A Very Real Affair: A Clean Regency Romance Series, #5

By Sarah Smith

The Duchess of Masham in the most beautiful woman Peter Waverley, a doctor, has ever seen. The problem is she is married, and as unobtainable as any woman ever was, but there is a spark of attraction, a dangerous spark. 

At a ball they dance together, the seductive nature of their dance incurring the wrath of the Duchess' husband. The Duke is a powerful man and soon Peter is arrested and put in prison. The Duke has the Duchess' committed to a lunatic asylum, ridding himself of her forever. 

Will they end up together in the end?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Smith
• Release date: May 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781393748298

Book preview

About the Author

Sarah Smith is an educator for two decades. She maintains a teacher’s blog and spends her free time reading romance novels.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter one

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter One

The Duke of Masham lowered his newspaper and looked at his wife.

''You look worse than you usually do, what's the matter now?''

''I feel a bit under the weather. Perhaps you could ask Dr. Jones to come to the house?''

''More expense.'' The count rang the bell and Ashton appeared. ''Ask Dr. Jones to come to the house please, Ashton.''

''Very well sir.''

Moat Hall was a huge house on a very large estate. The Duke had several hundred tenants, not many of whom liked him. He was well known for regular rent increases and evicting whoever he felt like at a moment’s notice. The house was run by his wife, the twenty-one-year-old Duchess. The Duke was forty-four. The age gap had begun to affect their marriage after just three months.

The Duchess was kind and considerate and modern in her attitudes, preferring to give to poor people than engage in conversation with the rich. The Duke loathed the poor and treated them with disrespect. They had fought like cat and dog when the Duke had evicted a man and his wife who had a disabled son. He'd told her they were in arrears with the rent, and she'd asked where his compassion was.

Compassion wasn't something the Duke possessed. After three years of marriage to the young Duchess, he began to treat her with disdain, forbidding her to go to visit tenants in the villages around the house. She spent the time running the household and avoiding him as far as possible.

They had a full complement of servants who didn't make the Duchess' life any easier. She tried to run the household to the best of her ability but the servants constantly referred to the way things were done under the previous Duchess, who sadly died. When she complained to her husband, he told her to stop moaning and get on with it.

Trapped between an arrogant husband and disrespectful servants her young life turned into misery.

––––––––

Dr. Jones had his surgery in East Whitton a small town in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a county in the North of England.  When required, he would make the short journey to Moat Hall to tend to the medical requirements of the Duke of Masham's family.

Jones drove his single horse carriage between the stone pillars guarding the entrance to the kilometer long driveway, rounded two corners and looked at the castle in front of him. ''Bloody monstrosity. A family of six with thirty bedrooms and people in the village sleeping five to a single bed.''

''Yes, doesn't seem fair does it?'' said Dr. Peter Waverley.

Dr. Jones was a