I have the privilege of being able to share Emily Greenwood's musings on Lord Byron.
EG: With the release this month of The Beautiful One
, the
first book in my Scandalous Sisters series, I’ve been thinking about some of
the memorably scandalous people from the Regency era (which seemed to have more
than its fair share!). But if I had to pick the person who comes to mind first
when I think of Regency scandals, it’s Lord Byron.
It helps that he was strikingly handsome, with dark hair
and lips that seem as though they could be either sensual or cruel. Perhaps,
with a father named Mad Jack and a mother who was mentally unstable, he was
destined for a life of excess. At ten he inherited the title and estates of his
great-uncle, and though the manor was crumbling, it was surely an improvement
on the cheap lodgings where he and his mother had been forced to live after the
loss of the family fortune and the death of Mad Jack.
At fifteen, Byron fell in love with an older, engaged
woman, who rejected him. He also formed strong attachments to a number of boys,
and later wrote of that time, “My school friendships were for me passions (for
I was always violent).” At university, he sank into heavy debt and had a number
of sexual affairs, likely with both sexes.
When, at twenty-four, he had his first major success with
the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
he became instantly famous and celebrated. He embarked on a very public affair
with Lady Caroline Lamb, the married daughter of an earl, who called him “mad,
bad, and dangerous to know.” Her outrageous behavior—she did things like
slashing her wrists in front of him at a ball— caused contemporaries to say she
was in the grips of “erotomania,” or insanity caused by romantic obsession.
Equally obsessed with her initially, Byron schemed to ruin her marriage, though
after a few months, he broke off the affair.
Plagued by heavy debts and the scandal of his affair with
Lady Caroline, Byron began to consider marriage, but he also seems to have
begun an affair with his half-sister, Augusta, who was married. Eventually, to quell
the rumors of their incestuous relationship and pay off his debts, he married
an heiress, Annabella Millbanke. They had a child together, but Byron’s
infidelities and his obsession with his half-sister continued, and Annabella
left him.
Byron then left England, never to return, and journeyed
to Italy. There he lived among other English expatriates like Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and continued an affair with a woman named Claire Clairmont, who gave
birth to Byron’s illegitimate daughter, Allegra. He also began work on his
great poem, Don Juan, and joined a
secret society called the Carbonari, whose goal was to free Italy from Austrian
rule.
Byron eventually to traveled to Greece, where he joined
the fight for Greek independence. He died of a fever in Greece at the age of
thirty-six.
So there you have it: an intense, too-brief life filled
with passion, adventure, scandal, and literary greatness. No wonder he’s
memorable!
About the Book
The Beautiful One
By Emily Greenwood
The Scandalous Sisters, Book 1
Historical Regency Romance
June 2, 2015
ISBN: 9781492613657
$7.99 paperback
“A SIZZLING ROMANCE THAT TOUCHES THE HEART.” —Sally
MacKenzie, USA Today bestselling
author
A PICTURE SAYS A
THOUSAND WORDS…
The ton is buzzing about The Beautiful One, a striking
figure in a scandalous book of nude sketches. Only two men know the true
identity of The Beautiful One, and they are scouring the countryside,
determined to find her.
BUT NOT THE MOST
IMPORTANT ONES
The unlikely center of the scandal, Anna Black is forced
to flee home as disaster looms. Her tomboy’s heart and impertinent tongue serve
her well when she meets the most brooding viscount ever to darken a drawing
room. Will Halifax, Viscount Grandville, has his reasons for pushing people
away, and when his tempestuous teenaged ward arrives on his doorstep, he
presses Anna to take on her care. As Anna begins to melt the Viscount’s frozen
heart, she knows the more she loves, the more she has to lose. For although
Will cares nothing for what makes Society titter, he has yet to see The
Beautiful One.
Rounding the edge of the wood at the back of
Stillwell, he was startled to see his ward standing about. She was looking up
at a tree in which, from the movement of its leaves and branches, some large
creature seemed to be thrashing. A crow?
As he drew nearer to the oblivious Lizzie, he
was almost certain he heard a woman’s voice coming from among the leaves.
Lizzie stepped closer to the tree and lifted her hands upward, and he saw that
on a thick branch perhaps six feet off the ground were perched two feet in
past-their-prime dark ankle boots, and above them he was treated to a view of
trim calves he could not regret. The surrounding leaves and branches mostly
obscured the rest of his recently hired governess. In the instant before Lizzie
became aware of Will, he saw that she held in her cupped hands a fluffy white
ball.
Lizzie turned and saw him, her mouth forming
into an “O” as a voice called from above, “Lizzie? I’m ready for the owlet.”
“Er,” said Lizzie, looking at him. In the
clear afternoon light he noticed that her eyes were a different color blue than
Ginger’s had been. But the shape was Ginger’s, as were the eyebrows. Not her
fault, but he couldn’t go the route of compassion. It would only muddy what had
to be. He looked past her and lifted a hand to rub his eyes.
