The Duke's Daughter - Guest poster Sasha Cottman

THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER is the third in Sasha Cottman's Regency 'Duke of Strathmore' series. It is a challenge for any author to find something new and different about this period, which is why I particularly like Sasha's stories.

The stories are about real people (admittedly of 'the ton') - the heroes and heroines are of the right age to be courting couples of this period and most importantly, for me anyway, they come from families who love them. To read most regencies you would think the characters were immaculate conceptions, untramelled by inconvenient parents or siblings.  In Sasha's books, there are mothers and fathers who may not always agree with the way their offsring are erring and are not above teaching them the occasional life lesson, but at the end of the story you are left with the feeling that Christmas at the Duke of Strathmore's estates would be rowdy, happy, family times.

This story revolves around the Strathmore daughter, Lucy, sister to the heroes of Book 1 and 2.  We have met Lucy in the preceding two stories (LETTER FROM A RAKE and AN UNSUITABLE MATCH) and we are familiar with her interfering ways. With both her errant brothers happily settled it is Lucy's turn to find love...

THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER

When handsome army officer Avery Fox unexpectedly inherits a fortune, he instantly becomes one of the season's most eligible bachelors. More accustomed to the battlefield, he has no patience with the naive debutantes who fill the ballrooms of London.

Honest and impetuous Lady Lucy Radley is a breath of fresh air, guiding him through the season and helping him to avoid any traps. So when Avery is left with little option but to marry Lucy, he can't help but feel he's been manipulated. Nor can he shake the feeling that a duke's daughter should be out of his reach.

From the wildly beautiful Scottish Highlands to the elegant soirees of Paris, Avery and Lucy go on a journey that is full of surprises for them both.  But will their feelings for each other be strong enough to overcome the circumstances of their marriage and survive the ghosts of Avery's past?

Read an excerpt from THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER....

Chapter One

By every measure of her own behaviour, Lady Lucy Radley knew this was the worst.

'You reckless fool,' she muttered under her breath as she headed back inside and into the grand ballroom.

The room was a crush of London's social elite. Every few steps she had to stop and make small talk with friends or acquaintances. A comment here and there about someone's gown or promising a social call made for slow going.

 Finally she spied her cousin, Eve. She fixed a smile to her face as Eve approached.

'Where have you been, Lucy? I've been searching everywhere for you.'

'I was just outside admiring the flowers on the terrace.'

Eve frowned, but the lie held.

Another night, another ball in one of London's high-society homes. In one respect Lucy would be happy when the London social season ended in a few weeks; then she would be free to travel to her family home in Scotland and go tramping across the valleys and mountain paths, the chill wind ruffling her hair.

She puffed out her cheeks. With the impending close of the season came an overwhelming sense of failure. Her two older brothers, David and Alex, had taken wives. Perfect, love-filled unions with delightful girls, each of whom Lucy was happy to now call sister.

Her newest sister-in-law, Earl Langham's daughter Clarice, was already in a delicate condition, and Lucy suspected it was only a matter of time before her brother Alex and his wife Millie shared some good news.

For herself, this season had been an unmitigated disaster on the husband-hunting front. The pickings were slim at best. Having refused both an earl and a viscount the previous season, she suspected other suitable gentlemen now viewed her as too fussy. No gentleman worth his boots wanted a difficult wife. Only the usual group of fortune-hunters, intent on getting their hands on her substantial dowry, were lining up at this stage of the season to ask her to dance. Maintaining her pride as the daughter of a duke, she refused them all.

Somewhere in the collective gentry of England there must be a man worthy of her love. She just had to find him.

What a mess.

'You are keeping something from me,' Eve said, poking a finger gently into Lucy's arm.

Lucy shook her head. 'It's nothing. I suspect I am suffering from a touch of ennui. These balls all begin to look the same after a while. All the same people, sharing the same gossip.'

