Risky Regencies

Bound By A Scandalous Secret

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

Bound By A Scandalous Secret, my latest book and the third book in the Scandalous Summerfields, is released today!

Here’s the back cover blurb:

A most shocking betrothal!
The pleasure-seeking Marquess of Rossdale has little interest in his birthright and even less in finding a bride. So he comes up with the perfect plan to survive the Season unscathed—a fake engagement to a most unsuitable girl!
Outspoken Genna, the youngest of the scandalous Summerfields, has no wish to marry, either. So agreeing to be Ross’s temporary fiancée will grant her freedom for a little longer. But with every kiss, both Ross and Genna must face up to what they really desire… a true match!
The Scandalous Summerfields–Disgrace is their middle name.

Genna’s story begins in the Christmas season of 1815 and ends at Christmas 1816. The gifts Genna and Ross share on that first Christmas are meaningful, but not valuable.

When I strive to give gifts, I always hope to make them meaningful, but I’m rarely successful, so I was pleased I could make Genna and Ross’s gifts so.

You know, books make great Christmas gifts. Feel free to give a friend or relative Bound By A Scandalous Secret. Or treat yourself!

In many ways, this book is about giving and expecting nothing in return. That’s pretty much the essence of love, isn’t it?

You can purchase the paperback of Bound By A Scandalous Secret at bookstores and online vendors. Book Depository has the book on discount!

(Prefer the ebook? The ebook will be released December 1)

Posted in Diane Gaston, Risky Book Talk, Risky Regencies | Tagged Diane Gaston, Harlequin Historical, Mills and Boon | 2 Replies

A Regency Christmas in Bound By A Scandalous Secret

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

Bound By A Scandalous Secret, available in paperback and ebook, begins and ends in the Christmas season. I’ve written about Christmas before in A Twelfth Night Tale (my only Christmas novella, still available in the Governess Brides Bundle), but I had to go back and do the research about Christmas in the Regency all over again.

Many familiar Christmas traditions–decorating Christmas trees, singing Silent Night, waiting for Santa Claus–did not emerge until the later Victorian times, but a Regency Christmas did have other traditions still celebrated today.

Regency families decorated their houses with holly and ivy and evergreens of fir and pine. Mistletoe was hung and the tradition of a gentleman and lady kissing beneath it would have been part of a Regency Christmas. With each kiss the gentleman plucked a berry from the mistletoe. When the berries were gone, so were the kisses. In the book I’m working on now (more on that in later months) the hero and heroine decorate his house. I’m writing those scenes today!

Christmas was mainly a religious holiday during the Regency. Gifts were exchanged, church attended, and guests might be invited to Christmas dinner, like Ross and Dell were invited to Lord Tinmore’s for Christmas dinner in Bound By A Scandalous Night.

At Christmas dinner a goose or turkey would be served. A Regency household would also serve a Christmas pudding that was made on Stir Up Sunday, the Sunday before Advent, and served on Christmas day. The pudding was a porridge of sugar, raisins, currants, prunes, and wine that was “stirred up” and boiled together in a pudding cloth.

Some of the traditions of the Regency holiday season had their origins in ancient winter celebrations. First-Footing customs of New Year’s Day may have originated in ancient Greece. In order to have good fortune all the year, an uninvited stranger–a dark man in some areas of the UK but the hair color could vary by region–should be the first to cross the threshold on New Years Day. He might carry symbolic gifts- salt (or a coin) for wealth; coal for warmth, a match for kindling, and bread for food. The householder might offer him food and drink. In some villages one tall, dark, and handsome fellow was selected to visit all the houses, receiving food and drink at each one. I mentioned this custom in A Twelfth Night Tale.

Twelfth Night, the eve of the Epiphany, was even more of a time for revelry than Christmas day during the Regency. It was a time to drink wassail (ale or wine spiced with roasted apples and sugar) and play games. A bean was buried in a cake and whoever found it was designated the Lord of Misrule who presided over all the Twelfth Night festivities, which might include theatricals or singing, although many of our most popular Christmas Carols were translated from German later in Victorian times. When Twelfth Night was over, the house decorations were removed and the season is over.

Christmas cards were invented by Sir Henry Cole, who, as an Assistant Keeper of what is now the Post Office in the UK, started the Penny Post, the first postal service that ordinary people could afford. He and an artist friend designed a Christmas card that would encourage people to use the Penny Post. Here’s an example of a Victorian Christmas Card.

