her side as soon as he saw her at any event they both attended, no singling her out without including her sister to give the appearance of propriety, no gifts beyond a polite note or a bunch of flowers. But within those constraints, he had been faithfully attentive for months.

And he’d sought her out in Cheltenham and organised this journey to spend time with her. Did that not tell her his intentions? Although she believed he was on his aunt’s errand.

In Para Daisa, his mother or another female relative would already have met with a female relative of hers. In England, he should, according to the courtship rituals Aunt Grace had described, call on the Earl of Hythe, the male head of the lady’s family.

Given Hythe’s attitude, such a meeting was unlikely to produce the results James needed.

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Tea with a black widow

The widow was not one of Her Grace’s usual circle. She was too young to be one of the grand ladies with whom the duchess had ruled Society for more than thirty years, and too old to be one of their daughters.

That was not the real reason Eleanor barely knew her, of course, as Eleanor admitted to herself. The real reason was that Eleanor liked cats only when they had whiskers and four paws. Lady Ashurst was a cat of the human kind; one for whom the less influential members of Society were mice to hunt and torment.

If an innocent action could be given a vicious interpretation, Lady Ashurst would find it and the sycophants who clustered around her would spread it. And woe betide the person, lady or gentleman, who made a misstep in negotiating the silly rules that governed the lives of the ton. It would be magnified a thousand fold if Eleanor and her own allies were not in time to mitigate the damage.

She sat in Eleanor’s formal drawing room, a striking beauty still, though she was in her mid-thirties. She should look colourless in her light blue walking dress and white spencer, with white-blonde hair drawn into fashionable ringlets that did not dare to do anything so indecorous as bounce, delicately darkened brows arching over ice-blue eyes. Instead, in the sumptuous splendour of the room, she drew the eye, like a diamond centre-piece of a barbaric collar of gold and gems.

“How kind of you to invite me, Your Grace,” she purred. “I have long wished to be better acquainted. I admire you so much, and feel for you in your current circumstances. My husband, too…”  She trailed off.

Eleanor smiled, a baring of teeth containing little amusement. If this upstart thought the Duchess of Haverford was going to be manipulated to play her game of insinuation and scandal, she could think again.

“You were invited for one reason only, Lady Ashurst. I understand you are taking some interest in Lady Ruth Winderfield, the daughter of the Duke of Winshire.”

Lady Ashurst dropped her lashes to veil her eyes. “You take an interest in the matter, of course. The feud between Winshire and Haverford is well known to me, Your Grace.”

Eleanor allowed none of her disgust to show. “Your interest, of course, is your brother-in-law, whose name you have chosen to couple with that of Lady Ruth.”

The woman looked up, a flash of spite in her eyes. “They connected their own names, Your Grace, when she stayed with him, unchaperoned.”

Eleanor could argue that Ruth had her companion with her, as well as a bevy of armed retainers, a maid, and six children; that she was taking refuge during a typhus epidemic; that she was providing medical care for several of her party. But Lady Ashurst was not interested in facts, but in fixing her claws into the weak. This time, she had chosen the wrong targets.

Eleanor showed her own claws. “I would take it amiss, Lady Ashurst, if these rumours continue to circulate. Very amiss.”

An expression at last. Alarm, quickly concealed. Lady Ashurst’s tinkling laugh was unamused. “You jest, duchess. Haverford hates the chit’s father.”

Eleanor raised a brow. “I have not invited you to address me as an intimate, young woman. Nor will I.”

Colour flooded Lady Ashurst’s face. “Your Grace. My apologies, Your Grace.”

“You have miscalculated, Lady Ashurst. His Grace of Haverford cannot abide scandal-mongering women. In addition, I am dearest friends with Lady Ruth’s aunt. I must thank you, however, for drawing my attention to the Earl of Ashurst. I had not noticed his absence from society since his brother’s death. I intend to amend that oversight. Your brother-in-law shall be presented to the Regent under my sponsorship and that of His Grace, the Duke of Haverford. I suggest you make yourself least in sight for the remainder of the little season. A sojourn in the country might be good for your health, Lady Ashurst.”

Lady Ashurst sat, as pale as her spencer, her mouth open.

Her Grace stood and pulled the bell chain. “My footman shall show you out,” she said.

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Recreating the 1814 Frost Fair

Here’s something to watch for — photographs of the 1814 Frost Fair by Julia Fullerton-Batten, taken as part of her Old Father Thames historical reconstruction project.

