Elinor now finds herself coerced into becoming the wife of the dying Eustace, and so mistress of his ruined estate and, very likely, in danger of being dunned for his accumulated debts and gambling losses.

By morning Eustace is dead and Elinor find herself addressed as Mrs Cheviot by her new family, who promise to look after her interests and, as a first instalment, to supply her with widow's weeds as a sign of mourning that she scarcely feels.

Having discovered the secret door by which he entered, Nicky lies in wait for him the following night, but gives the game away by blundering into a suit of armour and is shot in the shoulder by the intruder.

Next Eustace's uncle, Lord Bedlington, arrives, claiming to have heard the distressing news of his nephew's death in London, although the family has not yet sent an announcement of it to the papers.

Instead, his place is taken by his son, Francis Cheviot, an exquisite dandy and crony of Beau Brummel, very much concerned for the state of his health in the winter cold, who takes up quarters at Highnoons.

He reveals that the body of his close friend De Castres has been discovered stabbed in London, which arouses the suspicions of the Carlyons, since the report in the papers made no mention of the cause of his death.

[5] However, genre writing is of long descent and it is therefore unsurprising that traces of earlier subjects can be found in Heyer's historical novels, often introduced to give period veracity but also to add variety.

The governess novel was a popular Victorian genre, allowing dramatic contrast between the dependent lot of the economically disadvantaged female and the easy circumstances of her employers.

[8] In Heyer's own time there had been a revival of the Gothic tradition in Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca (1938) and its adaptations to stage and screen, which similarly had as theme a fatal marriage inheritance and the solution of a murder at its end.

Pre-war support of Nazism by the well-born is reflected in the behaviour of the aristocratic Louis de Castres and the complicity of Lord Bedlington, a member of the Regency set about the future monarch, in the time of the Napoleonic Wars.