Excerpt 1 sets the background for the main storyline of the book.
When Harriot Mellon Coutts and the duke had married, it had caused a sensation, mainly because he was twenty-three years younger than she was. Also, despite her previous marriage to the late Thomas Coutts, she was still known far and wide in British aristocratic society as ‘the actress’. Appearing at the reading of his wife’s will wasn’t something which the duke would countenance, not with all her damnable relatives pointing and sniggering.

Explanation (On her death in 1837, her property and fortune went to her step granddaughter, selected as heir after careful scrutiny of the possible recipients, who as a condition of the inheritance adapted her name to Angela Burdett-Coutts.^[7])

Excerpt 2 provides an insight into society at the time and the controversy
Harriot Mellon Coutts legacy made.
Sir Jonathan walked to the large desk at the front of the room and sat in the chair.
When all were seated, he took a sip of water from a glass, and said, ‘Ladies and
gentlemen, Her Majesty the Queen has asked me, as Attorney General of the
United Kingdom, to read this last will and testament of the late Duchess of St
Albans.’
As he tore open the envelope, there was a buzz of conversation, not about the
contents of the will, but that this man was the most important law officer in the
land, and the queen herself had sent him.
He opened the will, straightened it, and began to read the words which had been
dictated some three months earlier. It was short, just three pages, and took him
only nine minutes to complete. By the time he had finished, the assembled
company were in a state of utter shock.
Sir Jonathan glanced over to the family solicitor and whispered, ‘Is there
something untoward happening, Mr Charles?’
In an undertone, the family solicitor whispered, ‘No errors, Sir Jonathan. When I
drew up the will for the duchess, I told her that there would be some consternation
among her relatives. Especially the brother of the young woman who has become
the major beneficiary. I warned the duchess that there would be anger, but she
merely smiled and said “good”. I fear, Sir Jonathan, that this is the consternation
she was hoping for.’

Excerpt 3 sums up nicely the finale of the story
Baroness Burdett-Coutts died of bronchitis on 30 December 1906 at the age of
ninety-two. She passed peacefully in bed in her beloved home in Stratton Street.
Her body was moved to lie in state and thirty thousand people came to pay their
respects to a woman who had tried to relieve the pain and suffering of her
countrymen and women. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, and
the service was attended by one of the most eclectic congregations the abbey had
ever experienced: sitting in the pews to pay their respects were members of the
royal family and the aristocracy, as well as the impoverished and former
prostitutes, all of whom had been recipients of her generosity. She was known to
everybody in her day as the Queen of the Poor.
King Edward VII wrote in his eulogy that ‘After my mother, Angela Burdett-Coutts
was the most remarkable woman in the country.’