An Unexpected Earl (Lords of the Armory #2) - Anna Harrington Page 0,118
to prove not just adultery but also extreme cruelty. Not an easy task considering that husbands were legally entitled to beat their wives so long as it was done in moderation with the intent to correct their misbehavior. Further, most divorced women had to surrender all their property, all their social standing, and all their rights to their children. Obtaining an annulment was even more difficult and damning. Annulment was allowed only in cases of fraud, incompetence (in which either party was underage and married without the guardian’s consent, or proven legally insane), or impotence; nonconsummation was not grounds for annulment. Only in 1937 were women allowed to divorce on grounds of abandonment, cruelty, and incurable insanity.
Shooting the bridge! Pearce and Amelia order the waterman to “shoot the bridge” in order to escape. That meant running the boat through the dangerously swirling waters of the Thames as it flowed beneath old London Bridge. Over the years, as the bridge grew in size, the narrow arches where the river flowed between the stone foundations—known as starlings—became narrower and fewer. The result: the river sped beneath the bridge at an astonishing rate, resulting in life-threatening rapids and a drop in water level of at least six feet. Only the brave or the very foolish attempted to guide a boat through the bridge during a flood or high tide; many drowned. Although in 1751 its two center arches were replaced by a wider, single span to make the bridge more navigable, paintings after this change still show whitewater churning around the starlings. A new bridge opened in 1831. No one knows exactly when watermen stopped shooting the bridge. During my research, none of the historians I contacted were able to provide a definitive answer, including the Museum of London, except to say that it had ended by 1832 when the old bridge was demolished. So at the slight risk of historical inaccuracy, I let Pearce and Amelia shoot the bridge. After all, I’ve never been able to resist a really good chase scene.
As many of you might have guessed, Amelia’s sham marriage at the hand of her brother was inspired by Charles Dickens’s novel, Great Expectations. In the Dickens book, Miss Havisham’s brother tortures her for inheriting the family fortune by arranging for a man to court her, propose to her, and jilt her, destroying her life to secure his revenge. I took that idea a step further by having Frederick Howard let Amelia believe she was lawfully married and then abandoned in order to get his hands on her money. (In fact, Amelia was named after the Dickensian version of Miss Havisham.)
And finally, the Hellfire club. In the eighteenth century, it became fashionable for gentlemen to establish Hellfire clubs where men of “quality” could partake in immoral acts. The one in this book was based on the club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, the most infamous of the Hellfire clubs. With a motto of Fais ce que tu voudras (“Do what thou wilt”), the club played on religious and pagan themes, with meetings held in Medmenham Abbey, beneath which ran a series of caves carved out for meetings and decorated with mythological themes, phallic images, and other sexual symbols. The members addressed each other as brothers and the leader as the abbot, and during meetings, members wore ritual clothing—white trousers, jacket, and cap—while the abbot wore red. Prostitutes, referred to as nuns, were often present. Rumors claimed that the club sacrificed to Bacchus, Venus, and Dionysus, and meetings often included mock rituals of a pornographic nature, drinking, banqueting, and wenching.
I hope you enjoyed this historical glimpse into Regency England as much as you enjoyed spending time with Pearce and Amelia. Happy reading!
About the Author
Anna Harrington is an award-winning author of Regency romance. She writes spicy historicals with alpha heroes and independent heroines, layers of emotion, and lots of sizzle. Anna was nominated for a RITA in 2017 for her title How I Married a Marquess, and her debut, Dukes Are Forever, won the 2016 Maggie Award for Best Historical Romance. A lover of all things chocolate and coffee, when she’s not hard at work writing her next book or planning her next series, Anna loves to fly airplanes, go ballroom dancing, or tend her roses. She is a terrible cook who hopes to one day use her oven for something other than shoe storage.
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