The Duke of Shadows, Meredith Duran

The Duke of Shad­ows (2008) by Mered­ith Duran is a his­tor­i­cal romance set out­side Regency Eng­land. The story is par­tially set in India dur­ing a most tur­bu­lent time when the British mil­i­tary was in occu­pa­tion of the coun­try. The grow­ing ten­sions between the natives and the British offi­cers leads to what some refer to as the Indian mutiny. Sepoys rebel, tear­ing down the city and killing British sol­diers out­right. The story starts a few days before all of this upheaval takes place.

Plot Sum­mary, The Duke of Shadows

Emma Mar­tin is an Eng­lish heiress betrothed to an British offi­cer sta­tioned in India. Her par­ents decide to accom­pany her to India to ensure she arrives safely and into the arms of her future hus­band, Colonel Mar­cus Lind­ley. Unfor­tu­nately, dis­as­ter strikes. Emma finds her­self the sole sur­vivor of a ship­wreck that kills her par­ents. Stranded for sev­eral days, she is res­cued by sailors but Delhi soci­ety labels the out­come, a “dis­hon­or­able res­cue.” As if sav­ing her life implied that they, the sailors, stole her virtue for ser­vices rendered.

Enter Julian Sin­clair, a Mar­quess and future heir to a duke­dom and cousin to Mar­cus Lind­ley. No, the two cousins are not close. In fact, Lind­ley labels Julian a “half-breed,” a deroga­tory term to describe some­one of mixed her­itage. But Julian is, in fact, half British and half Indian. Of course nei­ther half is very accept­ing of the other which leaves him in the mid­dle or in the “shad­ows”, if you will in regards to his blood loy­alty. He grew up in India but was whisked off by his grand­fa­ther, the Duke, who makes him his heir.

To briefly sum­ma­rize the events of the story, Julian’s been labeled as an “alarmist” because of his con­tin­ued warn­ings to the British mil­i­tary about the natives threat to turn on them. No one believes him. In fact, many snidely think that he is in col­lu­sion with them, since he is part Indian and all. It isn’t too long after Julian meets Emma in Delhi that the two end up run­ning for their lives out of the city. The natives do turn and chaos erupts every­where thus lead­ing to what is his­tor­i­cally referred to as the Indian Rebel­lion.

It’s advan­ta­geous that Julian is part-Indian. He saves them both by shed­ding all hints of his Eng­lish­ness by blend­ing into his sur­round­ings while the natives rebel all around them. This change shocks Emma but the fear of death super­sedes any ideas she had about his loy­al­ties to the British. They get sep­a­rated when he leaves her with the royal fam­ily. This is after they’ve become lovers. Julian decides to go back and help the British and Emma was sup­posed to wait for his return. The sepoys attack the town and Emma must run again. Julian tries his best to find her after learn­ing what has hap­pened to her. Things don’t work out as planned. The two meet again some 4 years later in Lon­don, dur­ing an art exhibit.

My Thoughts on The Duke of Shadows

This is a good story. In fact, Ms. Duran’s writ­ing is spec­tac­u­lar and rem­i­nis­cent of Kin­sale and Judith Ivory to me. First, let me dish out the praise: the first half of the story was excel­lent. You have war with vio­lence galore, a romance devel­oped dur­ing wartime with a hero with mixed her­itage that add com­plex­ity and a hero­ine edu­cated with a back­bone. I also enjoyed the dia­logue and the indul­gent and mem­o­rable amount of time the h/h spent with each other espe­cially at the start of the story. Unpre­dictable plot­ting with decent char­ac­ter­i­za­tions had me fully engaged in this story.

Now for the criticism(s): some scenes were overly long and some char­ac­ters didn’t need the added screen time, Lady Chad any­one? I was, quite hon­estly, sick of her chat­ter. The con­flict that held the two lovers apart shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did to me but I did appre­ci­ate the fact that both char­ac­ters didn’t let this con­flict between them develop into some huge mis­un­der­stand­ing. The sus­pense part of the story devel­oped kind of late and also I thought it quite thin and some­what unclear regard­ing a trea­so­nous soldier.

I haven’t touched on all the plot points in this story. Leav­ing that for you to dis­cover. The heat level in here is quite hot but not sear­ing. I loved that this story was based on his­tor­i­cal facts mixed with fic­tion. The set­ting was not wall­pa­per and didn’t detract nor inter­fere with the story. I really liked Julian with his faint smile and burn­ing green eyes. Reserved and not afraid to let his feel­ings show in front of a woman, thus he made for a mag­nif­i­cent hero. Over­all, this is a good story and I’m glad to have read it. This writer shows promise in deliv­er­ing the his­tor­i­cal romances I used to love and enjoy back in the day. B. Look for­ward to read­ing more from this tal­ented writer. Decent debut.