Chapter Two

During Amelia’s life, the complicated political circumstances of her dissolute Father changed in many ways. He continued to enjoy his passion about science through his leadership of the Royal Academy. However, his gambling and other notorious behaviors (especially involving the backsides of attractive women) continued to cause great embarrassment to the Royal family as well as severe financial stress in covering his gaming losses. His Father the King died after the longest reign in British history when Amelia was eight years old, to be succeeded by Augustus’ eldest brother, George IV. This worsened the Prince’s circumstances, as his Royal revenues were sharply cut by his disapproving older sibling. This only seemed to worsen Amelia’s Father’s rebellious ways. To the surprise of no one, when our heroine had just turned nineteen years old, she was informed that Augustus had died of a fit of apoplexy while ‘in flagrante delicto’ with a London courtesan.

This news was a great relief to the blue-eyed blonde beauty, who had little affection for Augustus and had grown to fear her Father’s increasingly severe spankings every night when he was in residence (even though tempered by her secret post-punishment rewards at the able fingers of Lisette). Nonetheless, once her spankings ceased our heroine continued to secretly pleasure herself every night. She was a bit alarmed by the fact that her wonderful total body ‘explosion’ seemed to require that she fantasize about her newly deceased Lord belaboring her bare buttocks. But before a month of her mourning had passed, everything changed yet again.

It seemed that His Majesty George IV had decreed that all of Augustus’ estates were to be confiscated by the Royal Treasury in lieu of decades worth of the Prince’s gambling debts. His bastard daughter would retain the title of Lady, since her royal bloodlines were not in doubt, but there would be no financial settlement on her. Instead, like Mistress Ramundo and hundreds of other impoverished noblewomen, she would be trained as a Governess at a private school that specialized in preparing the often spoiled upper class daughters for this humble new role in life. Amelia was allowed to gather up a few trunks full of clothing but none at all of her jewelry (which would be sold against the Prince’s debts). After a tearful goodbye to Lisette, our heroine boarded a coach provided by the King to carry her to her new life.

Mrs. Urquhart’s School for Young Ladies was located in a large rather run-down mansion that had been the country estate of a long-since bankrupt Baron whose properties had been confiscated by the Crown. Its twenty sparely furnished bedrooms were occupied by forty young upper class women in similar straits to our heroine. All were struggling to be resigned to their fate as old maids for life since the absence of a dowry made young noblewomen unmarriageable in their cutthroat world. They were caught in an impossible conundrum: their status was too high for them to be paired off with lower class men who might otherwise have found them quite desirable. But without sufficient funds they could not meet the bride price that their society deemed necessary for the families of noble daughters to compensate the groom’s clan for the lifelong expense of supporting a dependent new member.