Here’s what Fullerton-Batten says about the Frost Fair part of the project.

Frost Fairs had taken place several times before on the Thames but the one in 1814  was the last to take place before a new London Bridge was built, improving the flow of the water and stopping the freezing.  In 1814 the Thames froze between the  first London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. Thick ice formed from early February lasting for four days and an impromptu festival took place. Londoners stood on the frozen Thames eating ginger bread and drinking gin. Oxen were roasted over roaring fires. There was entertainment – hoopla, skittles, fire-eaters, wrestling. Temporary pubs did a roaring trade and drink encouraged people to dance. The ice was even thick enough to support printing presses churning out souvenirs and an elephant walking across it.  ‘The 1814 Frost Fair’ will be an epic story and will complete the first phase of my long-term Thames project. It will also be my most ambitious story-telling to-date.

Read more at:

Julia Fullerton-Batten. Old Father Thames


https://phmuseum.com/news/recreating-historical-stories-of-the-river-thames
https://www.hasselblad.com/stories/the-tales-of-old-father-thames-julia-fullerton-batten/

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Parents on WIP Wednesday

 

We all have parents and many of us have offspring. Both ways, the relationship is hugely formative, and in stories, scenes between a parent and offspring, or memories of such scenes, can be important for both plot and character. This week, I’m inviting excerpts about relationships between parents and children. Good or bad. Mother or father. Children grown up or still young. With our protagonist as parent or as offspring.

Mine is from Unkept Promises, and shows how Jules feels about his children by his mistress.

“I would rather do laundry than wash dishes,” Marshanda argued.

“Washing dirty pots is the worst,” Adiratna agreed, and Perdana nodded. “I hate washing dirty pots.”

The children fell into a discussion about the baked on grime that was hardest to remove, and Jules pulled Mia to one side, his face thunderous. “When have my daughters cleaned dirty pots?”

“While you were away,” Mia explained. “Maureen O’Riley sent them to the kitchen when she took over Kirana’s place.” She bit at her lower lip, frowning. Now to tell him her fears. But he spoke before she could, his voice cold enough to freeze.

“Took over Kirana’s place? Explain yourself, Mrs Redepenning.”

“Has no one told you? After you left, Maureen announced she was your new mistress, and was taking over the mistress’s room. She had the servants move Kirana to the little storeroom by the kitchen.”

“That hole?” Jules took a deep breath and two or three swift paces, back and forth, colour ebbing and flowing in face.

“Quite,” Mia agreed, reassured by the strength of his reaction. Clearly, Maureen had not had his authority for the move.

“No wonder she— Kirana told me you’d moved her from a hot stuffy room, and I thought she meant the one you are in now.”  He took another two swift paces, his struggle to remain outwardly calm clear on his face.

“Papa?” Marshanda left her conversation to run to Mia, putting an arm around her waist and peeping at Jules from that place of safety. “Why is Papa angry, Ibu Mia?”

“Your father is angry you were made to work in the kitchen, and your mother was made to sleep in the storeroom,” Mia said.

Jules had himself under control, and his voice dripped ice, though sparks of fire lit his blue eyes. “My servants will explain to me how they allowed this to happen — how they helped this to happen.”

Marshanda plastered herself closer to Mia, and Adiratna explained. “Dench said you had told him this was what you wanted. I told Marsha he was lying. I don’t like Dench.”

“You were right, Ada,” Jules told her. “He was lying. And I don’t like him, either.”

“Dench hits people if they say he is lying,” Marshanda warned. “He hit Japheth when Japheth didn’t believe you had given the orders. And he hit Ada when she bit him.”

Jules dropped to his knees and took his youngest daughter’s face between his hands. “He hit you, sweetheart?”

“Papa will hit him,” Perdana promised. “Papa will hit him right through to next Tuesday, won’t you Papa?”

“I will certainly make certain he never lies to my little girls or hits them again,” Jules vowed, not taking his attention off Adiratna. “Biting him was a very dangerous thing to do, my darling.”

Adiratna stuck out her lip and glowered. “I am not sorry,” she insisted. “He was dragging Mami by her arm. It hurt her. I made him stop.”

“She was very brave, Papa,” Marshanda insisted, her whole body trembling as she stood up for her sister. “Mami tried to walk, but she fell down, and he said a bad word and began to drag her, but when Ada bit him and ran away, he ran after her and Japheth and I had time to help Mami to her new room.”

“You were both very brave, then,” Jules said. “I am proud of you. And Ibu Mia is proud of you, too.”

