Antonia - A Regency Romance

Antonia's Bargain

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People/Characters: Antonia, Duchess of Roxton

As the story is told, Lorenzo falls in love with Antonia. The mysterious priest, who was left at the abbey as a child, delivers the sermon, and Antonia is fascinated with him. Lorenzo vows to win the hand of Antonia, but must first visit his sister Agnes, who is a nun at the nearby abbey. Having fallen asleep in the church, he awakens to find someone delivering a letter for his sister from Raymond de las Cisternas.

On the way home, a gypsy warns Antonia that she is about to die, killed by someone who appears to be honourable. Ambrosio is visited by nuns, including Agnes, for confession. She drops a letter which reveals her plans to run away with Raymond de las Cisternas. When Agnes confesses that she is pregnant with Raymond's child, Ambrosio turns her over to the Prioress of her abbey for punishment.

As she is led away, she curses Ambrosio. Returning to the abbey, Ambrosio's constant companion, a novice named Rosario, admits that he is a woman named Matilda, who disguised herself so that she could be near Ambrosio. They both know he must throw her out of the monastery, but she begs him not to and vows to kill herself if he does. He relents, but after talking the next day she decides to leave of her own accord, on the condition Ambrosio gives her a rose to remember him by.

As he picks the rose, he is bitten by a serpent and is rushed to his room where it is predicted that he will die within three days.

Customers Also Bought

Rosario acts as his nurse and the next day it is discovered that Ambrosio is cured, which is proclaimed a miracle. When the other monks leave, Matilda reveals that she sucked the poison from Ambrosio's wound and is now dying herself. At the point of death, she begs him to make love to her and he succumbs to the temptation at last, having discovered that she is the model who sat for his beloved portrait of the Virgin Mary. Lorenzo confronts Raymond about his relationship with his sister Agnes and his being identified as Alphonse d'Alvarada, who tried to elope with her.

Raymond tells a story of the time he went travelling in Germany with his rank concealed under the name Alphonse d'Alvarada. While travelling, his chaise is incapacitated and his servant finds him some lodging at a nearby cottage owned by Baptiste and his wife, who is anything but congenial. At another party, a Baroness and her retinue also stop for the night. Receiving a sign of bloody sheets on his bed from Marguerite, Baptiste's wife, Alphonse realises that something is amiss and discovers that he has fallen into a group of murderers, who waylay travellers to kill and rob them.

He avoids being drugged and manages to escape with the others, along with Marguerite, who kills Baptiste. They make it to Strasbourg, where Marguerite shares her story of illicit love with a bandit, by whom she has two children, and being forced into marriage with Baptiste. She returns to the home of her father and Raymond continues his travels, taking along Marguerite's son, Theodore, as a servant. At the home of the Baroness, Raymond falls in love with her niece Agnes and goes to the Baroness to ask for her blessing.

However, the Baroness is in love with Raymond and when he refuses her advances since he loves Agnes, she vows vengeance. Discovering that it is Agnes, she plans to send her to the convent and so Raymond and Agnes make plans to elope. Agnes plans to dress as the Bleeding Nun, a ghost who haunts the castle, when she escapes with Raymond. The two drive away in the night, but the carriage crashes, and when Raymond awakens, he finds the nun Agnes is gone. After several months healing, he learns that it was not Agnes, but the Bleeding Nun herself who was with him.

Raymond learns that the Bleeding Nun is an ancestor and he is responsible for burying her bones and so release her from her hauntings. He finds Agnes in the convent and takes the disguise of the convent gardener. There he overcomes Agnes, earning her rejection. However, when she discovers that she is pregnant, she begs him to come to rescue her. When Raymond finishes his story, Lorenzo agrees to help him elope with Agnes.

Lorenzo then goes to visit Elvira, who is Raymond's sister-in-law and the mother of Antonia, to ask for permission to court Antonia. However, Elvira is very fearful that her daughter might be rejected by Lorenzo's family, just as she was rejected by the Cisternas. Despite Lorenzo's pleadings, Elvira suggests to both Raymond and to Antonia that they resist their love.

