SEX AND THE SINGLE GEORGIAN
I write traditional romances set in Great Britain in the 1740s. Not sweet, not wholesome, just…no explicit sex. Yearning hearts, family conflict, kisses, mild bad language, rogues, a seasoning of underhanded doings, shots fired, and a dollop of crime. But you will not find half-dressed persons in passionate embraces on the covers or in the pages.
However, I doubt there was as much sex as depicted in the majority of steamy historical romances. Logistics made sexual encounters problematic for unmarried members of the aristocracy and gentry. Men could visit prostitutes but a young lady would almost certainly be living with relatives. She might be chaperoned outside the house. How would she manage to be alone with a man someplace where a sexual encounter would be possible?
Farm laborers and their sweethearts did have access to some privacy. They seldom wed until they had saved enough money to set up their household and the countryside provided places they could be alone. If a baby resulted, there may have been little fuss over its irregular birth if marriage eventually followed.
Undoubtedly there was illicit sex (apothecaries’ manuals of the time contain far more remedies for “bringing on the courses” than for encouraging conception) but I suspect it was more common among married women and widows than virgins. The wife of Edward Harley, the fifth Earl of Oxford, was so notoriously unfaithful that the children were referred to as “the Harleian Miscellany”. Eighteenth century wit was not always kind. But as I’m discussing single Georgians here, let us draw a veil over the activities of the married and widowed.
Blurb:
What can you look forward to when your only relatives call you ugly, unbalanced, and a scandal? What would you do if your only friend was threatened? Dependent on her half brother, the Earl of Lamburne, Adelaide knows. She wants to escape.
Gervase Ducane, invited to Lamburne’s home to court his daughter, is torn. He needs to marry well and soon but not this spiteful chit. Should he buy a commission instead? Seek a wealthy merchant’s daughter? As a marquess’s brother, he has at least a noble connection to offer an heiress apart from his good manners. And why is he only now meeting the earl’s delightful half sister?
Ordered to stay away from the house party, Adelaide rebels. She will make her unwelcome, embarrassing presence known to avenge herself and her pet. Sometimes when you least expect it, magic happens.
Bio:
athleen Buckley has loved writing ever since she learned to read. After a career which included light bookkeeping, working as a paralegal, and a stint as a security officer, she began to write as a second career, rather than as a hobby. Her first historical romance was penned (well, word processed) after re-reading Georgette Heyer’s Georgian/Regency romances and realizing that Ms. Heyer would never be able to write another, having died some forty years earlier. She is now the author of eight Georgian romances: An Unsuitable Duchess, Most Secret, Captain Easterday’s Bargain, A Masked Earl, A Duke’s Daughter, Portia and the Merchant of London, A Westminster Wedding, and A Peculiar Enchantment. While a ninth is in production she is writing the tenth.
Warning: no bodices are ripped in her romances, which might be described as “powder & patch & peril” rather than Jane Austen drawing room. They contain no explicit sex, but do contain the occasional den of vice and mild bad language, as the situations in which her characters find themselves sometimes call for an oath a little stronger than “Zounds!”
Captain Easterday’s Bargain was an Oklahoma Romance Writers of America IDA 2019 finalist, Historical Fiction category.
Most Secret was an Oklahoma Romance Writers of America IDA 2018 finalist, Historical Fiction category, and a 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist, Romance category.
Amazon author page link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B072J2GPZ3/about