Download or read book An Aristocratic Affair written by Janet Gleeson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BIOGRAPHY: HISTORICAL. The life of Harriet Spencer, Countess of Bessborough, was one of both respectability and high scandal. She was born into the wealth and privilege of the Spencer family - and was the great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. Harriet became one of the most glamorous and influential women of the Regency age. At a time when marriage was an aristocratic woman's only career choice, Harriet made an excellent match, to Frederick, Viscount Duncannon. But the marriage proved unhappy and Harriet soon embarked on a series of illicit affairs. In Naples she met and fell in love with the handsome young aristocrat Lord Granville Leveson Gower, a man twelve years her junior.And so began the affair that became the last, untold story of enduring love in the Regency period, an open secret within just a tiny circle. A window on aristocratic life at its most intimate, and brings one of the Regency period's most colourful characters vividly to life.