Series: Scottish Lords and Ladies Series
Author: Cathleen Ross
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Release date: 13 April 2020
Genre: Regency
Pages: 192 52,000 words
Blurb:
Lord Aaron Lyle has one hell of a choice: a bankrupt dukedom, or marriage to some simpering society miss so his spendthrift father can get his hands on her huge dowry. He won’t do it. He has a reputation to maintain, and besides, he’d rather run naked through the streets of London than marry anyone at all. Surely, there must be a third option.
Then Lady Crystal Wilding walks into his life, a bluestocking, full of subversive thoughts, who hates the notion of marriage even more than he does. He is intrigued…and suddenly he has an idea. He invites the totally unsuitable lady home on the pretext of presenting her as a possible match…but in truth, Aaron has something far more pleasurable in mind. For her part, Lady Crystal has her own reasons for going along with his harebrained scheme.
Imagine their shock when his highly proper family loves her and starts planning the wedding. Good lord. Now what?
National Portrait Gallery D16053, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11261173
The Wedding Dress in Regency Times
We take it for granted that wedding dresses are usually white but this was not always so. When I wrote An Unsuitable Lady for a Lord set in Regency times, I needed to do my research. One of the best ways to do this was to look at what royal brides wore at their weddings.
Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales married Prince Leopold of Sax-Coburg-Saalfeld on the 2nd May 1816. There is some mystery around the wedding gown, as its final form which is kept at Kensington Palace in the Royal Dress collection, differs from the original description of the dress. The wedding gown in 1816 was described as silver made up of “silva lama on net” – the petticoat was white and silver with a matching train. The slip was embroidered with “shells and flowers”. The dress also had a manteaux of silver tissue lined with white satin, the borders embroidered to match the dress. (La Belle Assemblee (1 June 1816). Costing 10,000 pounds, it must have shimmered as Princess Charlotte walked down the aisle to marry her prince.
To give you an idea of what 10,000 pounds was in 1816, Princess Charlotte’s groom was granted 50,000 pounds per year as his income. My inflation converter converts 10,000 pounds to 896,254.61 pounds today.
After poor Charlotte died in childbirth, her family was so shocked, all her clothes were preserved. In its present form the dress is made up of a bodice, skirt, train and underskirt, though it is rarely put on display. If you compare one dress to the other, the second picture appears to have a different loop skirt in front of the dress. However one can get an sense of the color and the glitter of the material.
In An Unsuitable Lady for a Lord, I took great care to describe my heroine’s gown.
A month later, Aaron stood with his wife, Crystal, the Marchioness of Lyle, on the stairs in front of St. Giles’ Cathedral, proudly holding her hand and smiling as family and friends gathered around them. The marriage had been a simple affair, though Crystal looked ravishing in her silver threaded dress, a headdress of pearls and diamonds atop her head, and his personal gift of pearl and diamond earrings glittering in the morning light.
He was a married man, and he couldn’t be happier.
Don’t be surprised if you notice a similarity in the style of dress. After all, I’m very keen to get my history right.
An Unsuitable Lady for a Lord is on sale for .99 cents on June 12 only.Buy Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Unsuitable-Lady-Lord-Cathleen-Ross-ebook/dp/B085X9DBG6/
https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/an-unsuitable-lady-for-a-lord
Cathleen Ross is a quirky writer who lives on Sydney Harbour with her husband, daughter and very loved dog, Denzel. As an English teacher and editor, she has always surrounded herself with books. When she’s not giving psychic predictions for her family and friends, she’s writing romances where her heroines always get their man.
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