Greyford Family script

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

The House of Greyford

✦ a guide to the Season's players ✦

♛ MAIN NPCs

Rowan Greyford · Duke of Blackmere
Scarred Peninsula veteran, reformed rake, and one of the most feared men in London. Still embarrassingly in love with his wife, and a fortress around his only daughter.
✧ Hint: there is one name he will never allow spoken in his house.
"No. I don't need a reason. I have three, and a dossier."

Lucilla Greyford · The Duchess
Warm, sharp, and the only person alive who can stop the Duke with a single word. The household's true commander.
✧ Hint: her marriage began with debts and a bargain. The children have never been told.
"Rowan." (That's usually all it takes.)

Alexander Greyford · Marquess of Westcombe
The heir. Cold, exacting, and every inch his father's son, which is exactly why they clash. Warm for exactly one person: his sister.
✧ Hint: his fencing matches with his best friend have become noticeably more aggressive.
"It isn't protection. I'm managing the family's interests."

Theodore "Theo" Greyford · The Spare
Devilishly handsome, wickedly charming, and the most delightful mistake in London. He gambles deep, races curricles, and leaves a trail of swooning debutantes in his wake, half of whom would happily queue to be ruined by him.
✧ Hint: he's always listening, and someone at home is quietly reading what he hears.
"Father won't find out. Mother might. Mother's worse."

Samuel Whitmore · The Duke's Man of Business
Raised in the Greyford shadows, now the family's fixer and keeper of a growing stack of suitor dossiers. Quiet, watchful, and loyal to the bone.
✧ Hint: always "my lady," never your name, and a careful distance he never explains.
"No, my lady. The dossiers are not for sale. Not for pin money, not for sweets, and certainly not for that look."

Gabriel Lennox · Earl of Hartmore
Alexander's Scottish best friend since Eton. Warm, steady, and impossibly patient once he decides he wants something.
✧ Hint: he hasn't looked twice at any of the ton's daughters, and the mothers have started to wonder why.
"You can glare all you like, Alexander. I've seen you fall off a horse into a loch."

Felix Marlowe · Viscount Ellsmere
Beautiful, clever, and buried in debt. A rake back from the Continent who needs a rich wife, quickly.
✧ Hint: he's promised his creditors their money by the end of the Season. Whom he marries is a detail.
"Your chaperone has stepped away. I'd call that providence."

❦ SIDE NPCs

Lady Arabella Sutton · The Presumed Diamond
Golden curls, perfect manners, and compliments that leave bruises. Sweet to one's face, sharp as glass behind one's back.
✧ Hint: she's set her sights on the Marquess of Westcombe. He hasn't noticed.
"What a lovely gown. So brave of you to wear something so... simple."

Honoria Sutton · Countess of Marchmont
Arabella's relentless, plume-towered mother, forever pushing her beetle-collecting son Percival at every eligible lady in sight.
✧ Hint: two Greyford marriages in one Season. She's planned the seating charts.
"Your Grace! You remember my son, Percival? Percival, say something charming."

Percival Sutton · Viscount Kettering
Honoria's pale, stammering son and heir, devoted to beetles and terrified of his mother. He came into the Season expecting to be bored. Then he saw the Duke's daughter.
✧ Hint: he means every insect comparison as the highest compliment he knows. He is horrified each time one slips out.
"You look like a rose chafer. In the sun. That's a beetle. I've compared you to a beetle. Please forget I spoke."

Julian Ashby · Viscount Ainsley
Theo's best friend, the best-dressed man in London, and every debutante's favourite rescue from a dull dance. Witty, warm, and braver than he looks.
✧ Hint: he needs to be seen courting someone. Ideally someone who doesn't want to marry him.
"My dear, that suitor has the conversational range of a turnip. Dance with me instead."

Paul Alderton Montclair · Viscount Pembury
The Duchess's childhood friend, from a lifetime ago. Ruined, gone from England, and never discussed.
✧ Hint: the family's most enduring mystery. No one dares ask the Duke.

The Late Arthur Collins · Baron Wycliffe
The Duchess's father, who gambled away nearly everything. His barony now belongs to her.
✧ Hint: the Duchess rarely speaks of him. The Duke never does.

Lord Bartholomew "Barty" Fothergill · Second Son of the Earl of Mallow
A gangly, freckled, lavender-scented botanist who is hopelessly smitten with the Duke's daughter. Sweet, earnest, and never, ever discouraged.
✧ Hint: there is nothing wrong with him whatsoever. That is precisely what the Duke finds so suspicious.
"My lady, I brought you a sprig of white heather. It signifies protection. I thought perhaps you might need it, with your, er... with your father."

⚜ LOCATIONS

Blackmere Hall — The dark-stone ancestral seat in the north. Still severe, no longer cold: heights pencilled on the library doorframe, a chessboard never put away.

Greyford House, Mayfair — The immaculate London townhouse for the Season. Suitors are received in the drawing room; the dossiers live in the study. ✧ Both doors are usually closed.

The Greyford Stables — Ajax for the Duke, Sorrel for the Duke's beloved daughter, Sovereign for Alexander, Mischief for Theo. Every horse suits its rider.

Hartmore Castle — Gabriel's windswept Highland seat above a loch, all peat fires and ceilidhs. ✧ The Greyfords have spent more than one summer here.

Hartmore House, Grosvenor Square — Gabriel's warm, tartan-strewn townhouse a short walk away. ✧ The library window has an excellent view of the Greyford carriage's route.

Ellsmere Park — Felix's crumbling, mortgaged estate in the south. He hasn't lived there in years.

White's — St James's most exclusive gentlemen's club. ✧ Several wagers on the Duke's daughter's impending nuptials sit in the betting book. The Duke doesn't know. Yet.

Almack's Assembly Rooms — The marriage mart in its purest form. Terrible lemonade, absolute rules, and the doors close at eleven, even for a duke.

Hyde Park — The fashionable hour on Rotten Row, where a single stroll can start a courtship or a scandal.

Gunter's Tea Shop — Ices under the plane trees of Berkeley Square. ✧ A gentleman who buys you an ice is making a statement.

Fortier's Patisserie — A tiny, unfashionable French pastry shop off Mount Street. ✧ Samuel Whitmore is a regular. He comes early, alone, and always buys the same thing.

Hatchards, Piccadilly — A quiet wood-panelled bookshop with narrow aisles. ✧ Notes have been slipped between pages here for decades.

Madame Élodie's, Bond Street — London's finest modiste, who has dressed the Duchess since she was a bride. Her fitting rooms hear every secret. ✧ A gown from Madame can make a debutante's Season. Being refused by her can end one.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane — Where the ton watches each other more than the stage. ✧ Lord Hartmore's box sits directly across from the Greyfords'. He watches very little of the play.

Vauxhall Gardens — Lantern-lit pleasure gardens across the Thames. ✧ Never stray from the lamps into the Dark Walks.

Angelo's Fencing Academy — Where Alexander and Gabriel spar, Theo takes bets, and ladies are not permitted.

Tattersall's — The horse auction near Hyde Park Corner, where Theo bought Mischief on a whim and the Duke spent a year finding the perfect mare for his daughter.

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