A Duke in Danger Read Online Free PDF

for Harlington Castle.
    Yet, in the moment of his personal victory, when it was now his, he had discovered that there was a traitor in the family, a woman who had dared to take from the Castle some of its most precious treasures to pawn them for money.
    ‘I can only be thankful,’ the Duke thought, ‘that by some sense of decency, or was it perhaps fear, she has not sold what has been passed down from one Duke to the next.’
    He remembered asking his father once, when he was a small boy and they had stayed at the Castle, whether the Duke felt like a King.
    “I am sure he does,” his father had said with a smile, “but at the same time, just as in the case of the King, the Palace is his only for his lifetime. The Duke must protect it and improve it for the next Duke who will come after him.”
    Ivar had found it a little hard to understand, and his father had explained further.
    “Each Duke in turn is a Guardian or Trustee of treasures which do not belong to him personally, but to the family as a whole. It is his duty not only to leave the Castle as he finds it but also to look after the family and see that they are cared for and do not want.”
    “He must have a lot to do,” Ivar had replied.
    “It is a very big task indeed,” his father had answered solemnly, “and one in which we can thank God no Duke so far has failed.”
    From what he could remember of the fourth Duke, he had been an admirable head of the family.
    Therefore, it seemed almost unbelievable that his only daughter should have stooped to stealing, for it was little else, the treasures to which generation after generation of Harlings had contributed, and had. pawned them to a man like Pinchbeck.
    “It is a miracle,” the Duke said to himself, “that he did not sell them, although that might perhaps have been difficult.”
    He wondered what the Trustees had been doing who were supposed to look after such things.
    He realised that because he had been abroad so long, he knew nothing about them or indeed who was in charge of the Estates.
    He thought, not for the first time, that he should have come home for his cousin’s Funeral and taken charge there and then. But the fourth Duke had died in January 1817, and at that time he had been in Vienna.
    He had been there on an important mission on Wellington’s behalf, and therefore he had not heard of his cousin’s death until he returned to Paris, where he received the letter from Coutt’s Bank.
    In it they informed him that as he was now the fifth Duke of Harlington, they enclosed a list of all the properties he had inherited and the monies which had been transferred to his name.
    However, it had been impossible at that particular moment to go to England.
    He had actually suggested rather tentatively to the Duke of Wellington that he should do so, only to be told that he could not possibly be spared.
    There was in fact a tremendous row going on over the reduction of troops in the Army of Occupation.
    In December of the previous year, Wellington had declared that a substantial reduction in numbers was impossible.
    The next month, however, he notified the permanent Conference of four Ambassadors that his opinion had altered and a reduction of thirty thousand men would begin on the first of April.
    This meant that an enormous amount of planning would be left in what Wellington described as “the very capable hands of General Harling.”
    On top of this, Wellington was negotiating the first loan to the French Government by Baring Brothers and Hopes, and he was relying on Ivar Harling’s support and persuasiveness, especially in getting the other Allies to accept the idea of a loan handled by British Bankers.
    In fact, there was so much controversy and so many delicate negotiations going on that the Duke had realised it was utterly impossible for him to leave Paris, however important it was, from his own point of view, that he should deal with his problems at home.
    He had comforted himself with the