Cecilia (The Aphrodite Academy #2)

Author's Note: This Limited Special Edition of CECILIA also includes BELLE, Book 1 of The Aphrodite Academy series. These novellas go beyond the traditional Regency novel to explore what might have happened to young women, from ladies to tavern wenches, to whom life was unkind—young women with no family or friends willing to help when their lives fall apart. This is a new genre for me, and I call it "Regency Darkside." The language is saucy, the sex occasionally graphic. But the stories are driven by plot and character, not the sex scenes. And traditional Happily Ever After endings prevail.

BELLE. Lady Arabella Pierrepont vows vengeance on all men, only to find the one man she respects and secretly loves—the man who rescued her from her father's abuse—is the high bidder for her services as a courtesan. And now she must suffer the anguish of being mistress to the only man she ever wished to marry.

CECILIA. Cecilia Lilly has but one grand ambition—to become the mistress of a titled gentleman. Unfortunately, she soon learns the truth of the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for." Yet even after suffering a severe beating by her "protector," a marquess, she finds it difficult to accept the friendship of a man on a far different rung of London's social ladder.