It is rather fun to be writing Christmas scenes in this Christmas season. And to have a book out at this time of year where Christmas plays a part. Of course, though my characters are decorating at this very moment. I’ve not done anything yet!

Have you decorated for the holidays yet? Have you sent any Christmas cards?

Posted in Diane Gaston, Holidays | Tagged Christmas, Diane Gaston, Regency Christmas | 3 Replies

Visiting the Elgin Marbles

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

In Bound By A Scandalous Secret, (December, 2016), my hero, Ross, surprises aspiring artist heroine, Genna, with a special visit to view the Elgin Marbles, which (to the best of my research abilities) were housed in a shed behind Burlington House in 1816, when my story takes place.

The Elgin Marbles are Classical Greek marble sculptures that once decorated the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. Originally the Earl of Elgin had obtained a permit from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire who then ruled Greece to make casts of the sculptures, but he noticed that the marbles were being burned for lime to use in other buildings. He decided to rescue them and send them to England. At the time, his acquisition of the marbles was met with mixed support. Some, like Lord Byron, were appalled at their removal. He wrote about it in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch’d thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

1822 Engraving

Elgin suffered financial reversals and hoped to sell the marbles to the British Government, who eventually exonerated him from acquiring the sculptures illegally. Parliament purchased the marbles in 1816 but at a much lower cost than Elgin had desired. After the purchase, the marbles were housed in the shed behind Burlington House, which held the collections of the British Museum.

Because my hero Ross is the heir to a dukedom, he was able to arrange a private viewing for Genna. Here’s a snippet of that scene:

Huge slabs of marble lined the sides of the shed. Scattered around were ghostly figures. Headless. Armless. Standing. Reclining.
Genna stepped inside reverently. “Oh, Ross!”
She walked along the perimeter where the long slabs of marble that used to decorate the frieze of the Parthenon. The sculpted figures depicted all sorts of figures, men on horseback, on foot or racing chariots, women carrying items, for sacrifice to the gods, perhaps? Everything seemed in motion. Rearing horses, figures interacting, no two the same.
“It must tell a story,” Genna said. “I wish I knew what it was.” She dared to touch the sculpture, almost surprised the figures were not as warm as flesh they were so realistic.
“Here is a Centaur fighting a Lapith,” he said.
It was one segment, not a part of the long procession of figures that had been part of the frieze. Had there been more Centaurs? Did they tell a different story?

Lapith and Centaur

The marbles are now in a special room in the British Museum where I’ve been lucky enough to view them three times. They are massive and impressive!

Diane and pal Julie – photo taken by Risky, Amanda McCabe

The debate continues as to whether the UK should return the marbles to Greece. All I know is that the British Museum has taken excellent care of them and that there is no guarantee that they would even exist if Elgin had not seen to their preservation.

What do you think? Should the marbles go back to Greece or stay in the British Museum?

By the way, the last book in my Scandalous Summerfields series, Bound By Their Secret Passion, now has a cover and is available for preorder. It will be released in paperback March 21, in ebook, April 1.

Posted in Diane Gaston, Risky Regencies | Tagged Diane Gaston | 2 Replies

The Argyll Rooms

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

When I was writing Bound By Their Secret Passion, the final book in the Scandalous Summerfields series, I needed to invent a masquerade that would attract the most scandalous of London’s aristocracy and the Cyprian world. I decided to place the ball in the Argyll Rooms. The year is 1818.

The Argyll Rooms were originally at the corner of King Street and Little Argyll Street in what was once the north wing of the mansion of the Duke of Argyll, partially demolished to build Little Argyll Street. It opened as the Argyll Rooms in 1806, hosting various entertainments such as music, dancing, burlettas, and dramatic performances, including readings by the famous Sarah Siddons. And, of course, the infamous Cyprian’s Ball.

In 1818, though, the old Argyll Rooms were to be demolished to make way for New Street, which would eventually be called Regent Street. Here’s the map showing the eventual path of Regent Street.

So I invented a last Masquerade Ball in the old Argyll Rooms. Luckily I found a detailed description of the rooms in British History Online.

The Rooms were ‘fitted up in a style of great magnificence. Corinthian pillars, illuminated by gilt lamps, grace the entrance and the lobbies. The ground-floor consists of three very extensive rooms, the first of which is hung with scarlet drapery. The drapery of the second is a rich salmon colour, lined with pea-green. The third, though inferior to the others, is nevertheless, finished in a capital style; and the whole is most brilliantly lighted up.

