Capturing the Earl’s Love Part One ~ A Historical Romance Story

A new #free short story… I’ll be telling it here, and it can also now be preordered on Amazon.

@Copyright Jane Lark; Publishing rights owned by Harper Impulse; Harper Collins UK

Capturing the Earl’s Love

A Historical Romance story

Part One

Lord Rupert Stanforth, Earl of Morton, watched his sister, Rowena, approach.

She was smiling, and her friend, Meredith Divine, clung to her arm.

His gaze briefly passed over the other girl. He was increasingly convinced Miss Divine only kept Rowena as a friend because Rowena was the perfect foil to show off Miss Divine’s more striking looks. Her auburn curls glowed in the candlelight beside Rowena’s lacklustre, light-brown locks.

Miss Divine was also slightly taller, and a little fuller in the bust.

While they crossed the room, she appeared to press as close as she could to Rowena’s side, letting Rowena’s less impressionable looks make Miss Divine’s stand out among the white-clad debutantes in the ballroom.

“Rupert…”

His eyes focused on his sister once more. She was out of breath, having just completed a country dance, and her cheeks were flushed, while her eyes glowed, expressing the fun she was having.

“I want to introduce Meredith to Ellen. Will you escort us and do the honours? Meredith is dying to meet her.”

Mmm, now what is this little game? He glanced at Miss Divine only to receive a very bright but subtly restrained smile.

She was trying to win his approval.

He was not interested. He wished nothing to do with the little schemer. Her father was in some sort of trade. Rupert had not even wished Rowena to befriend Miss Divine, let alone become so thick with her. The two of them were inseparable; or rather, Miss Divine hung about Rowena like a moth around a flame. Except Miss Divine was no moth. Her beauty was far too vibrant.

Rupert was Rowena’s guardian. Their father had passed on long ago, so Rupert was responsible for keeping his sister safe. It fell to him to help her choose her friends wisely. Yet the more he disparaged Miss Divine, the more Rowena favoured the girl. He’d ceased his complaints. Their friendship had still blossomed. He’d hoped it would wither and die back. It had not—yet.

He expected Miss Divine to make a wrong step soon though, one which would open his sister’s eyes, and end this arm-in-arm behavior.

“They are over there,” Rowena prodded.

Their cousin, Edward, had come up to town yesterday with his wife, who was with child again, although her condition was still barely visible.

Rupert ought to be glad they’d come. His mother rarely rose from her bed, due to her rheumatism, which she eased by drowning herself in laudanum. It left the burden of chaperoning Rowena on his shoulders. Ellen could help. Yet he felt uncomfortable about the notion. His cousin’s wife had a disreputable past.

Complying with Rowena’s request, he offered his right arm.

Miss Divine let go of Rowena and swept about to claim his left, without an offer.

While the girls chattered excitedly, he walked about the hall in the direction of his cousin, not listening to a word they said.

Edward was standing in conversation with his wife and his in-laws.

The Pembroke sisters, of whom Edward’s wife was one, stood out like dark-haired sirens. It was difficult not to stare when they were all together.

Edward’s wife, Ellen, was the eldest, but unfortunately, as Rupert looked at her, an unwanted image of her in her former life slipped into his mind.

She’d been a courtesan when he and Edward first saw her, and he’d seen her in one particularly compromising situation. It still made his spine tingle, like hackles rising, to let Rowena mix with Ellen. Yet Ellen’s family, along with the whole of the ton, society’s elite, had disregarded her past, if they were aware of it. It had simply been swept away.

Rupert could not forget.

Miss Divine gripped his arm too tightly. God, he found the girl irritating. Her voice was shrill, as though the excited pitch was forced.

He’d thought Edward’s wife a schemer, too, in the beginning, angling after his cousin for some reason. Rupert had been wrong. The moment they’d come back to town after their elopement, he’d seen that. A mutual affection lingered in the air between them.

Rupert could not fathom it. His parents had hated one another. Even his cousin’s parents had only displayed comfort with one another. Yet Edward had changed character in many ways since meeting Ellen. She’d become the pivotal focus of his life, when for weeks Rupert and Edward had been as inseparable as Rowena and Miss Divine. So there must be something in the word love. Edward certainly seemed to have a deep intimacy with his wife.