'Oh dear, and I thought I was having a bad day,' Eve replied.

'Sorry, I was being selfish. You are the one who needs a friend to cheer her up,' Lucy replied. She kissed her cousin gently on the cheek.

Eve's brother William had left London earlier that day to return to his home in Paris, and she knew her cousin was taking his departure hard.

'Yes, well, I knew I could sit at home and cry, or I could put on a happy face and try to find something to smile about,' Eve replied.

Eve's father had tried without success to convince his son to return permanently to England. With the war now over and Napoleon toppled from power, everyone expected William Saunders to come home immediately, but it had taken two years for him to make the journey back to London.

'Perhaps once he gets back to France and starts to miss us all again, he shall have a change of heart,' Lucy said.

'One can only hope. Now, let's go and find a nice quiet spot and you can tell me what you were really doing out in the garden. Charles Ashton came in the door not a minute before you, and he had a face like thunder. As I happened to see the two of you head out into the garden at the same time a little while ago, I doubt Charles' foul temper was because he found the flowers not to his liking,' Eve replied.

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About Sasha Cottman...

Sasha Cottman’s debut novel was published in 2013. Letter from a Rake, was a Ruby finalist in 2014 and won the Book Junkies Choice Award in 2014.

Her books are centred on the theme of love, honour and family. Her current book series, The Duke of Strathmore, covers the story of the love lives of a group of siblings and their cousins.

Sasha’s second novel An Unsuitable Match, was a four time ARRA finalist in 2015. The third book in the Duke of Strathmore series, The Duke’s Daughter, was released in August 2015.

Sasha divides her time between the city of Melbourne, Australia and her family beach retreat at Torquay. She and her family have discovered all the places the family cat disappears to whenever it realises they are about to head home on a Sunday night.

Before accidentally enrolling in a course for romance writers a number of years ago, she had always had a love of history. While her writing career may appear at odds with her professional career as a finance executive, it means she can spot a poorly written company board report at twenty feet.

A self-confessed ‘hopeless’ cook, she writes a blog, In the Regency Kitchen, where she recreates recipes from the Regency/Georgian era. Her family have so far managed to survive being the test subjects of her culinary efforts.

The little time she has left during the week and weekends is spent trying to beat her husband at Fitbit challenges and trying to find where the pair to that sock really went.

Sasha is published by Destiny Romance a digital imprint of Penguin Random House.

Connect with Sasha at... http://www.sashacottman.com, Twitter and Facebook 

For her In the Regency Kitchen Blog where she attempts to recreate Regency Recipes with mixed success http://www.sashacottman.com  

MIddle Class Women in Georgian Times - Guest Elyse Huntington

And it's Friday! And another chilly week in Melbourne (Australia) - there has even been snow in Queensland (unheard of!).

To warm our hearts I have debut Australian author Elyse Huntington whose first book, MY DARK DUKE is the perfect antidote to a chilly night. Hailing from Borneo, Elyse joins the ranks of 'lawyers who write romance' (of which I am an alumni member!). The world seems to expect lawyers to write crime novels but romance is a wonderful escape from the cut and thrust of the legal world and I'm with her! Elyse has always had a fascination with Dukes and any book with Duke on the cover was an immediate draw card. Meet Elyse at her website, Facebook and Goodreads

MY DARK DUKE is set in Georgian rather than Regency times and Elyse's researches have taken her into some interesting areas. Today she focuses on the lives of middle class women of the 18th century. Welcome... Elyse!

Middle-class Women in 18^th century England

Despite having written my first novel My Dark Duke which is set in England in 1770, I find that I am still discovering new information about 18^th century England. Of course, this is hardly surprising. There are so many aspects of this century that information about it would encompass many encyclopedic volumes. There’s the politics, fashion, living conditions, architecture, medicine and social conventions, to name just a few. Today, though, I have chosen to focus on women who are considered to belong to the middle class in the Georgian era.