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Tea with Becky

 

This is another excerpt post. The Duchess of Haverford has come to help Becky recover from the deep depression she fell into after the birth of her child. Find out more in A Baron for Becky.

Her Grace descended to the kitchen, and her visit inspired the cook to new heights in preparing small, tasty meals for a flagging appetite. Becky was served something tempting to eat every couple of hours. Hugh took her walking in the snow when the sun shone, and up and down the stairs and the halls when the weather closed in. And, on the advice of the duchess, he moved back into their bedchamber.

“She thinks you have moved out because you no longer want her,” Her Grace said bluntly. “And if you continue to treat her like a plaster saint, Overton, you are a great fool. She is a woman, and if her needs are blunted at the moment by her sadness, that will not last.”

So, Hugh slept spoon-fashion against his wife, but he continued wearing a nightshirt and made no attempt to make love to her.

Aldridge took over the work of the estate and the factories Hugh owned, so Hugh could spend most of his time with Becky, and Aldridge and Sarah reached an understanding to restore him to ‘Uncle’ status, a privilege Sarah’s sisters also deigned to confer.

These activities kept him mostly away from Becky, and he treated her with cautious courtesy when they could not avoid being in the same room, as if she might explode if he ventured any familiarity. “I do not understand, Overton,” he said once. “Was it so bad, being with me?”

Hugh could afford to be generous. “Not so bad. She said you were kind, Aldridge, and she will always be grateful.”

Aldridge shook his head as if emerging from water, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Grateful! I did not want her to be grateful!” He never mentioned it again, but his puzzled gaze followed Becky when she was not watching.

Twice a day, Hugh and Her Grace took Becky to spend time with the children, and once a day Mrs Goodfellow brought them to her. And not just to be in the same room. “She needs to do things with them,” the duchess insisted. “Read them a story, teach them a sewing stitch, or help them on the pianoforte.”

Becky resisted only the duchess’s last change.

“Did you intend to hire a wet nurse?” Her Grace asked.

Becky paused before she answered, as if she had to come a great distance to hear the question. “No,” Hugh answered for her. “She said she would feed our baby herself.”

The duchess narrowed her eyes, thinking, then nodded decisively. “It has been not quite two months, and you have fed before.”

Becky shook her head. The duchess said nothing more then, but must have spoken to Becky later. Hugh came back from signing correspondence to find the duchess watching benignly, and the wet nurse anxiously, as Belle suckled at Becky’s breast.

At first, Belle was as angry at the change as Becky, but the duchess persisted, and Belle was put to each of Becky’s breasts every two or three hours for four days.

“It is no use,” Becky said. “I have no milk.”

But that very afternoon, a delighted Belle came away too replete to suckle from her wet nurse, and an equally delighted duchess reported success.

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What do women want?

In the classic Arthurian legend Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, the quest was finally over when the heroic knight had married an ugly old woman to get the answer to the question ‘What do women desire above all else?” (The answer was, ‘to govern their own lives’. In the video above, it is expressed as ‘their own way’, but self-governance is the point.)

In romance, which is mostly written by women, that answer is a given. The trick is to create a readable and believable story in which a desirable hero is prepared to be the heroine’s partner, rather than her owner — to let her, in other words, govern her own life. The journey is particularly fun if the story is set in a historical era or a culture where women are possessions and status symbols, but not really people. The journey is harder for some types of hero than others, but if the hero doesn’t make it to Gwain’s conclusion, the book’s a hurler for me (as in hurl it at the wall).

Here’s a version of the eight hero archetypes, and the challenges they face in accepting a partnership with their heroine. (Any given hero might have elements of more than one, of course, and if you look on the internet for hero archetypes, you’ll find lots of different sets.)

The king

This is the alpha hero, the leader. He’s in command. He looks after his own, which includes his entire family and the heroine. He hates making mistakes, can’t admit he’s wrong, won’t share, and is protective to the point of smothering. His challenge is to recognise that his mate is his equal, and that he needs to listen to her, and let her go into life’s battles at his side.

The bad boy

He’s the rebel, the crushed idealist who hates authority and fights for freedom: often only his own. He’s bitter and moody, but also charming and clever. His challenge is to accept himself as worthy of love, which makes him a romance favourite.

The best friend

The beta hero, and a nice responsible, decent, fellow. He doesn’t like to hurt people’s feelings, so he comes across as a bit of wimp, but he is dependable. He always puts others first. He’s practical and responsible. His challenge is to get the heroine to notice him, because he doesn’t have the confidence or the showy glamour of some of the other archetypes.

