Passionately independent and intellectually stifled, a sensual encounter with a seductive scientific researcher draws Lady Emily Henshawe into a forbidden romance, forbidden above all by herself, and into the toils of a scandalous liaison that threatens to turn her world upside down.
It's 1868. Darwin's 'Origin of Species', with its message of survival of the fittest and 'nature red in tooth and claw' has shaken the established order. Sequestered in rural Hampshire, Lady Emily Henshawe's problems are closer to home, a childless marriage and a husband who's more interested in breeding pigeons than he is in her. With her thirtieth birthday fast approaching it's time for Emily to resign herself to a humdrum future, until, that is, Jonathon Gilbey, a young, firebrand follower of Darwin, arrives at Henshawe Hall to conduct experiments on her husband's pigeons. Emily's appalled—that a youth of Jonathon's noble aspect and fine physique should believe in beast eat beast!— and she sets out to save the young man from his atheistic ideas. Love, however, works in mysterious ways and before Emily knows it Jonathon is conducting experiments on her heart, and on her newly awakened body too.
Explicit, angst-y and salacious, 'In His Lordship's Dovecote' is erotica and more than erotica, a 15,000 word novella with an authentic period atmosphere and a passionate story to tell.