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

I am going to start telling my next historical story right here, in parts. If you have read The Passionate Love of a Rake, then you will recognize the characters… 😀

Part One

Looking from the window of the dingy hotel room, Lady Violet Rimes gathered her courage. She knew what the physician was about to say. She could not quite believe she had trapped herself in this dreadful muddle. She was a grown woman, a widow who knew the way of the world and she had always been cautious before, but this time…

“I presume, Ma’am, you know you are with child?”

“How far gone? When is it due?” Her bleeding had stopped weeks ago, though she’d pretended it was not happening. She had spent the last weeks half hoping it was true and half wishing it were not.

“I would think February, Ma’am.”

February? It was already October.

The physician hesitated. “I know of… If you… There is a woman who can help with such things –”

“No.” She wanted the child. She had wanted a child by her husband. But none had come. Since then unless she’d married again, caution was the only choice. She’d avoided conception as best she could. But now fate had made her choice she was neither going to give up the child or allow it to be condemned by scandal. She would keep the child. It was her life which must change.

“No, thank you. I will manage.” She faced him, the heat of a blush creeping over her skin as she remembered how he’d examined her alone in this room, moments before. He’d left her to straighten her clothing and then returned to share his judgement. He must have surmised she had no husband, and her voice probably labelled her as wealthy, even though she’d taken a dress from her maid’s closet, to help hide the fact.

This whole thing made her feel sordid and guilty. She’d been hiding her condition from the world for weeks and now she was hiding herself.

Violet’s heart raced as she looked at the doctor as though he could provide an alternative answer, but she must find her own answer. She felt cold inside, in her stomach and in her limbs, but yet her heart was warm, with longing. I am with child.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. How could she be a mother? “Thank you, Dr Rivers, but, no,” she said with more control, “I do not wish for any help, not in that way. I will have the child. Is it healthy?”

“Everything seems well –”

“Thank you,” she said again, picking up her reticule.

After she’d paid him, he left.

Her fingers shook as she tied the ribbons of her bonnet. Oh how ridiculous. She was known for her confidence. Her gaze spun about the inn room she’d hired. She’d thought it better to see the physician on neutral ground, so no one could see her enter his offices, nor see him enter her home. But it only made the whole thing seem sordid, but why should she feel ashamed. She was glad, warmth seeped from her heart into her limbs as an ache stretching from her middle into her breast.

I am with child.

As she left the room, closing the door behind her, she thought of her friend Jane, and longed for her company. Jane had only recently left London, and yesterday Violet had seen an announcement in the paper advising Jane had married again. She’d married the man who had been chasing her all summer. Violet imagined Jane happy. But the picture of Jane’s happiness only made envy twist like the pain of a cruel dagger in Violet’s stomach. She’d never expected to marry again. But what would she do now?

Go away. She had to. She was already showing. Options spun in a whorl in her head. She must leave London. Go somewhere no one knew her and not come back. She must live there and begin a new life.

Geoff. His hazel eyes, glittering at her with laughter, appeared in her mind’s eye. At least he had not noticed how rotund her figure had become. He should have noticed. She had noticed. But perhaps he had not dared to comment.

She stepped from the bottom step of the stairs within the inn, and deliberately did not look left or right, fearing she might see someone she knew. Instead she crossed the entrance hall in a hurry and went out into the street. It was very wrong to be walking alone without a maid, but then she was dressed as a servant, and the poke bonnet hid her face.

Her heart cried out for the man who usually walked with her. Geoff.

She was going to miss him. She loved him. A tight knot tied in her stomach, and a clenching feeling gripped about her heart.

She hurried along the street, unsure whether it was best to merely walk home or try to stop a hackney carriage. Which would encourage more outrage, if she was seen entering her house? She would walk, she needed the exercise to absorb her restless thoughts, and perhaps by the time she reached home, some inspiration would have come and she’d know what on earth to do.

When she crossed the street, Geoff’s smile came to mind. She missed the solidity of his arm to grip.

Male company, within a bed and without, had been her obsession for the last few years. She’d slept with numerous men since her husband had passed. So many she’d lost count. But Lord Geoffrey Sparks had become far more than pleasure. He was necessity. Yet she had to leave him behind now. For their child’s sake. He would not wish a woman like her as his wife. He was a third son and she was seven years his senior, though he thought her only three. What they’d had, had been merely entertainment to him too. She knew how offspring of liaisons like theirs were managed. He would expect her to hand the child to some poor woman to foster. Well, Violet would have none of that. He would not even know of the child.

If only she had not been fool enough to fall in love.

Don’t worry Harriette Wilson’s story, the true story of a courtesan is going to continue along side this! Next part of that tomorrow.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance stories.

See below on the side bar for details of Jane’s books, and 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

A Regency courtesan’s power of persuasion

After the story I told last week, Harriette Wilson, tells us in her memoirs that Mr Meyler paid her ‘unusual attention’ becoming far more attentive, perhaps fearing she might stray…

And then she shares one of her passages that for me is a window in to the past and a very truthful glimpse of the relationship she had with her lover, Mr Meyler.

But before I share it, here’s the history of this series of posts for anyone reading them for the first time today. If you’ve been following Harriette’s story, as always, jump straight the end of the italics.

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.

In Harriette’s words, and I love this because it paints an image in my head, ‘One morning, when I called on him at his house in Grosvenor Square, I found him reclined on his chaise-longue, in a very pensive attitude. On a table, before him, was a most becoming military cap, which appeared to belong to the militia, or might have been worn, for aught I knew, by the hero of some corps of volunteers.’

