"Encouragement" (Book 1), by Gratiana Lovelace, 2016 (Completed)

Ch. 1 (PG): Grandmama's Courtship Advice

"Encouragement", Ch. 1 (PG): Grandmama's Courtship Advice

September 03, 2016 Gratiana Lovelace (Post #962)

(An original Regency love story copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace; all rights reserved)

[From time to time, I will illustrate my story characters with: Emma Hamilton as Lady Madeline Sinclair, Richard Armitage as Lord Christian Blount Earl of Sussex, and others as noted.]

Authors Content Note: "Encouragement" is a frothy love story with sometimes humorous and sometimes dramatic themes of love and relationships. It will mostly be at the PG and PG-13 movie levels. Specific chapters or passages may have a further rating of: D for dramatic emotions, and LS for love scenes that are tenderly sensuous and not explicit. And I will rate the chapters accordingly. If you are unable or unwilling to attend a movie with the ratings that I provide for a chapter, then please do not read that chapter. This is my disclaimer. And as is my habit, I will summarize the previous chapter's events at the beginning of each chapter.

"Encouragement, A Regency Tale of Love and Romance", Prologue/ Wattpad Description

Lady Madeline Lucretia Sinclair's very proper maternal grandmother Lady Lucretia Beckham Knott advises her that all a gentleman needs from a lady to offer for her is a little encouragement from that lady. But then again, it is encouragement that a lady must refrain from lest an unsuitable or undesirable gentleman presses his suit upon her. But therein lies the crux of Lady Madeline's dilemma. How does a lady become sufficiently acquainted with a gentleman in order to discern if she wants to encourage him--without first seeking him out for conversation or dancing, and without seeming to encourage him before her mind is made up? And when her heart has chosen, but his has not, how does she help him find his heart's desire in her? These will be the riddles that Lady Madeline must find the answers to for her happily ever after.

"Encouragement", Ch. 1 (PG): Grandmama's Courtship Advice

Lady Madeline Lucretia Sinclair--Lady Maddie to her family and intimate friends--is a young lady of seventeen about to embark upon her first London Season. Lady Maddie possesses a pleasing petiteness of height so favored by middling to tall men, copper flecked silky brunette hair, a cheerful face when smiling, and she enjoys robust health with a figure with pleasing womanly attributes so favored by gentleman, and curvy hips that show promise for child bearing. Yet her youthful beauty is not all of her charm. She is a young lady who knows her own mind—or thinks that she does.

And in Lady Madeline's time of 1816 Regency England [(2)], women and young ladies have to rely upon men for everything—their lifestyle, their protection, their permission to do ... anything—or the ladies learn how to get around them. And having a man—or husband as they prefer to be referred to—is de rigeur. Husbands proliferate and are as plentiful as blades of grass. And yet, as with most lawns, not all grass is equal. Some grass is more pleasing than others. And nascent London society debutante Lady Madeline Sinclair promises herself to find a very pleasing husband.

Her wants in a husband are many and varied—that he be charming, handsome, older than she but not too old, comfortably situated, likes dancing, tall, not having alarming sideburns like her Papa, well respected, perhaps titled, romantic, have his own home that he is willing to allow her to redecorate, generous with her pin money and charities alike, supports and is prideful of her work for the less fortunate, does not gamble nor drink to excess, and is amiable in all things, etc. But at the top of Lady Madeline's list of marital requirements in a husband is love—she for him, and he for her. And she will settle for nothing less than having a love match. So it is to the London marriage mart [(3)] that she goes filled with yearnings for a good match by her late mother and sage husband hunting advice from her mother's mother, Lady Lucretia Beckham Knott.