Rupert missed his cousin’s company, and he wanted nothing to do with love. He’d seen his cousin travel through hell to be with Ellen; he did not fancy that for himself. And it was a farce, as far as he was concerned; Rupert half-expected Edward’s haven of happiness to collapse at any moment. Solid relationships were built on mutual respect and nothing else.

Miss Divine’s grip shifted a little on his arm, as if she sought to gain his attention. He ignored her.

When Rupert took a wife, which would not be for a few years yet, he wished for someone who would bring him contentment. A woman he would not argue with, someone quiet, who would be willing to make his home, and perhaps his bed, comfortable, and manage all else without needing to refer to him.

“Ellen,” Rowena exclaimed as they neared the couple.

“Edward,” Rupert acknowledged. His cousin’s eyes were shining with both humour and happiness when he turned.

“My friend wishes an introduction—” Rowena began.

“So I have been asked to do the honours,” Rupert completed. “Lord Edward Marlow, this is Miss Meredith Divine, Lady Eleanor, Miss Divine.” He bowed slightly to Ellen, who bobbed a shallow curtsy as both girls on his arms did the same, but dipped a little lower.

“Miss Divine…” Ellen acknowledged, then began asking the girls questions, finding out from Rowena what she had been up to in town.

Rupert could answer that — shopping mostly, spending a small fortune, as well as visiting constantly.

Lord, he prayed she would hurry up and find a suitor he might accept.

Rowena’s fingers slipped from Rupert’s arm, while Miss Divine’s clung a moment longer. Awareness prickled across his skin when she finally let go.

Edward set an arm about Rupert’s shoulders, drawing him aside from the women.

“How are you?” Edward asked.

A Lord’s Desperate Love is the story of two of the secondary characters from the 1st book in

the Marlow Intrigues Series

‘The Illicit Love of a Courtesan’

For

the story of the real courtesan who inspired The Illicit Love of a Courtesan,
another free short story, about characters from book #2, A Lord’s Scandalous Love,
the prequel excerpts for book #3 The Scandalous Love of a Duke

Go to the index

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance stories, and the author of a No.1 bestselling Historical Romance novel in America, ‘The Illicit Love of a Courtesan’.

Click here to find out more about Jane’s books, and see Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

The first of the truths a real courtesan excluded from her memoirs ~ How she fell

If you have been following my blog for a little while, you will know that Harriette Wilson, the real Regency courtesan who published her memoirs in 1825 as a kiss and tell series, inspired the first novel in the Marlow Intrigues series, The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, I have been sharing the version of her life she told in her memoirs here for about a year, but over that year so many times people have told me – but it’s known she lied in them.

Well recently, I discovered the work of someone who has researched Harriette’s real life, and so I can now share with you some of the things she did not include.

As to whether or not she lied, well I will also cover that… But… I will say now, I have used her memoirs as a wealth of insight into the Regency world, her writing is like looking in through a window to see how life was for someone who lived then, and yes, you can definitely spot the scenes where there is some embellishment, either because she was writing for an audience, or because she wished to hurt someone who had hurt her… But overall, many of her scenes are from truth. Plenty more of this in the next couple of weeks, including some insights which I have found really upsetting.

But let’s start at the beginning, Harriette opens her memoirs at the point she had already become a courtesan, and was living in Brighton, on the Marine Parade with Lord Craven, everything she tells us about Lord Craven implies she thinks him tedious and from the beginning she appears unhappy with him. So why had she taken him as her first protector?

Harriette does not tell us.

But here is what Frances Wilson has discovered.

Harriette was the 6^th daughter in her family, and she also had 4 younger sisters and 2 brothers so there were 12 children in all.

I have been saying for weeks her father was a watchmaker, but apparently that was a myth. Her father really laundered silk stockings, which you may think a mundane task, but only the genteel wore silk, and there was an art to keep the fashionable white stockings clean. It was a business that paid well, and her father and mother ran it from a large town property in Queen Street, in between Curzon Street and Charles Street, right in the heart of fashionable London, among their customers.

The family were not poor, but obviously not upper class, yet their neighbours included Dr Merriman, Lord Craven, Lord Lucan, Lord Whitworth and the Dowager Countess of Granard… Harriette and her sisters grew up watching wealthy young and titled gentleman walk past No. 23 Queen St hourly.

