The Confessions of a Duchess
Fortune's Folly, Yorkshire, September 1809
Dowager. It was such a lonely word.
Most people thought of dowagers as faintly comic figures, diamonds displayed on their shelflike bosom, possessing a long, patrician nose to look down.
Laura Cole thought of dowagers as the loneliest people in the world.
It was Laura's loneliness that had prompted her to go down to the river that day, dressed in a pale blue muslin gown with a warm navy-blue spencer over the top, a wide-brimmed straw bonnet on her head and a novel in her hand. She had read somewhere that the beauties of nature were supposed to soothe a troubled spirit and so she had decided to take the rowing boat out and float in bucolic peace under the willow branches that fringed the water's edge.
However, the nature cure was proving to be a disappointing failure. For a start the boat was full of fallen yellow leaves, and once Laura had brushed them off the seat her gloves were already dirty. She sat down and opened her book, but found herself unable to concentrate on the trials and tribulations of her heroine because her mind was full of her own difficulties instead. Every so often, golden-brown ... read full excerpt from: The Confessions of a Duchess ebook