“Miss Black,” he said, knowing he could not
avoid asking, “what on earth are you doing?”
There was a pause as she absorbed his arrival
and a shifting of the feet on the branch near his forehead as they drew
together, perhaps in an attempt at modesty.
“Ah, my lord,” she said from above him. “Good
afternoon. Lizzie and I are engaged in returning a fallen owlet to its nest. It
was her idea. She is very caring toward animals.”
He could feel Lizzie’s big blue eyes on him
though his own were still covered by his hand. He had no doubt as to whose idea
it had been to climb the tree. He hadn’t truly expected Anna Black to be a
typical sort of governess, had he?
“Come down at once.”
“If you will wait just a moment, my lord,”
she said breezily, “I shall be down directly. Lizzie, the owlet.”
Lizzie cleared her throat. “Here.”
He tapped her on the shoulder before she
could lift her arms farther. “Give me that creature, please.”
She looked uncertain, but she clearly didn’t
want to displease him, and she handed over the motionless owl. He took it
carefully from her and did not return her tentative smile. He could feel her
eagerness for him to acknowledge her, but he let it flow past him.
The leaves and branches above them shook as
Anna Black crouched down and extended her hand for the animal. Her bonnet, the
same horrible blue one, had fallen on its strings around her neck again, and
her hair, apparently loosened by her climb, curled crazily about her face as if
she were some unkempt urchin, accentuating her pert nose and reminding him of
her jack-in-the-box appearance from the coach.
Her pink lips pressed outward at the sight of
him; doubtless she was annoyed by his arrival, but her expression didn’t draw
an answering wave of annoyance from him. Instead, her lips were making him
wonder, unaccountably, what it might feel like to be kissed all over by pink
butterflies.
“The owlet, please,” she fairly ordered him.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Get down this instant
before you fall. I will return the owlet.”
“I am already positioned to do so. If you
will just give it to me, I can put it back and then receive your displeasure
properly on the ground.”
He grunted. Why did he keep finding himself
in out-of-his-control conversations with this maddening woman?
In his palm the owlet’s heart beat with a
rapid, stressed flutter. He reached up his hand, and she gently took the animal
and disappeared into the foliage.
From above came a few rustling noises, then
the angry screech of what had to be an adult owl and a yelp. Fearing Miss Black
would fall, he stepped forward to catch her, but at that same moment she jumped
neatly down, so that she landed right in front of him.
He grabbed her arms, a reflex to steady her.
She didn’t need his help, but their eyes locked, and for a moment he read
vulnerability there before it was replaced with the hard glint of independence.
She smelled like sunshine and crushed leaves, and he felt the slim softness of
her arms and his body’s yearning to hug her close.
She stepped away from him. It had all
happened in the space of a few moments.
But as he watched her brush some leaves from
her skirts with her head down, that vulnerability he’d glimpsed tugged at him.
Who was this woman? Where had she come from? She was clearly educated and
intelligent, and though she was too forthright and she dressed terribly, she
was not rough, merely unusual.
That life-on-the-edge-of-propriety quality
he’d observed in her the night before had suggested that she’d known some
hardship, or that she had some burden she might trade for money. And yet today,
in the company of his ward, she looked at ease, even if her eyes seemed to be
hiding something.
Buy
The Beautiful One here:
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******************
About the Author
Emily Greenwood
worked for a number of years as a writer, crafting newsletters and fundraising
brochures, but she far prefers writing playful love stories set in Regency
England, and she thinks romance novels are the chocolate of literature. A
Golden Heart finalist, she lives in Maryland with her husband and two
daughters.
Connect with Emily Greenwood:
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GIVEAWAY
3 copies of The Beautiful One by Emily Greenwood
probably comes first here, and is actually
the only author where I can’t think of an exception under the terms I’ve
described above. (I was dubious about 
—I may write shapeshifter books,
but I need all people in a relationship to at least look like attractive human
beings when it counts—but man, the book won me over so hard.) I love her prose
style, I love that she writes original-world fantasy without falling into
unrestrained bleakness and everyone being awful, and I love the variety and
agency of her heroines. Also, her later works make me want to take up things
like gardening or baking, despite my general ineptitude at anything domestic.
when I was eleven
and have been a fan ever since. Generally speaking, he does a great job at
portraying people’s everyday lives or surroundings in a way that actually makes
them interesting (and I speak as someone who cannot grasp talking to fellow
commuters or hanging out with co-workers), makes worlds very immersive whether
they’re a completely different universe or just the eighties, and balances
horror with hope very effectively. (The books I don’t buy or read are those
which hit the horror/bleakness angle too hard: Cell is too close to where I
live, and I heard enough about the ending of Revival to nope on out of there,
as the saying goes.)
