The Game of Hearts

Each and every January they came, with baggage-laden coaches, back to their houses in town. Woken from a wintertime slumber were the streets and squares of London's West End, suddenly echoing once more with the rumble of carriage wheels and coal-wagons; the steady beating of brass door knockers and the shouts of servants. Inside tall narrow townhouses and mansions more like private palaces, holland covers were cast off, shutters flung open, and preparations begun in earnest for the annual social whirl that was the Regency season...The Regency period in Britain has long been glamorised as a blur of glitz and glamour with the women of the period being fondly remembered for their wide gowns and big hair topped with feathers, but who were these women and what was it like to live and love in this age of elegance Regency Romance allows the reader a glimpse behind the drawing room doors of high society, charting the lives of the women who filled them. True tales of rakish husbands, runaway lovers and rich heiresses; candid insights into the competitive world of the so-called marriage mart; and plentiful examples of the pitfalls of pursuing a brilliant match, reveal what courtship and married life was really like for Regency women.