These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

The Duke remained at Avon for over a month, during which time Léonie applied herself energetically to the task of becoming a lady. Madam Field's ideal of this estate was luckily not Avon's. He had no wish to see his ward sitting primly over her stitchery, which was just as well, perhaps, for after the first attempt Léonie declared that nothing would induce her to ply a needle. Madam Field was a little flustered by this defection, and by Léonie's taste for swordplay, but she was far too good-natured and indefinite to do more than murmur nervous remonstrances. She stood very much in awe of her cousin, and although she was by birth an Alastair she felt herself to be a wholly inferior creature. She had been happy enough with her husband, an obscure gentleman with a taste for farming, but she knew that in the eyes of her family she had disgraced herself by marrying him. This had not troubled her much while he lived, but now that he was dead, and she had returned to what had once been her own milieu, she was uncomfortably conscious of the step downwards that she had taken in her foolish youth. She was rather frightened of Avon, but she liked to live in his house. When she looked about her, at faded tapestries, at stretches of velvet lawns, at portraits innumerable, and crossed swords above the doorway, she remembered anew the glory of past Alastairs, and some almost forgotten chord stirred within her.

Léonie was enchanted by Avon Court, and demanded to know its history. She walked with Justin in the grounds, and learned how Hugo Alastair, coming with the Conqueror, settled there, and built himself a fair dwelling, which was destroyed in the troublesome times of King Stephen; how it was built again by Sir Roderick Alastair; how he was given a barony, and prospered, and how the first Earl, under Queen Mary, pulled down the old building and erected the present house. And she learned of the bombardment that partially destroyed the West Wing, when Earl Henry held all for the King against the usurper Cromwell, and was rewarded for it at the Restoration by a dukedom. She saw the sword of the last Duke, the same that he had used in tragic '15, for King James III, and heard a small part of Justin's own adventures, ten years ago, for King Charles III. Justin touched but lightly on this period of his life; his work in that attempt, Léonie guessed, had been secret and tortuous, but she learned that the true King was Charles Edward Stuart, and learned to speak of the little warlike man on the throne as Elector George.