A Lord’s Desperate Love Part Seven ~ A Historical Romance Story

A Lord’s Desperate Love

A Historical Romance Story

Part One

Part Two

Part Seven

The fog had finally lifted and sun glowed through the parlour window. Its brightness reminded Violet of her breakfast parlour at home. The windows there always caught the morning sunlight. But that was her old house, and her old life. It was no longer home.

The sunlight made her restless, calling her outside. She’d never done so little in her life.

After the last few days of loneliness and boredom, she was willing to admit how much she missed the parties and the people – as well as Geoff. Yet once the child came, she would be fine. She was not worried that this was a life sentence. It was merely adjusting from the old to the new. But there were three more months before the child would come.

Anxiety and impatience rattled through her nerves, battling. She wished the child here and yet, she did not. She was afraid of becoming a mother… She had no idea how to be a mother… But she longed to be one… Her fingers spread across the rise of the bump in her stomach slipping over her muslin dress as if comforting the child to tell it, it was loved.

“Janet, I think I shall go for a walk.” Violet spoke to her maid, putting down the book she’d been reading. It had failed to hold her attention, she’d merely read the same page thrice.

“Did you wish me to accompany you, Ma’am?”

“Not today, Janet. Just fetch my bonnet and cloak.” She felt too much like weeping. Besides, this was a small village and she was a widow, no one would care if she walked alone. After all she was Mrs Mayer here, not Lady Rimes.

Her fingers settled on her stomach as she walked to the window and looked out, stroking the taut convex curve before falling away. The street outside was busy. People were hurrying about their business. She wished for somewhere or someone to hurry to.

“Ma’am?”

Violet turned. Janet held up her cloak and settled it on Violet’s shoulders. Violet tied the tapes in a bow, then took her bonnet from Janet’s hands and put it on. As she tied the ribbons, she was suddenly disoriented.

It was so strange to be wearing all this black, only a few weeks ago she’d persuaded Jane to give hers up, and now here Violet was masking herself, hiding behind it – lying.

Oh she was feeling melancholy today and this ill mood would do the child no good. She would walk and breathe in some fresh air and enjoy the prettiness of her new surroundings and force her heart to be glad again.

She took her gloves from Janet and slipped them on. “Thank you.” Then she nodded and turned to leave. Janet hurried to open the door and held it as Violet walked out.

The sunshine immediately touched her face, warming her skin a little. The autumn day was chilly, but now the fog had gone, in the sunlight, it was not harshly cold.

The summer had been long this year, and hot. She’d spent several hours of it walking with Jane. She wished Jane were here.

A time they’d walked in Hyde Park came to mind. They’d seen Barrington’s niece. Mary was a pretty little thing.

Suspecting her own condition but denying it wholeheartedly at the time, Violet had been enchanted. It was the first moment she had let herself accept the possibility and hope.

She thought of Jane as she walked about the village, peering into the bakers and milliners shop windows, and then wandering on; smiling at anyone who smiled at her, and greeting them if they spoke. She didn’t know many people yet, bar her neighbours. If she’d have been in London now, she would have called on friends. But she was not in London.

If only Jane had not married Barrington, Violet could have asked Jane to visit and she would have come. But Violet could hardly ask Jane to keep the secret from Barrington, he was Geoff’s close friend. Her friendship with Jane was another casualty of this muddle. She could neither write nor ask her to come and none of Violet’s other friends could be trusted to keep a secret.

Isolation settled on Violet’s shoulders like a second cloak as she walked on through the people busy shopping in the market square, away from the inns. She sought somewhere silent to sulk and suffer her heartache.

This was so foolish. She’d made this choice for good reason. Her hand touched her stomach. It was not her way to mope. She forced a smile and tried to lighten the mood in her heart, walking on down a side street. Then she turned left at the narrow cobbled ford which crossed to a row of cottages on the far side. She looked at the stepping-stones but instead decided to turn left and carry-on up the hill where the cottages grew sparser.

Violet laughed suddenly, remembering how she’d accused Barrington of toying with Jane. Barrington would laugh now if he saw how far Violet had tumbled from her pedestal.

Reaching a wooden gate at the entrance of a field, where a deep cart rut was cut in the meadow, from hundreds of loads and horses passing through over centuries of use, Violet leaned her elbows on the top bar and looked out across the long grass.

Another wash of pain and misery swept over her in a wave as she thought of Geoff.

A Lord’s Desperate Love is the story of two of the secondary characters from the 2nd book in the Marlow Intrigues Series

~ ‘The Passionate Love of a Rake’.

The true story of a courtesan, who inspired The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, which I’ve been telling every Sunday, will continue alongside this.