Harriette was taught to read by one of her older sister’s, the one she calls Paragon in her memoirs, growing up she recorded her favourite novel as Gil Bas, the story of a rogue who has many adventures and becomes a wealthy Lord. She apparently imagined herself writing a female version of the story.

Harriette says when she was younger, that her sisters constantly spoke of the men who lived near them. Fanny was kissed by Tom Sheridan, and read aloud the love letters she had received, and Paragon agreed to walk out with a man, while the others glorified Berkeley Craven’s bright eyes. Harriette at this point was uninterested, but then she declares that listening to such things for so long inspired her to become inquisitive, and then she started curling her hair, and receiving her own love letters through the hands of the maids.

It was then her mother chose to send her off to a convent school in Rouen, as far away from the interest of the debauched men of London society, who thought nothing of trying to tempt young girls into sin, as possible.

She returned in 1800, to discover that two of her older sisters, Fanny and Amy, had given in to the charms of such men, and run off to become the mistresses of a Mr Trench and a Mr Woodcock. Amy had found Mr Trench who sent her back to school, settled a hundred a year on her, and then never saw her again, and so Amy found General Madden to keep her company. It was then that Fanny followed the example of her sister and let herself be set up in a house by Mr Woodcock. She used his name although he already had a legitimate wife he lived with.

When Harriette published her memoirs in 1825, someone who claimed to have known Harriette in 1800 wrote a letter to The Times, signing himself ‘An Old Rake’ he described Harriette as ‘a little dirty girl, whose name was Du Bouchet, who was five and twenty years ago a regular tramp in St Jame’s Street… bunch backed with a shuffling gait.’

Harriette was then fourteen, and her father was unwilling to feed her, he wished her to support herself, and her father had been a figure to be frightened of all her life. When she was younger, once she recorded angering him, and then taking a beating with a birch that disfigured her entire body, while beyond the chamber door her mother screamed for her father to stop.

From a family that was not poor, but not at the level of someone who might be a companion, Harriette had one option, teaching, it would have been abohorent to her to take on a labouring job or a position as a servant when she came from a family who had servants. She had lived a lifestyle in town, probably similar to that which Jane Austen lived in the country, but Harriette’s family were not descended from a title, so there were no wealthy relatives to be looked to for support.

Of course her sisters had taken another option, to become kept women, a role in which they would still have servants, and be paid more money than they would as teachers, and the role must have seemed far less strenuous 🙂

Harriette’s mother found her a position as a music teacher in a school initially, near Hyde Park, but Harriette only survived three months there. The French mistress, having claimed to see Harriette’s breast uncovered, said she could not be a virgin. Harriette returned home. An appointment was then found for her at a girls’ school in Newcastle upon Tyne, and she travelled there on the mail coach, with Tom Sheridan, who was returning to his regiment in Edinburgh.

To express the sort of young man Tom was, like so many of the young men of the day, Francis Wilson records some of the things he was known to have said ‘Told by his father to take a wife, Tom replied ‘Yes but who’s?’ Told by his father he would be cut off with a penny, Tom asked whether he might have the penny now.’

It is not known what occurred on their journey, but there are hints in Harriette’s memoirs, that imply she may have allowed herself to be seduced by Tom, during the two days and one night they travelled, and certainly when she left him at Newcastle upon Tyne, she had agreed to him sending her love letters, with which she could tease her sisters.

Harriette did not survive long at this school either, such a life was too boring, and Tom Sheridan suggested to her in his letters that she should become an actress. The idea appealed, and Harriette headed back to her family home in London. But her father refused such a notion. Being an actress was no better than being a prostitute, and he said ‘he would rather see me in my grave.’

It was her father’s anger which finally drove her away. Francis Wilson, says, Harriette made him his favourite meal, and waited up beyond the time she was supposed to be in bed to ensure it remained hot, only to receive a scolding for her attempt to placate him, for her disobedience in staying up…

Harriette then planned her escape, but she did not run very far to look for her saviour, only to the end of the street where her parents lived. It is believed she ran away initially with Berkeley Craven – he who was revered by her sisters for his bright eyes. She had known the family for years. But it was not Berkeley Craven she remained with, it was his older brother, Lord Craven, who she became the mistress of…

And what happened then, I will continue next week… 🙂