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Duchess had suffered. How they cringed when they continually heard the appalling tales of Jason’s debauched behaviour in Paris.
    The Duke regularly received astronomical bills he was forced to honour, but it was the humiliation that he found most unbearable, especially when he looked to the future.
    How could any man not want to keep and cherish anything as magnificent as Wood Hall, which was not only a treasure belonging to his family but also to the nation? Worse, perhaps, than anything else the Duke suffered was the pity of his contemporaries. They knew he was worrying about his son, but they never mentioned him – they just commiserated with him without actually mentioning Jason’s name.
    â€˜Whatever can I do about Jason?’ the Duke had asked himself a thousand times and never found an answer.
    Yet now when he least expected it, Jason had returned home.
    He had apologised in a way that made his father believe that he was being truthful and honest. He had even offered to make amends.
    It was Jason who suggested he should make a marriage that his father and mother would approve of, and Jason who promised to do his best to produce an heir, which was so necessary for the future of the Dukedom.
    â€œFind me a wife, Papa,” Jason had said. “And then we will be able to forget the past and look forward to a happy future.”
    It was when the Duke thought he could not be hearing right that Della had sprung into his mind.
    He had been watching her riding through the Park only the previous day before he had left for London.
    The Park deer were moving out of the way of her horse and although he was not close to her, he knew how lovely she would be looking.
    The curls of her fair hair would be dancing against her white skin with her eyes shining excitedly because she was riding one of his finest and most spirited horses.
    The Duke had watched her on many occasions and he had often thought that she looked more like a Goddess than a human being.
    She rode, as his Chief Groom continually told him, better than any woman he had ever known.
    It was then that the Duke had suddenly awoken to reality.
    He realised that Della, with her sportsmanship and her brain, was the only person who could save Jason.
    She would be strong–minded enough to force him to keep his promises.
    She would be lovely enough to attract him perhaps as no other woman had attracted him in his life.
    She would definitely produce children who would make the whole family proud.
    â€˜Della! She is the answer!’ the Duke had exclaimed to himself and at once rang a bell to tell a servant he wanted a carriage to take him to Lord Lainden’s house.
    *
    When Della left her uncle she walked out into the garden.
    She was beginning to feel that even the roof over her head was confining.
    In just the short time she had spent with her uncle he had managed to shatter not only her happiness but her whole feeling of security, something she had always felt with him since her father and mother died.
    She has been so happy when they were together.
    Actually she had often thought it was quite unnecessary to have many friends, as she had never met a young man who was as clever or amusing as her uncle.
    No one else made everything they talked about seem so interesting that it was like reading a book she could not put down.
    She had also loved every minute since they had come to live in the country. It was impossible for her to put into words her joy of riding the Duke’s horses.
    It passed through her mind that in the future they would belong to her.
    But the thought was immediately followed by a vision of Jason as she had last seen him.
    Even to think of him made her shudder.
    â€˜How can I possibly be married to a man I loathe and detest?’ she asked herself. ‘A man who, I do not believe for one moment, is really genuine in what he is now telling his father. A man who has already proved himself a hundred times over to be a liar and