One of the things I was certain about was that she would be the kind of woman who showed up in the scandal sheets and the tabloids, the Angelina Jolie of her age. It wasn’t until I read Jo Manning’s wonderful book My Lady Scandalous that I got the idea for using this as a facet of the book. In the book she mentions the Tête-à-Tête column in the Morning Post. This was a salacious gossip column, which featured at the very top of the page a vignette of a man and a woman (people easily recognizable to the reading public). The poses of the couple in question were a comment upon the state of the relationship: Gazing at one another implied something entirely different from one looking towards the “beloved” while the other looked away, or turned their back.

 

Each chapter of the book begins with a made-up quote from the column. This is a feature I’ll be repeating in the upcoming sequels. Some of the quotes give you an insight into the story, some provide misleading information, and others directly affect the plot (a facet of this that I love).