Her mother died when she was 10 and her sister died a few years later after contracting consumption while they were in debtors' prison with their father. Lydia is our heroine and she is the orphaned daughter of a lady who ran away with an actor. However, fate has a way of playing tricks on you and he winds up saving a man (who turns out to be Bertie, Sebastian Ballister’s jovial brother-in-law) from the path of one Lydia Grenville, who is driving a breakneck pace down the London streets. He then made things worse by declaring a driving race in which one man had to put down his horses after a bad accident.

We know some of his misdeeds, as they were chronicled in the Lord of Scoundrels when he assumed Sebastian Ballister’s new wife was a whore (Marquess of Dain if you remember). He has done nothing but drink and wench and in general try to drown out the fact that he is the last male of the Mallory line. Making Vere the reluctant 7th Duke of Ainswood.Ī year and half later and Vere still resents the title. It was a short watch, this time, the shortest, hardest of all. He could do nothing but wait and watch, as he’d done so many times before. Though Vere went on talking, coaxing, pleading, though he clung to the little hand, he could not draw the disease away and into himself. For an instant, his mouth shaped a ghost of a smile. Something like recognition seemed to flicker there. You don’t know a fraction of it-what there is to see, to do.” The young duke’s eyelids fluttered and opened. “It’s too soon for you, Robin, you know it is. “Give it up, please,” Vere urged, choking back tears, stifling the useless grief.

Vere makes it back just in time to hold the boy’s hand as he passes. Sadly after only 3 weeks away, Vere is called back because Robin has caught diphtheria and is on his deathbed. They travel around for 6 months and then at the urging of Charles’s sisters Vere returns Robin to his sisters so he can continue his education and not be under the terrible influence of Vere, the last Mallory Hellion. He meant to stay away but he took comfort in comforting his cousin’s son who was 9 years old, a similar age to when Vere lost his parents.

Vere is also furious and so he takes Robin on the road with him. For some reason he saw fit to make Vere the guardian of his 3 children, Robin, the youngest is now the Duke and he is furious at fate. It starts at the funeral of Vere’s best friend and cousin Charles, 5th Duke of Ainswood.

The last hellion