Childbirth was dangerous and infant mortality was high. Infants who progressed to solid food were fortunate to survive diseases such as infantile diarrhoea , which was likely caused by the preparation of food in unhygenic kitchens, from dirty bread, or from water or milk infested with bacteria. Babies who had teething problems might have their gums lanced with a sharp instrument. And if you think this sounded terrible, there is even advice that strong children should be bled from the jugular to help with teething!

Once the girls were older, they would attend day schools or boarding schools where they learnt subjects such as English, French, arithmetic, geography, needlework and dancing. Girls in more affluent households had governesses and visiting tutors and may be given lessons in languages such as Latin or Italian, and be taught how to play different musical instruments. It’s likely that part of the motive for their education, at least at some schools, was to assist them in obtaining husbands.

When it came to marriage, women found husbands from either working with them (such as domestic servants) or answering lonely-heart ads, some of which were hilariously prescriptive. I was surprised to find out that the average age of marriage was around 26 or so. And here I had thought ‘young’ ladies of this age were very much on-the-shelf.

This leads to the next interesting fact that an average family was estimated to have 2.5 children, so really, no bigger than the families you meet today. This is partially explained by the fact that the women were no longer at their most fertile by the time they married in their mid-twenties. There was also the adherence to the church’s calendar, which meant couples abstained from intercourse during Lent, Sundays and fasting days. This, in addition to menstruation and long periods of breast-feeding which could inhibit ovulation, meant that babies were not conceived very often.

The women had to supervise their servants to ensure the smooth running of their household. They also did their own food shopping at the markets (or street vendors) if they didn’t have a cook or a housekeeper, or were between cooks. Cooking in those days was very labour intensive. The cook had to ensure that the coal-fuelled fire was the perfect temperature for a roast pig or a cake, she had to maintain her cooking utensils and she had to preserve as much as she could to prevent waste. Thankfully, there were also establishments where you could buy ready-made dishes to eat in or take away, if you were to be in one of those highly inconvenient between-cooks periods.

I do admit that my preference is to write about the wealthy men and women in the aristocracy. I did find reading about this particular class of women to be quite entertaining. Who knows, one day I might even write about a duke who, against his better judgment, falls in love with such a female. She will be around 25, well-educated, independent and of course, be very impudent!

I leave you with this humorous anecdote of a marriage ceremony taken from Dr. Johnson’s London by Liza Picard which includes quotes from the Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1964. I can easily picture a heroine of mine doing exactly this!

When asked whether she would ‘take this man to be her wedded husband’, one woman said, ‘No and I have often told him so’. The parson asked the obvious question – why was she there?  ‘Only to tell you, before him, that I would not marry him’, and she left the church, and her swain.

MY DARK DUKE

Since his notorious wife died in mysterious circumstances, rumours about James, the handsome Duke of Trent, have scandalized society. Now, he must marry again – but finding an eligible woman willing to overlook his past won't be easy.

Defiantly single, Lady Alethea Sinclair has already turned down six offers of marriage. She prefers living on her own terms and refuses to answer to any man. Yet when Alethea meets the seductive and enigmatic Duke she finds herself strangely drawn to him.

Intrigued by Alethea's defiance of society's expectations, James is instantly taken with the willful beauty and soon they are enjoying a playful flirtation. And when circumstances force them into a comprising situation, he does the honourable thing and marries her.

But adjusting to the constraints of marriage doesn't come easily to the rebellious Alethea and, despite their growing feelings for each other, the Duke's troubled past keeps getting in the way. Can they learn to trust each other and give love a chance before it's too late?

A steamy Georgian romance about desire, the importance of staying true to yourself and the power of the past to cast a shadow on the present.

There is a bonus epilogue for My Dark Duke at her website so please do visit. And if you sign up for her mailing list, you will have exclusive access to a free short story when it becomes available. Click HERE

MY DARK DUKE is available at all reputable ebook stores...