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

Life as a courtesan begins to age, and lose her fame

Oh Harriette, I owe you so much, thank you for the words you put down on paper nearly two hundred years ago, your inspiration gave me a number one book! 😀

There is not all that much left of Harriette’s story now, we are drawing towards the end, but I now know several things she left out of her memoirs that I will share with you when I finish her story as she told it, but until then let’s carry on, and, as always, if you are new to this series of posts today, here’s the history behind them, and if you have read this before just skip to the words highlighted in bold.

In 1825 Harriette Wilson, a courtesan, published a series of stories as her memoirs in a British broad sheet paper. The Regency gentleman’s clubs were a buzz, waiting to see the next names mentioned each week. While barriers had to be set up outside the shop of her publisher, Stockdale, to hold back the disapproving mob.

Harriette was born Harriette Debochet, she chose the name Harriette Wilson as her professional name, in the same way Emma Hart, who I’ve blogged about previously, had changed her name. Unlike Emma, it isn’t known why or when Harriette changed her name.

She was one of nine surviving children. Her father was a watchmaker and her mother a stocking repairer, and both were believed to be from illegitimate origin.

Three of Harriette’s sisters also became courtesans. Amy, Fanny and Sophia (who I have written about before). So the tales I am about to begin in my blogs will include some elements from their lives too.

For a start you’ll need to understand the world of the 19^th Century Courtesan. It was all about show and not just about sex. The idle rich of the upper class aspired to spending time in the company of courtesans, it was fashionable, the thing to do.

You were envied if you were linked to one of the most popular courtesans or you discovered a new unknown beauty to be admired by others.

Courtesans were also part of the competitive nature of the regency period too, gambling was a large element of the life of the idle rich and courtesans were won and lost and bartered and fought for.

So courtesans obviously aspired to be one of the most popular, and to achieve it they learnt how to play music, read widely, so they could debate, and tried to shine in personality too. They wanted to be a favoured ’original’.

The eccentric and outspoken was admired by gentlemen who liked to consort with boxers and jockeys, and coachmen, so courtesans did not aim for placid but were quite happy to insult and mock men who courted them, and demand money for any small favour.

Last week, I told you, or rather Harriette told us, about Fanny’s breakup with Colonel Parker, this week, Harriette relates a letter Fanny sent to her while she was in Paris, letting her know how things went on in London.

Fanny talks about her own loss, and says that Colonel Parker has called to visit his child twice, since his marriage, and is still supporting the child. She is writing sitting on the bed in his old room, ‘Methinks the bed looks like a tomb.’ She sounds empty hearted, and she says later in her letter that another man has been making love to her… ‘The other day, he said something to me which I fancied so truly harsh, coarse, and indelicate, that it produced a violent hysterical affection, which I found it impossible to subdue.

Ward wanted me to submit to something I conceived improper. When I refused, he said, with much fierceness of manner, such as my present weak state of nerves made me ill able to bear, ‘D––––d affection’ Obviously poor Fanny, was facing a need to find another man to support her, when she did not really want to be with another man, and like Harriette she was getting older and her choice of men narrower. The nice men everyone wanted would be in the enthrall of the new women on the market, the younger courtesans.

The other third of the ‘three graces’ which is what they had been called at the height of the their fame, Julia Storer, was doing little better. The young Mr Napier, who’d fallen for her some years before was still devoted, but was tight.

‘Napier’s passion for Julie continues increase. I will not call it love or affection, else why does he, with his twenty thousand a year suffer her to be so shockingly distressed? On the very day you left England, Julia had an execution in her house and the whole of her furniture was seized. I really thought she would have destroyed herself. I insisted on her going down to Mr Napier at Melton by that very night’s mail, to whom I wrote, earnestly entreating him to receive her with tenderness, such as the wretched state of her mind required. A man of Mr Napier’s sanguine temperament was sure to receive any fine woman with rapture, who came to him at Melton Mowbray, where petticoats are so scarce and so dirty; but, if he had really loved her, he surely would have immediately paid all her debts, which do not amount to a thousand pounds, as well as, ordered her upholsterer to new-furnish her house.

Would you believe it? Julia has returned with merely cash or credit enough to procure little elegant necessaries for Napier’s dressing-room, and, for the rest, her drawing-room is covered with a piece of green baize, and, in lieu of all her beautiful knick-nacks and elegant furniture, she has two chairs, an old second-hand sofa, and a scanty yellow cotton curtain. Her own bed was not seized, it is now the only creditable piece of furniture in the house of Napier’s adored mistress, one of the richest commoners in England, who is the father of her infant.’

Their days of fame and complete adoration have truly past.

Next week, to cover her back, Harriette is caught up in a love triangle…

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

Why not also read A Lord’s Desperate Love the story of two of the characters from The Passionate Love of a rake which Jane is telling for free here, access each part on the index of posts.