Lorenzo promises that he will get his family's blessing and marry Antonia. In the meantime, Lorenzo tries to visit his sister Agnes in the convent, but is told that she is too ill to see him.

He has sent to Rome to receive a papal bull releasing Agnes from her vows so that she may honourably marry Raymond without fear of retribution. When the Prioress of the abbey is presented with the papal bull, she tells Lorenzo that his sister died several days before. Lorenzo does not believe it, but knows that is simply the Prioress's way to relieve the shame that having a pregnant nun would have on the abbey. However, after two months, there is no other word concerning Agnes. In the meantime, he has secured his family's blessing on his hoped-for marriage with Antonia.

Ambrosio and Matilda spend the night making love, Ambrosio no longer feeling the guilt of sin. The next night in the cemetery, she performs some ritual of which Ambrosio can only see flashes of light and quaking of the ground; when she returns, she is free of the poison and free to be Ambrosio's secret lover.

But as the week progresses, Ambrosio grows tired of her and his eyes begins to wander, noticing the attractiveness of other women. Ambrosio is approached by Antonia, who asks him to provide a confessor for Elvira, her dying mother, and is immediately attracted to her. He prays for Elvira, who begins to improve, and so agrees to come to visit them often, for the simple purpose of being with Antonia and hopefully seducing her.

Elvira confesses that she sees something familiar in Ambrosio, but she cannot pinpoint what it is.

People/Characters by cover

Ambrosio continues his visits to Antonia. He asks if there is not a man whom she has ever loved, and she confesses that she loves him. Misinterpreting her, he embraces her, but she resists him, insisting that she did not love him in that way, yet the priest continues to ravish her until her mother enters.

Ambrosio pretends that nothing was happening, but Elvira had already suspected his designs on her daughter and tells him that his services are no longer needed. Matilda comes to his room and tells him she can help him to gain Antonia's charms, even though she realises she herself no longer holds his interest, in the same way in which she was healed of the poison: Ambrosio is horrified and rejects her suggestion. However, when she shows him a magic mirror that reveals to him Antonia bathing, he agrees.

Matilda and Ambrosio return to the cemetery, where Matilda calls up Lucifer and receives his help, and they receive a magic myrtle bough, which will allow Ambrosio to open any door, as well as satisfy his lust on Antonia without her knowing who is her ravisher. Ambrosio agrees, without, he believes, selling himself to the devil. Raymond mourns the death of his lover, Agnes, so Theodore plots to disguise himself as a beggar and go to the convent to find out what happened to her.

He is taken into the convent, where he hopes that Agnes will recognise him, sending some word of her state. He is disappointed when no word comes. However, as he leaves, Mother St. Ursula hands him a basket with gifts. Theodore takes the basket back to Raymond, where they find a note hidden in the linen cover, stating that they should have the cardinal arrest both Mother St.

Ursula and the Prioress, so that Agnes's murder can be requited. Ambrosio carries out his plot to rape Antonia. With the magic myrtle bough he enters her chamber and finds her asleep. He performs the magic rite that will prevent her resistance. He is on the point of raping her when Elvira enters the room and confronts him, promising that she will make his true nature public. In desperation, Ambrosio murders Elvira without carrying out his true purpose of ravishing Antonia.

He returns to the abbey, unsatisfied in his lust and horrified that he has now become a murderer. Antonia is grief-stricken at the death of her mother and alone. Leonella is married and distant, Raymond is ill and ignorant of her plight, and Lorenzo has gone to get an arrest order for the death of his sister.

Miss Dane and the Duke: A Regency Romance

One night Antonia wanders into Elvira's room and sees what she takes to be her mother's ghost, which warns her that it will return in three nights and Antonia will die. Terrified, Antonia faints and is found by her landlady, Jacintha, who goes to Ambrosio, requesting him to exorcise her home.