‘The grand saloon is of an oblong form, with elliptical terminations, and is used for the purpose of theatrical representations; and also for masquerades and balls. Above the entrance, on each side, are three tiers of boxes, amounting in the whole to twenty-four. The first range above the ground tier is ornamented with elegant antique bas-reliefs in bronze; the upper tier is of ethereal blue, decorated with scrolls in stone colour, and both are enclosed with scrolls in rich gold mouldings. Over each box is a beautiful circular bronze chandelier, with cut-glass pendants. The draperies are of scarlet; and the supporters between the boxes represent the Roman ox, and Fasces, in bronze and gold.

‘At the opposite end are the orchestra and stage, over which is the following appropriate motto: “Sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ”. The walls of the middle space, of an ample size, are superbly ornamented with ranges of Corinthian pillars, representing porphyry with gold capitals. On the intermediate pannels, which are surrounded with borders of blue and gold, are basreliefs, in stone colour, as large as life, the subjects of which are admirably adapted to the purposes for which they are placed there….’

I was able to sprinkle in this description as my characters moved from room to room at the masquerade ball, eventually winding up in one of those very private boxes.

Here’s how my imagined masquerade ball might have appeared, although this print is from 1825 when the new Argyll Rooms would have been opened:

Theodore Lane, George Hunt – The British Museum

Bound By Their Secret Passion will be released in paperback on March 22 and as an ebook on April 1. You can get a sneak peek here.

Posted in Diane Gaston, History, Regency, Research | Tagged Argyll Rooms, Bound By Their Secret Passion, Cyprian's Ball, Diane Gaston, Masquerade Ball, Regent Street | Leave a reply

New Release! Bound By Their Secret Passion

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

Bound By Their Secret Passion is now in bookstores, with online vendors, and in ebook version.

This is the last book in my Scandalous Summerfields series–Lorene’s story. Here is the back cover blurb:

A forbidden attraction… A hidden desire!

Years ago, penniless Lorene Summerfield wed for duty, giving her siblings the chance to marry for love. But now the generous-hearted countess finds herself widowed…and the man she’s loved in silence for years is falsely accused of her husband’s murder!

Although he closed his heart to love long ago, the Earl of Penford has always found Lorene irresistible. Their newly ignited passion may be scandalous, but now he’ll stop at nothing to clear his name and win Lorene’s hand!

Book 4 of The Scandalous Summerfields—
Disgrace is their middle name!

Here are what some readers/reviewers said about Bound By Their Secret Passion:

BOUND BY THEIR SECRET PASSION is an emotional romance packed with heartache yet also hopeful longing.
With this being the last book in the series, I was delighted to see all the past couples featured, thus letting me get caught up with their current lives. There are also plenty of other secondary characters in the story that I came to know well, as their personalities were brought to life with colorful behavior. The author inserted historical facts into quite a few scenes, and I enjoyed these moments of reality.
—A. Richard, Amazon reviewer

Diane as always never ever disappoints, went through every emotion and was fully immersed into the book and it was a complete honour to read it, fell in love with the hero, usually in historical romance its the Hero’s you want to shout honour be damned listen to your heart first, utterly adore also the epilogue, and seriously want to slap the ever interfering Duchess but you need characters to love and hate to balance an amazing book Diane definitely does this, thank you Diane and Mills and Boon for letting be an insider reader member so I could read and review this amazing story
–GT, Goodreads

I have followed the fortunes of the Scandalous Summerfields as each of them found happiness. Each of the four books in the series has been immensely satisfying, and the final one, “Bound by their Secret Passion”, was no exception. It managed to tie up the loose ends and round off the series clearly, while also being a complete story in itself. And what a story! It had everything: intrigue, extortion, star crossed lovers and a scandal.
–HM, Goodreads

Read all the Goodreads reviews.

I’m a little sorry to say goodbye to all the Summerfields. I grew very fond of them and was happy to give each of them their happily ever after. I do, however, have a new book to be released by Harlequin Historical. I don’t know when yet, but more on that as soon as I know.

Meanwhile, I need to start another book. I’m open to all suggestions of what sort of Regency Historical I should write. A governess story? A story with some suspense? Heroes and heroines who are not aristocracy? Or would you like to see me write about a duke? How about more soldiers? How about another road story? Or popular themes like secret baby, a fairtale theme, reunion story, marriage of convenience?

Let me know!

Bound By Their Secret Passion can be purchased at any of these sites.

Posted in Diane Gaston, Risky Regencies | Tagged Diane Gaston | 5 Replies