I can see him there, and without Harriette saying she called on him, I would never have thought she’d have gone to his house! But then she goes on to tell us how he speaks… and you can get a real judgement of his mannerisms.

‘What is the matter, Meyler? And why is that frightful cap stuck up before you?’

‘Ah!’ said Meyler, with his usual slight, but sentimental sigh, ‘frightful indeed! Fancy a little, quiet, country-gentleman, like myself, sticking such a thing as that on his head!’

‘What necessity can there possibly be, for disfiguring yourself so?’ (Harriette has told us previously she never had a fancy for men in uniform. She preferred them in evening dress, in breeches and stockings so she could see their calves).

‘Why you see I am obliged to be Captain of the Hampshire militia, of which Lord Palmerston is Colonel and Commander,’ continued Meyler having another sigh, and looking most interestingly pensive, while his eyes were steadily fixed on the cap.

I could not help laughing; for there was, in fact, a originality about Meyler’s manner of saying mere trifles, which it would be impossible to describe. And then he spoke so very slow, and his mouth was such a model of beauty, that even nonsense came gracefully out of it.’

His speech was so slow, that Harriette recalls his friend mimicking him for fun, Mildmay, of last week’s tale, accused him of taking a half-hour to say the name of his dog, ‘Ch-a-n-c-e’, Harriette berated him for calling Meyler stupid, but Mildmay’s reply was ‘Meyler possess a good understanding when one cane give him a fortnight to consider things; but whenever impulse is required, he is of no use on earth.’

‘I don’t K-n-o-w t-h-a-t’ Harriette says she mimicked, teasing her lover herself.

Still Meyler had another cause to put on military dress…

‘Do you know that Lord Worcester is expected to bring home the next dispatches?’ said Fanny’ to Harriette one night while they sat at the opera.

Well there was a thing, Harriette’s ex-lover, and the man who Meyler had tried to separate her from, initially out of dislike for her, thinking her bad company, and then because he wanted her himself. And the man whose family Meyler was still a close friend of, to the point he regularly stayed with them minus Harriette. When Lord Worcester’s father the Duke, as well as Lord Worcester, had treated Harriette badly.

‘It is all the same to me,’ Harriette replied, ‘since he could be so selfish and vilely shabby as to acquaint his father I had written to him. I shall never respect or like him again.’

But Fanny said she had received another letter from him. ‘A friend of mine, says… he, ‘saw my sweet Harriette in Hyde Park, looking lovely. God bless her! What would I give, but to see her pass, at this moment, even though she refused to acknowledge me.’

Harriette was not at all interested in the young Marquis, and his father the Duke of Beaufort, they had tricked her out of the money she’d been owed from her relationship with Worcester. But the idea of him coming back to London made her feel vulnerable, and in need of Meyler’s company. Yet that night he was invited to the Duchess of Devonshire’s dress-ball. ‘the idea torments me wretchedly.’

The night of the party, Harriette is at the opera, ‘I turned many an anxious glance towards the Duchess of Beaufort’s box’ (where Meyler usually sat if he was not with Harriette) but he did not arrive at either box before the curtain came down. But then as Harriette left the box with her friends there was a voice from a dark corner, saying her name. (Ah, dark corners in an opera house, pure gold to a romance writer – imagine that!)

‘Good gracious, Mr Meyler, is it you?’ He was dressed in a military uniform, and hiding.

‘I am going to the Duke of Devonshire’s dress-ball, where there will be plenty more fools in the same ridiculous sort of costume; and where, I hope, I shall not feel so much ashamed of myself; but here, I cannot for the life of me summon courage to face my acquaintance, and so, here have I been stuck up, in the dark, for the last two hours, trying to get to your box; yet ashamed to venture to my own carriage, till everybody shall have left the house.’

The women laughed at him, ‘the poor little interesting hero! And yet he looked so handsome, and his red coat reflected such a fine glowing tint on his transparent, pale cheeks, that I was selfish and wicked enough to determine against his exhibiting himself at His Grace of Devonshire’s.’

Harriette wanted him to come home, and not go. But as usual what Meyler wanted was what occurred. He told her he would go, as it was the first time he’d been invited and everyone was going, but that he would come back to her as soon as he could.

Bundled into his carriage, with the coachman ordered to take her home, I imagine Harriette’s need to win a battle with an aristocrat and have some comfort over the treatment Lord Worcester had bestowed on her came to a head. She did not want to be his second choice, second best, and she knew he was going back to Grosvenor Square. ‘I had scarcely got into Piccadilly, when the fit of jealousy seized me with such overpowering violence, that I suddenly pulled the check-string, and reqested to be conducted to Meyler’s house.’

When she arrived there she walked right up to his dressing-room. ‘Meyler,’ said I, ‘I have given way, at all times, to your caprice and jealousy. This once, humour mine, and I shall feel most grateful. My health and spirits are low tonight. Pray cut the Duke, and return with me. It is the first time I ever interfered with your amusements, therefore do not refuse me.’

He would have refused her, he did. But. ‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘I shall not return home alone. I propose going to Lord Ebrington’s, and making love to him.’ That speech would have disgusted most men; but I knew Meyler.

‘I am sure you would not leave me for Ebrington…’

‘Upon my word I will, and this very night, if he is to be found and you refuse to return with me.’

‘Well then I must return with you,’ said poor Meyler.’ Finally persuaded.

But Harriette highlights how unusual such anger and blackmail were as a form of persuasion for a courtesan, by telling us that one of Meyler’s friends said her behaviour had been very wrong, bringing Meyler home by force… But it was the format of her relationship with Meyler – anger, control, jealousy and passion, was what they were about.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance stories.