Why on earth, Eleanor wondered, had the duke her husband asked her to have this unlikable pair to afternoon tea? She knew he did business with the man, who continued to claim his naval ranking, though he had retired to run a large import export business.

But that did not require socialising with the man and his wife. The duke must owe Captain Hackett a large favour. He had even stayed to exchange a few pleasantries, before carrying Hackett off with him for a game of billiards, leaving the ladies, as he said, to get to know one another.

Mrs Hackett, a quiet faded woman who had said little in the past half hour looked alarmed at her husband’s desertion.

“Another cup of tea?” The duchess asked her. Mrs Hackett bobbed her head and pushed her cup forward. Eleanor prepared the cup with cream into sugars while she contemplated how to draw the woman out.

In the end, she decided on bluntness. “It seems our husbands mean me to be of some assistance to you, Mrs Hackett. Perhaps if you can tell me what it is you need?”

Mrs Hackett blushed. “I am so embarrassed, your grace. I hardly know how to ask. Is it true what they say? Does your husband expect you to acknowledge his by-blows?”

Eleanor had seldom been asked a more impertinent question. “I hardly think, Mrs Hackett,” but the woman compounded her rudeness by interrupting.

“I know I am being very impolite and forward, but indeed the captain assured me that such was quite acceptable in the best families, and that you were a lady who took such circumstances in your stride. That is why he asked the duke if I might meet you. I know it is most presumptuous of me, but, your grace, I have no one else to advise me.”

Despite herself, Eleanor found her sympathies were engaged. “You had better tell me the whole story.”

Mrs Hackett’s words tumbled over themselves as she explained her failure to bear her husband a son, and his determination to have a boy of his own blood to inherit his business.” The captain, it seemed, had such a son — a boy born to his mistress after he had dismissed the girl.

“He plans to claim the lad, and give him his name, and bring him up with our daughters. Tell me, your grace, is he mad?”

Captain Hackett is one of the villains in Unkept Promises, the fourth novel in the Golden Redepenning series, which I’m currently writing. The boy in question and his half-sisters, whose father is Jules Redepenning, are currently on their way to England with Mia Redepenning, who has adopted them after their mother died of consumption.