Excerpt from The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In 1889 – at the age of thirty-two, ten years after he inherited the dukedom – the 6th Duke married Winifred Dallas-Yorke. Although she came from an ancient Lincolnshire family, Winifred was not among the obvious, titled candidates for the 6th Duke's hand. 'Willy and Winnie', as they were known to their friends, entertained in lavish style at Welbeck, which was now to play host to some of the most famous people of the age. Both Queen Victoria and Edward, Prince of Wales, were guests there, as were the Duke and Duchess of Sparta, the Crown Prince and Princess of Greece and – a quarter-century later – the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, shortly before his assassination in Sarajevo in 1914. As Master of the Horse under Lord Salisbury's government, William was an important member of the Royal household staff. He masterminded, among other great ceremonial events, the arrangements for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Winifred, the new Duchess of Portland, was nearly six feet in height and considered one of the great beauties of her generation. The artist John Singer Sargent memorably captured her in a portrait of 1902 – a full-length canvas in which Winnie is revealed standing against a Corinthian column. The scale of the painting emphasizes her statuesque height, and the evening light heightens the dramatic contrast of her black hair against her crimson cloak and white gown. Winnie concentrated on supporting her husband in his role as a great landowner, throwing herself into charitable work and the life of the estate. It was a time of glittering balls, weekend parties and rifle shoots, the heyday of the English country house. Exchanges were organized between the house parties at Welbeck and the neighbouring 'Dukeries' estate of Clumber, owned by the Duke of Newcastle. Autumn and winter were the seasons for fox-hunting and shooting, when the valley echoed with gunshots and the abbey dining tables were loaded with pheasants, partridges, hare and rabbit. Summer was the season for lawn tennis and croquet, when gentlemen in boaters and ladies with parasols idled the hours away to the lazy strains of a gramophone. They were waited on by the abbey servants at picnic tables spread with a delicious array of exotic delicacies such as caviar, truffles and foie gras. Winnie herself presided over her guests with dignity, ignoring the fickleness of fashion by choosing to stick to her favourite fan-shaped Medici lace collar, paired with a spray of Malmaison carnations. She had an innate sense of the grandeur of her position. Once, when lost in London, she was obliged to ask her way of a policeman. On being given directions, she said: 'The City? I have only been here in processions.' Willy and Winnie's first child, Lady Victoria, was followed by a son, William Arthur Henry, who became the new Marquess of Titchfield. The future of the Portland dukedom seemed to be assured.

Until, that is, some twenty years after the 6th Duke's accession, when he was informed by his lawyers of a most fantastical set of assertions being made by an obscure widow in the church courts of London. A set of assertions that, if true, would call into question not only his entire inheritance, but the very future of Welbeck Abbey.

Excerpted from The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell. Copyright © 2015 by Piu Marie Eatwell. Excerpted by permission of Liveright / WW Norton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.