New Steamy Novella.

A Coaching Accident, a Regency New Year Fancy Dress Ball, and a Devilish Masquerade will ensue.

The cynical Melbourne, Earl Standish, has resigned himself to a bachelor existence in which a mistress is a damn sight safer than young chits with mother’s who are hell-bent on securing a title for their daughters. Stealing the cherry as sporting game has never been his gambit, until that is, a coaching accident, involving his sister and the Danby family, thrusts an irresistible young lady into his sightline. Conventions of hospitality must be afforded to the rescuers of his sister, and with a New Year ball imminent at Norton Priory, Standish is hopelessly smitten, but he has two brothers and the elder of the two is a renowned cherry stealer. Can the Earl overcome his misgivings and rejoin the Marriage Mart – and will the rakish brother let him steal away with Cecily Danby?

True to the traditional romance of Regency England coaches and horses feature greatly within Regency novels, and of course coaching accidents were not as uncommon as modern-day thinkers tend to assume. Some coaching accidents were fatal for passengers, especially those thrown overboard from up top,  Other coaching accidents, often in perilous weather conditions were almost as deadly. Thus a coaching accident features in this novella, and is the opening to a tale involving the original Cinderella fairy tale, though Cecy is no poor mistreated Cinderella. But the story reveals all, so I'll leave it there, except to say the coaching accident leads to a stay at Norton Priory, and that  is where Cecy learns who she really is, after seventeen years of believing she is someone else! 

      

So what does this once ecclesiastical building hold in store for Cecy?  


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Dispelling Myths - People didn't take Baths

Dispelling Myths - People didn't take Baths in 16th-17th century etc - in reference to Cleanliness is next to Godliness!

In actual fact, throughout history, people bathed more than historians declare - as can be seen within private journals circa 17th century. The reason they wore perfume and carried pomanders was to kill the stench of the streets where the saying Gardy Loo had purpose before the pitching of effluent from chamber pots to street gully. Hence the wealthy abandoned cities in warm weather, as often as they could and retreated to their country abodes. There's a huge myth the aristocracy abided to seasonal Parliamentary sittings - not those who didn't give a toss about politics, and that was the majority. Yes, they had town houses, in many cases owned streets of houses leased out to the middling merchant/trader classes, but in most cases they only attended specific events, and tended to swan about with a mistress rather than have their family with them. Even the court retired to the country - often. The upper merchant class owned their own vast properties, but of course the lower class were unable to take flight to fresh air unless they paid visit to relatives who were a bit farther distant, bearing in mind Chelsea was a village with open green fields as were other places of note such as Putney where there were windmills on Putney heath - Greater London didn't exist!

Casting stone built Roman baths aside, Wooden baths were little different than wooden baths of the 16-17th centuries resembling cut off ale barrels. Not the little brandy and port barrels, the biggies. Then there were tin (Roman baths) carried with armies for officers and tin baths carried on alongside wooden ones for centuries. Then came the Georgian era and the ever present copper pans, kettles, and yes, Baths. Note the differing wooden baths, the tin one used in the Poldark series, and the Georgian copper. 

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