Kedleston is simply beautiful. It’s designed by Robert Adam, so fits perfectly into the type of house a duke would have had built, with the kind of grandeur and extensive grounds such an influential and aristocratic family would have. The grounds were important, since we needed various trysting places out of the house so many of the relationships were scandalous, but we also wanted to have a village, a church, schools, an inn and shops, in order to give readers a whole world and a real sense of community, not just of the family.
The Dower House is taken from Luckington Court, which was used for the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. (http://www.luckingtoncourt.co.uk/index.html)
Again, because this featured across several books, we wanted somewhere with a real reference point, but we also wanted a building which was a contrast to Castonbury Park and yet at the same time in a similar Palladian style.
In The Lady Who Broke the Rules I also feature Maer Hall, which at the time was home to Josiah Wedgwood—son of the famous potter and head of the Wedgwood Company in 1816.
Where did you get the inspiration for Kate and Virgil?
I wanted to come up with a relationship that was outrageously scandalous, in line with the theme of social change and upheaval which we agreed would run through Castonbury Park as a series, so a freed black slave seemed like a brilliant starting point. Obviously any man who could survive the horrors of slavery and succeed on his own terms as Virgil does would have to be unbelievably strong-willed and he’d also, it seemed to me, have to have a motivation for his relentless drive to succeed which was not simply material. Virgil, I decided, would be the type of man who’d want to help others have what he’d had to fight so hard to get. Yet at the same time I thought a man like that would surely have deep-seated issues, coming from such a traumatic background. And that led me to the idea that, while Virgil was freed, he was at the same time a slave to his past.
Which led me to Kate… To be the perfect match for Virgil, my heroine had to be a very strong-willed, independent woman, willing to stand up for her beliefs and to stand apart from a society which would completely disown her once she made her choice. So she had to be a woman who was already in a sense an ‘outsider’—or at least a rebel, a thinker and a woman with a social conscience too. Like Virgil, Kate is a righter of wrongs—a woman who sees imbalance and wants to correct it. And the reason Kate sees imbalance so clearly is that she too has suffered injustice and is using philanthropy to avoid dealing with some deep-seated personal issues. Both are still bound by the chains of her past.
What are you researching for your forthcoming novel?
Not for my current book, but I am reading up on the Crimean War at present and thinking about writing something which is set in and around the aftermath of this, when the social upheaval which began after the end of the Napoleonic Wars had really started to set in.
What would you most like to have been doing in Regency times?
I love to travel and I’d love to think that, despite the social and possibly financial constraints which the Regency would place on me, I would have boldly gone where no woman had gone before. I’d have been an intrepid explorer like Lady Hester Stanhope, who went off to Arabia and never came back and whom I researched for my Princes of the Desert series.
Author Note
The history of slavery has fascinated me. It’s a complex, emotive and often controversial subject and no one except those who experienced it can know what it was really like. In writing this book I did a lot of research, but ultimately what I’ve written is a personal take which may or may not resemble ‘reality’. What I want to share with you are some of my reasons for choosing to take on the challenge of making a freed slave a romantic hero in the first place.
The Lady Who Broke the Rules is set in 1816. In the United States the trade of slaves was abolished in the north in 1804, after which the manumission of slaves in those states gathered momentum. In the South, however, where cotton was in increasing demand (paradoxically thanks to the north’s industrialisation of textile manufacture), slaves were a hugely important part of the economy and resistance to abolition was significant.
Virgil, my hero, was born into slavery in the South and freed in the north. He was one of the fortunate ones who came to true eminence and used his wealth to give others the chances he had had to make for himself. Though in reality this kind of success was rare, it was not unheard of. Robert Purvis is just one example of the black philanthropists from whom I took inspiration for Virgil, but his entrepreneurial side is an amalgamation of a whole number of black men and women who flourished in nineteenth-century Boston, renting out real estate, setting up restaurants and beauty parlours, making shoes and clothes for the mass market, taking on the establishment by training as lawyers and doctors.
Across the pond in Great Britain many aristocratic families had derived a large part of their wealth from plantations in the West Indies which relied on slavery, but their influence was on the decline. The actual trade of slaves became illegal in 1807 and, although it was not until 1833 that slavery itself was abolished, by 1816 the growing Abolitionist movement, coupled with the decline of the economic significance of the West Indies plantations, made the idea, if not the reality, of slavery much less politically and socially acceptable than it had been a decade or so before.
