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Letter from Mrs Laura Anstruther toEve, Duchess of WelburnMay 1810

My very dear Eve,

It was a great pleasure to receive your last letter and to hear that you and my cousin Rowarth are having such a splendid time on your wedding tour. I owe you particular thanks for the present of the beautiful negligee you sent me from Paris –Dexter likes it extremely!

You mentioned that you were curious to know all the news from Fortune’s Folly and there is much to report. I fear that Sir Montague continues to inflict all manner of greedy and grasping taxes upon us under the terms of the medieval law. There are now only three unmarried heiresses left in the village, for all the others have embraced matrimony in order to escape the Dames Tax!

My good friend Alice Lister tied the knot with my cousin Miles Vickery a month or so past. You will remember Miles, I feel sure. It is perhaps a blessing for the friendship between him and Rowarth that he always preferred blondes and so never sought your favour! However, he is quite reformed now. It is most amusing to see so shocking a rake hopelessly in love with his wife rather than with someone else’s. Stephen, Lord Armitage jilted Miss Mary Wheeler practically at the altar. A lucky escape for her, I feel. The other match is between Miss Flora Minchin and Lord Waterhouse. They are to wed in a few weeks. It is not a love match. His title for her money–you know the sort of thing. Though I have the strangest feeling matters may not go quite to plan.