From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 127)

Quite against my will, I have fallen in love a number of times. Unlike many of my gender, I don’t separate desire, or rather sexual need, from affection. Intimacy, to me, is exactly that, that special time I share with my intimates. Of course, I haven’t been in love with every woman with whom I have shared a bed, but there are a few who will always be of enduring affection to me.

I place the fault for this romantic soppiness squarely on my mother, who read me far too much in the way of poetry before I began school. Also, and I’ve no shame about this, I see women as human beings, never as mere objects, or in any way lesser beings.

They are delightfully different to men, and I celebrate them for that. The very idea that women across classes, who oversee servants, or run a household, could in any way be considered less intellectually gifted than many a man of my acquaintance, is nothing short of incredible. I’ve known more than one fellow, thought to be of above average intelligence, and trusted with the finances of a bank, who has no clue how to tie up his shoelaces without his valet’s help (and let’s not get started on the subject of bow ties).

The gentlemen of this era, especially those of the upper classes, set a standard of intelligence so low, a dog - nay, a hedgehog - could outwit them.

I’ve spent much of today in gentleman’s clubs, being undercover and fishing for rumours. I fear I shall have to do it again tomorrow. I’d rather join a group of washer women around their washtub. Not only would rumours be more free-flowing, but being of the real world and grim experience, I’d expect their conversation to be of substantially more interest than how Lord Whatsisface won a sausage-eating competition by secreting some down his trousers, thus beating Viscount Thingummy, who slyly fed some to his dog under the table, and who promptly vomited on his boots, exposing his deception. Of such men are empires supposedly made. Sigh.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to have not taken my place among the lowest of the nobility, thereby neatly avoiding having to spend my days with such mind-numbing dolts, but Lord in heaven, do I ever pity those poor women who are forced to marry them to preserve the ever-decreasing bloodlines of the so-called leaders of the nation. Still, I shall continue to do what I can to ease their burdens, poor darlings.

However, I simply cannot allow myself fall in love again. My country must be front and centre in my affections and my attentions. To care for anyone else so much that a threat of danger to them might make me forsake my duty is quite unthinkable.

I do worry about Jack. He is very dear to me, and his eventual passing will affect me more than many of my family, or colleagues, dying ever has. Then again, I hope I keep my affections out of the sight of the general public. I doubtless spoil Jack at home, but to the world at large, he is merely my dog.

Merely my dog? Ha! He’s worth two of the best of them any day.