The lady’s man

Or the jester, or the playboy, or the rogue. He’s fun, but he’s not dependable. He avoids hard work, using his charm to slide into easy situations. His challenge is commitment, and also convincing the heroine that he’s able and willing to commit.

The recluse

This guy is secretive, brooding, and a loner. He’s also wounded and vulnerable. He’ll commit to the heroine, but he’ll never tell her because why should she be interested in an emotional disaster like him? His challenge is to let the heroine into his life far enough that he can discover how she feels about him.

The professor

On the surface, the professor seems cold and hard. He’s logical, introverted, and inflexible. He likes facts. One fact he isn’t too fond of is that he is in love with the heroine. Love means feelings, and he’s not good at feelings. His challenge is to accept that feelings — hers and his — are also facts, and that a lifetime without them isn’t going to be a lot of fun.

The swashbuckler

Who doesn’t love an action hero? The swashbuckler is daring and brave. He loves danger and adventure. He takes risks for the sheer fun of it. His challenges in fiction are often external — his adventures put him and the heroine in danger. He can rescue her, of course, but the danger of a lifelong commitment? Isn’t that a risk too far? Or might it just be life’s greatest adventure?

The protector

Our warrior hero is brave, noble, and relentless. He always sticks up for those who need his help, and he acts according to his conscience, not the rules. He wants to win, and fears being constricted. His challenge is to see his growing love for the heroine as an opportunity, not a prison.

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Where dukes came from

Duke of Argyll, 1760s
Duke of York 1790s
Duke of Somerset 1690s

The genre I write in is infested with dukes. They hold the same place in Georgian, Regency, and Victorian romance as billionaires do in contemporary romance. However unlikely our multitudes of young handsome dukes and billionaires might be, they represent a certain type of story — one in which all the power lies with the hero, but still the heroine wins. Because of love. It is a story with a timeless appeal, obviously, but I thought a few facts might be fun.

The title comes from the Latin word dux, meaning a military leader responsible for a sizeable territory, and is found in the countries that were part of the Roman Empire. It was adopted by the barbarians of Germany, and after the Roman Empire fell the dukes kept ruling, either in their own lands or on behalf of a king.

In Germany, eleven sovereign duchies survived into the twentieth century. In France, four duchies were almost independent of the Crown in the early feudal period, but were later absorbed back into the Crown. The ancien regime also appointed dukes who were part of the French peerage rather than hereditary sovereigns: first royal princes, and later illegitimate sons and royal favourites of all kinds. More than 30 of these titles survived into the late 20th century. In Italy, the title is still widespread, not only as a result of the territorial duchies, six of which lasted into modern times, but Popes, Kings and Emperors could — and did — bestow the title.  In Spain, the territorial duchies disappeared with the Moorish conquest, but when the title was revived, it was, as in France and Italy, awarded to royal princes and royal favourites, even most recently as the 1940s. Portugal suffered the same conquest, and likewise revived the title. Fewer Portugese dukes were created than Spanish ones, though.

Britain, with whom our genre is chiefly concerned, imported the title with the Duke of Normandy, but it was Edward III who created the first English dukes. In the 14th and 15th century, all creations had royal blood, but after that it was increasingly given outside the royal family. The same timeframe and devolvement to the wider peerage applied to Scotland.

There were never many dukes in the United Kingdom. In 1814, there were 25 non-royal dukes holding 28 ducal titles:  17 English, 7 Scots only, 1 Irish. Today, there are 26 holding 31 titles. Plus the various sons and grandsons of monarchs, of course, but such historical figures are not available for us to marry off to our heroines.

Ah well. We can always bring one in from the continent. They had a few spares, it seems.

 

UPDATE: following on from some of the comments, I’ve looked up the dukes alive in 1814. Excluding the Duke of Wellington, who was a new creation in that year,  four-fifths were 40 or over in 1814, and half were 50 or over. All but two were married in 1814. One of those never married, and one (Leinster, who succeeded aged 13 and was 23 in 1814) married a couple of years later. So debutantes of the 1814 season had, on the face of it, two dukes in their twenties looking for brides, one Irish and one not interested, as it turned out.

Most of the dukes around in 1814 had already married while still heirs, and nearly all of them married in their twenties. Eight married after they succeeded to the peerage. Seven of these were children at the time of succession. One was 69 at succession and was 80 when his only son was born. I’ll bet there’s a story there.