Page 1 of Tamed By a Duke
Prologue
Nabob (n):A conspicuously wealthy gentleman, most usually having acquired their fortune quite rapidly in the east.
Brandon Michael Drew was born into a family that had, for at least two centuries, been on the rise — financially speaking at least.
The beginning of the family's ascendancy into wealth had begun in Holland, during the Dutch Golden Age, when Brandon's great-great-grandfather—a shoemaker by trade—had made his fortune by cashing in on the tulip-mania which had gripped the country in the early sixteen hundreds. The fortuitous Dutchman had bought when prices of the newly introduced bulbs were low and then when they rose to exorbitant levels in January 1637, had sold all his stock for an astronomical figure. The price of bulbs then plummeted in February that same year and thinking himself done with Holland, Anders De Vrew had set sail for England with his newfound wealth.
Once on English soil, he had married a lady—gently bred, but not overly so—and Anglicised his name to Drew. For the next century and a half, his descendants enjoyed a comfortable life as they invested his fortune in industry.
The family would have remained a completely unremarkable footnote in the history of the burgeoning middle classes had it not been for the arrival of Brandon, in the mid-seventeen hundreds.
Brandon had a thirst for adventure that could not be satisfied with remaining in Manchester, overseeing the running of the family's textile mills. So, once he was old enough, he set sail for the East, in search of fame, fortune and fun.
When he reached India, Brandon fell in with the East India Company and became heavily embroiled in the Carnatic Wars. The defeat of the French gifted the English with near-total control of the trading territories, leaving Brandon free to make his fortune. He traded everything from opium to tea, exported everything of value he could find, and by the approach of the end of the century, he was a very, very rich man.
In the summer of 1788, Brandon gathered the staff of his sprawling tea plantation in the Kangra Valley and regretfully told them he would be returning home.
"Parting is such sweet sorrow," he said with a sigh, though none of his faithful staff seemed overly moved by the pronouncement of his departure.
"Sorrow is a British import," one man helpfully piped up, to which Brandon laughed.
They could be rather funny, the Indians, he thought with a wry smile. Imagine anyone thinking that the Great British Empire brought sorrow anywhere.
No sorrow, not Britannia; she modernised, she civilised, she made men rich.
She had made Brandon richer than he had ever thought possible.
Once back in England, Brandon found that doors which had previously been shut to him were now open. He was invited to join members' clubs, invited to balls, and invited to the bedrooms of several society widows, who took a shine to the dashing merchant.
In fact, he was invited to so many gatherings that he soon had to employ a social secretary.
"Lord and Lady Helestine have invited you to a ball that they are giving for their daughter," said Percy the secretary one afternoon, as he read aloud Brandon's correspondence, "As have the Viscount and Viscountess Charleville. Another ball, another daughter."
"Lud," Brandon replied, scratching his blonde head, "Nearly every invitation is to go watch one of the gentry's chits make their come out."
"Well, yes," Percy said, clearing his throat awkwardly, "I suppose they're rather hoping you'll marry one of them."
"They are?"
"Well, you are incredibly wealthy, sir," Percy said delicately, "In fact, you're quite the catch."
He, the ancestor of a cobbler, quite the catch for the daughters of thebon ton? It was a novel idea for a man of Brandon's origins. Though his family had always been well-off, they had never been so well off that they had elicited attention from the top-ten-thousand, as the aristocracy were known.
Money might buy power—and it had for Brandon, in the shape of a seat in Parliament from one of the rotten boroughs—but it could never buy blue-blood. And Brandon, despite his impressive wealth, felt this quite keenly.
"Tell them I shall attend them all," Brandon said decisively, "All of the balls. All of the daughters."
"Yes, sir."
And so, after rounds of endless balls, routs, musicales, and regattas, Brandon found himself a wife with lineage so blue that could be traced back to the Norman conquest. His new wife, Lady Aubrietta, was the daughter of the Earl of Wilkes and was beautiful in that frail and delicate way which was so in vogue. Unfortunately for Lady Aubrietta, being frail and delicate was no help when it came to childbirth, and after delivering Brandon a second daughter, she promptly expired from the strain of it.
"Will you ever remarry, sir?" Percy enquired punctually, the day that Brandon's half-year mourning period had come to an end.
"La! Why ever would I do that?" Brandon asked. He was a man who was willing to try anything once, but now that marriage had been crossed off his list, he saw no reason to revisit it.
"Why, for an heir, sir," Percy replied; Brandon Drew was in possession of enormous wealth; wealth which could not possibly be left to daughters.
"Charlotte and Bianca shall inherit," came Brandon's bored reply, "It's not a title I'm leaving behind, just money. There's no need to sprog another poor woman up for the sake of fetching a boy. Now enough of this talk of inheritance, Percy; I find it all quite morbid."