Under Matilda's advice, Ambrosio acquires a concoction that will induce a condition appearing to be death for Antonia. While he is attending Antonia, he slips the potion into her medicine and waits. While he is waiting, he sees what he fears is, in actuality, the ghost of Elvira retreat across the room. He pursues it and discovers it is Flora, Antonia's maid, who is spying on him on the advice of Elvira before she died.

As they are speaking, Jacintha cries out that Antonia is dying, as it indeed appears. With her "dying" breath, Antonia confesses how much she admired Ambrosio and desired his friendship, against her mother's wishes. She leaves everything to her Aunt Leonella and releases her half-uncle Cisternas from all obligations to her, though she waited for him to come rescue her from her dire straits.

Lorenzo arrives back in Madrid with a representative of the Inquisition. During the procession honouring St. Clare, the Prioress is arrested. Ursula publicly relates the account of Agnes's trial by the sisters. The majority voted for the most extreme punishment, which would entail Agnes being thrown in a dungeon and left for dead. However, at Mother St. Ursula's instigation, the punishment is mitigated to death by poison. Ursula's revelation that the Prioress is a murderer, the crowd turns to rioting.

Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Miss Dane and the Duke: Dukes always get what they want — Or is this lady the one exception? Somehow, she vows, she is going to make a new life for herself, redeem the Danes, become independent.

Kindle Edition , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Miss Dane and the Duke , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Miss Dane and the Duke. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Feb 21, Joan added it Shelves: This was written in and boy, does it show.

Antonia is, for all her 'refusal' to marry Marcu, vapid and utterly without any real sense.

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She lets Marcus run rough-shod over her and is reduced to putty in his hands when he kisses her. Marcus is just as shallow - he seems to expect women to be at his beck and call, and his treatment of both his mistress who was the most obnoxious creature! Some of the story didnt seem to hold together, but that may well have been b This was written in and boy, does it show. Some of the story didnt seem to hold together, but that may well have been because I ended up skimming through the last third.

Its a typical Mills and Boon of that era - domineering alpha males with more money than brains and yet who were always more capable than a woman. And helpless women who swooned at the slightest thing and had no objection to a man forcing a kiss on them, etc etc etc. I'm not going to rate it. Had it been written in the last couple of years it would have got a resounding 1 star for the dreadful portrayal of both sexes, but as a book that is 20 years old, perhaps its better to simply accept it for what it was - a sign of past times.

Mar 13, Gilgamesha rated it liked it. Omg the back and forth between the duke and miss Dane was so annoying. It was an ok read Aug 27, Chris rated it liked it.

It would have been so much better… Why did it have to be the relatable h making all the mistakes, but when the H is a jackass, he mocks her reaction. The h caught the H making out with his old mistress and he just got mad at her and accused her of spying! That rounds it up for another week. Congratulations to everyone who had good news to share this week. Subscribe in a reader. The Official Blog of Romance Writers of Australia The RWA blog features conference news, special events, book signings, guest blogs and author interviews and everything else that promotes the work of our wonderful members.

RWA Conference August 11th, Want to become a member or need more information about Romance Writers of Australia? Visit the official Romance Writers of Australia Website or click the button below. All posts tagged Antonia Marlowe. New contract With now a happy memory, we look forward to sharing breaking news on new contracts for Posted in Cruisin' the Blogs , Uncategorized.

Posted by Juanita Kees on January 5, https: For your chance to win: Friday 31 st December Closes: Friday February 25, Closes: Friday April 8th, See website for details. Subscribe by sending an e-mail That rounds it up for another week. Posted by Sandie James on December 19, https: Imelda Evans Blog Editor: Keziah Hill Author Spotlights: Sarah Belle Cruisin' the Blogs: Juanita Kees New Releases: Laura Boon Blog Bites: Thea George Hearts Talk Wrap: Ainslie Paton Cover Contest:

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