The Scandal of the Season The Scandal of the Season

The Scandal of the Season

A Novel

    • 4.5 • 4 Ratings
    • $15.99
    • $15.99

Publisher Description

London, 1711. As the rich, young offspring of the city's most fashionable families þll their days with masquerade balls and clandestine court-ships, Arabella Fermor and Robert, Lord Petre, lead the pursuit of pleasure. Beautiful and vain, Arabella is a clever coquette with a large circle of beaus. Lord Petre, seventh Baron of Ingatestone, is a man-about-town with his choice of mistresses. Drawn together by an overpowering attraction, the two begin an illicit affair.

Alexander Pope, sickly and nearly penniless, is peripheral by birth, yet his uncommon wit and ambition gain him unlikely entrance into high society. Once there, privy to every nuance and drama, he is a ruthless observer. He longs for the success that will cement his place in society; all he needs is one poem grand enough to make his reputation.

As the forbidden passion between Arabella and Lord Petre deepens, an intrigue of a darker nature threatens to overtake them. Fortunes change and reputations -- even lives -- are imperiled. In the aftermath, Pope discovers the idea for a daring poem that will catapult him to fame and fortune.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2007
August 7
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
352
Pages
PUBLISHER
Scribner
SELLER
Simon & Schuster Digital Sales LLC
SIZE
893.2
KB

Customer Reviews

BCWTouch ,

The Scandal of the Season

If you adore Downtown Abby, you'll be captivated by The Scandal of the Season.
It is a historical novel that chronicles the intertwining lives of the upper class English and several others who have the opportunity to nibble about the edges of society.
Alexander Pope, sickly with a permanently deformed hunch back, is a recently published poet. He hopes to strike it big in London so that despite his physical shortcomings he could marry the maiden of his dreams, Teresa Blount. Teresa, the more aspiring of the two Blount sisters, and Martha go to London for the "season" to make their social rounds with their spectacularly beautiful and immensely sought after cousin, Arabella Fermor.
Alexander is well acquainted with the Blounts from childhood. Teresa knows that's he is smitten but she is setting her sights on the dashing bon vivant Lord Robert Petre. Lord Petre would be a prize for anyone with not only good looks but a title and a small fortune as well. He is rather bored with his recent London dalliances but the second he feasts his eyes on the ravishing Arabella, he will stop at nothing to sample her lusciousness. Arabella, grand beauty and grand flirt, succumbs to the charms of Lord Petre.
During the season of levees, masquerade balls and evenings at the opera, they slip away with astonishing regularity up to his bed chamber once she has been deflowered there.
Alexander establishes his fame amongst the London set with the publishing of his poetry but fortune eludes him. If only he could find inspiration in London to write the life altering sensation he knows he is capable of penning. The reward for his efforts would be the hand of Teresa Blount. In a moment of stunning forthrightness he admits his desires to the object of his affection. She explodes in fury at the presumption that under any circumstances would she consider linking herself to the deformed and impoverished little toad that he is. Furthermore she suspects that the reason she hasn't been snagged by far more suitable gentlemen he because he has circulated to all and sundry that they have an attachment.
She imagines that were it not for him surely she could have diverted the attention of Lord Petre from her cousin.
Fat chance of that ever happening since neither of the Blount sisters have a fat dowry lurking in a bank vault. Their brother holds the purse strings and he has obligations of his own in the maintenance of the family's rustic estate.
Lord Petre surprises himself by falling in love with the bedazzling Arabella and was slowly coming around to the thought that he was ready to marry her when he is blackmailed by the loyal footman who assisted him in smuggling the fair Arabella up the back stairs.
Lord Petre is forced by his mother and his male guardian to marry an uncomely 15 year old with a massive fortune.
Although he is in love with Arabella, a pound sterling is a pound sterling so Arabella is out of the running. He withholds the news of his engagement from her but the news has been circulating in whispers at the final grand gathering of the social season, The Queen's Party at Hampton Palace.
Goaded by a couple of guests, Lord Petre causes a scandal when he takes a keepsake of the forbidden love in a very public display after which action Arabella faints.
The writing transports you to the early 1700s, to a life we, gentle readers, can only imagine.
Keep a dictionary handy. You'll give it quite a workout.

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