The desertion of Lord Lysander Warburton's wife had come as a complete surprise, even though he readily admitted that he'd never excelled as a husband. The death of the wife he'd ignored for close to a decade was a downright nuisance, making him further fodder for the gossips, and now a target for every designing matron in London.
In line with her consistent talent for being disagreeable, Lady Adele Warburton had run off with a lowly lieutenant, leaving safety and respectability behind, then died in a cholera epidemic in a far flung country.
In a last show of husbandly duty, Lysander decides to recover her effects, and grudgingly those of her lover, retracing the steps of the wife he'd barely known across half the world. But arriving in the mayhem of India, he finds that all is not as it should be.
This book ranks quite highly in the Victorian Romance category (currently around #400 and that is six years after launch). It sells well. It is heavier on the drama and emotional aspects than some of my other books. Readers either love the book, or they have difficulty with the contentious relationship between the married characters who have deserted the marriage. It is a consisted seller and has remained so since it was launched.
“IT SEEMS MY WIFE IS DEAD,” Lord Lysander Warburton said and folded the crisp note sent from the Colonial Office. He returned the note to the silver tray placed by one of the club’s butlers on the shined mahogany table next to his chair in the quiet reading room.
Lysander’s dearest friend, Harry, looked up from his paper and sniffed. “Good,” he said. “Finally, the harlot is good enough to do something right.”
“Careful, Harry,” Lysander warned without any discernible sting in his voice. “She is my wife.”
“Was, Lysander. No more. And good riddance to her.”
Lysander considered the news. He couldn’t remember exactly the last time he’d seen his wife. It must have been at his nephew's christening two years ago. He turned over the implications of her death in his head.
He’d always said his marriage was the worst thing that ever happened to him—even before the tart had run off with some useless lieutenant. Lysander couldn’t remember his name. That wasn’t strictly true, his name was Samson Ellingwood—a man of little consequence—but Lysander liked to think that he couldn’t remember the man’s name. He’d bristled at her lack of propriety, if anything—she could have carried on discreetly with her...friend, as is expected, but instead, she had to resort to dramatics and run off like some witless character in an eighteenth-century tragedy.
“Cholera apparently,” Lysander stated quietly after a long silence.
“Nasty way to go,” Harry said absently. “They would have burnt the body. Never mind, that is a shackle you can do without.”
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Pedro Gil
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Susana Rebon
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