From the point of view of this story, what interested me most about the British abolitionists was how many of them were women. It was one of the few political causes in which it became acceptable for women to participate and in which women took a leading and influential role, so I relished the opportunity to create a heroine who could, without it seeming a historical anachronism, be active politically and philanthropically. Josiah Wedgwood’s daughter, Sarah, who introduces Kate to Virgil, was just one real-life example I drew on.
There’s a huge difference between perception and reality. Kate had only read about slavery. Virgil had experienced it. As a writer, I had to try and imagine myself in both sets of shoes and whether I’ve managed it or not—well, that’s for you to decide. But ultimately this isn’t a book about slavery—it’s about love. And I hope you’ll agree that Kate, The Lady Who Broke the Rules, is as perfect for Virgil as I imagined her to be.
Don’t miss the next installment of Castonbury Park—
LADY OF SHAME
by Ann Lethbridge
‘You’re in danger of dishonouring the family name for good!’
Lady Claire must put pride above prattle if she is to shake off the not-so-respectable reputation of her youth. Swapping rebellion for reserve, she returns to her imposing childhood home, Castonbury Park, seeking her family’s help. Penniless Claire needs a sensible husband…and fast!
But when the dark gaze of head chef Monsieur André catches her eye, he’s as deliciously tempting as the food he prepares. Claire knows he’s most unsuitable…even if the chemistry between them is magnetic. Risking her reputation for André would be shameful—but losing him could be even worse!
LADY OF SHAME
Ann Lethbridge
‘You risk too much.’A band tightened around her chest. Apparently he did not feel the same way. And yet she persevered.‘If we are careful—’His eyes found hers. A gaze filled with regret, or pity. She could not be sure.‘I cannot be that man.’ He shot a look towards the door and moved closer, lowering his voice. ‘I cannot be your dirty little secret, at your beck and call while you court a husband.’The flatness of his voice when he spoke those words stung like a whip’s metal point. She had never thought about what they had done in those horrid terms. She’d been too busy living only in the moment, in the joy of it. She could see what others might make of it, though. What he had made of it.‘Don’t make this any harder than it is, Claire,’ he murmured softly. ‘I cannot be what you want. I am sorry if I let you think otherwise.’She wanted to plead with him, but instead spun away, gazing out of the window before he could see her disappointment or the hot moisture welling in her eyes. He had clearly made up his mi
nd. And he was right. Their lovemaking was risky. Fear and relief had sent her into his arms the first time. Loneliness the second. ‘Of course,’ she said, keeping her voice calm. ‘I beg your pardon…’ Her voice cracked. ‘I did not mean to insult you.’ ‘Claire,’ he said softly. ‘You know this is right.’ She turned with a bright smile, patently false but a smile nonetheless. ‘The Dowager Marchioness has indicated that she will not attend our next dinner party, so our company will be smaller than usual, but I think we should not change the dishes. Are you agreed?’ ‘I agree. But—’Then there is no more to be said, Monsieur André. I bid you good day. I assume there will be no more little dramas like last time?’
His dark eyes held hers. Unreadable. His expression severe. ‘No, madame.’ ‘Very good. You may go.’ She sounded every bit the duke’s daughter with those words, and she held her head proudly in clear dismissal.‘It is for the best,’ he said, clearly trying to soften the blow. ‘Close the door on your way out.’ She spoke coldly, refusing to acknowledge his power to cause her pain. She turned back to the window, looking out blindly, staring at an imperfection in the glass that made the outside ebb and flow in ripples of light and shadow.
‘As you wish, madame.’ The silent pause said he’d bowed. The whisper of sound and the click of the door echoed in her ears. She collapsed onto the sofa, the tears she’d held back hot on her cheeks. She dashed them away. Had she so little pride? No common sense when it came to this man? This servant? Any hint of such a scandal would lead to utter ruin. For herself, she didn’t care about being an outcast. She’d been that for years. But Jane’s future hung in the balance. The sins of the parent would not be visited upon the child. She would not permit it.
ISBN 9781426876738
© Marguerite Kaye 2012
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