“Milk and sugar, is it not, Patricia?” Eleanor asked her guest.

It had been years since Eleanor, Duchess of Haverford, had seen her godmother, Lady Patricia Strathford-Bowles. The elderly lady had been chatelaine for her brother, the Earl of Ruthford, for more than twenty years. Ever since his failing health precluded him from making the long trip from his family seat in County Durham to London and the House of Lords, Eleanor and Patricia had kept in touch by letter.

A letter had already informed Eleanor about the family crisis that had brought Patricia south without her brother. Her brother’s announcement that his supposedly illegitimate grandson was, in fact, born the heir the Ruthford title was a topic of discussion at all levels of Society, and the earl’s concealment of his son’s marriage until all other possible heirs had died was drawing much comment. Society was divided between those indignant on behalf of the overlooked heir, and those who thought his tainted blood reason enough to pass him over.

Furthermore, the newly announced heir had married suddenly and in suspicious circumstances. Eleanor and her allies had been doing their level best to put a romantic gloss on the wedding, but others were working just as hard to make the young wife appear a grasping witch, and the heir a lustful fool.

The heir and his wife, Lord and Lady Harcourt, were not known to Society, and not present to make friends of their own. Lord Harcourt, a colonel in the cavalry, was leading his men in Spain, and his wife was with him.

“I am here to represent the family,” Lady Patricia said. “I believe we may need to address the poisonous lies about my great nephew and his wife at the source. Will you help me to confront the Westinghouse family, Eleanor?”

Lord Harcourt, also known as Lionel O’Toole, and Dorothea, his wife, have their story told in Chaos Come Again.