The Duke's Forgotten Wife

Chapter One

May 15, 1873 Kelton Manor outside London

It was a boring house party as house parties went and Amanda Herrington was more than ready to retire early to her bedchamber to read one of the many books she'd brought with her for this very reason. She skirted the edge of the drawing room trying not to draw attention to herself as she did and once through the door she hurried up the stair-case to her bedchamber, breathing a sigh of relief once the door firmly closed behind her.

She would make her excuses in the morning and return to London and her Aunt Geraldine's residence. She could not go through another day of feeling trapped here with the silly girls vying for the attention of the equally silly single men invited to the house party. Even though only twenty, she felt much older than most of those present. None of the men stirred any strong feeling in her either, which gave her one more reason to depart early from the house party.

Her Aunt Geraldine had been the one to convince her to come. Lady Geraldine Morton and Countess Constance Kelton were very old and dear friends and had been since they both were young girls. Amanda's aunt planned to chaperone her but at the last minute she had to see to some crisis at one of her many estates left to her aunt by her late wealthy husband. Her aunt knew that Countess Kelton would look after Amanda for her in her absence.

Amanda arrived with only her maid, Dilly Brewster, along with the driver of her coach, John Dipplewhite and her aunt's regrets.

Amanda let out another sigh as she rang for her maid to help her undress. Dilly would come in a few minutes bringing with her Amanda's warm milk, which she liked before retiring for the night. She would get undressed and once in her nightgown would climb into her bed and read until too tired to see any print on the face of the page.

She sat in front of the fireplace and thought about how for several weeks now she'd put herself on the marriage mart. There were many suitors because of how wealthy her father left her. So far none of the suitors she'd taken any fancy to. What they didn't know about her wealth was they would have no control over it. The man she chose would get a handsome dowry, of over one hundred thousand pounds, but not control of the almost one million pounds left to her.

James Herrington, the eighth Earl of Covington, her father, had seen to that. He left her everything that wasn't entailed which also included four very large estates.

Her father inherited both money and estates from his father and her mother, but the majority of what Amanda inherited was made from her father's business ventures and the cargos he sailed home to England with from all over the world. Sailing around the world had been her father's passion and her own as well.

Amanda missed him dearly, having spent the require year mourning for him, she still wasn't ready for marriage, but she promised him before he died, she would start her search for a husband as soon as the year was over with.

What she would rather be doing at this moment was sailing the oceans on her father ship the Free Spirit. James Herrington sold the ship once he learned how ill he was and she wondered if he did it deliberately to keep her from sailing off on her own after he was gone. Amanda spent many, to her way of thinking, too short of summers with him aboard the ship sailing around the world.

She sailed with him to France, Spain, Portugal, through the Straights of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean and on to Italy and Egypt. They even traveled to places such as India and China. She'd not set foot on the deck of a ship for almost two years now and she missed sailing, missed those days with her father and his crew. Now all she had left were her memories of those wonderful days, days she wished she could relive once more.