Two Dukes of Wyndham

About the Two Dukes of Wyndham series

Two Dukes of Wyndham is a matched pair of novels telling the same overlapping story from two different perspectives, built around a single premise: the current Duke of Wyndham may not actually be the duke at all, once a highwayman named Jack Audley is discovered to be the dowager duchess's long-lost, legitimately-born grandson. The Lost Duke of Wyndham follows Jack himself, dragged unwillingly into the question of his own identity, and Grace Eversleigh, the dowager's quietly overworked companion who finds herself caught between the two men who might hold the title. Mr. Cavendish, I Presume retells the same events from the point of view of Thomas Cavendish, the cousin who has spent his whole life expecting to inherit the dukedom and now stands to lose everything, and Amelia Willoughby, the young woman he's been engaged to since infancy and has never quite decided how he feels about.

Quinn's structural trick here is that both books cover the same weeks of plot simultaneously, with scenes that appear in one novel from Thomas and Amelia's side reappearing in the other from Jack and Grace's, so reading both gives a genuinely fuller picture of events than either book alone.

How to read this series

The Two Dukes of Wyndham novels can technically be read in either order since they tell the same events from two different couples' perspectives, but publication order — The Lost Duke of Wyndham, then Mr. Cavendish, I Presume — is recommended because The Lost Duke of Wyndham introduces the central mystery (which man is really the duke) more directly, while Mr. Cavendish, I Presume assumes some familiarity with what's already been set up. Reading both is part of the point: many scenes are deliberately shown from both sides across the two books.