Before Nelson, before scandal, before history tried to reduce her to a cautionary tale, Emma Hart was a young woman sent to Naples under another man’s arrangement, expected to remain beautiful, grateful and convenient.
Naples had other plans.
At twenty-one, Emma arrives in the city wounded, uncertain and quietly humiliated. Charles Greville has sent her away from England with promises that grow thinner by the mile. But under the roof of Sir William Hamilton, British envoy, collector, widower and man of rare intelligence, exile begins to change shape.
In a city alive with art, appetite, music and danger, Emma learns to become more than the woman men have tried to arrange. She finds language, confidence and power. She creates the famous Attitudes that will dazzle Europe. She enters the glittering, anxious world of the Neapolitan court and becomes intimate with Queen Maria Carolina.
And she falls into a tender, intelligent and complicated love with Sir William, a man old enough to know the cost of desire and wise enough to see that Emma is far more than beauty.
But Europe is shifting. Revolutionary France casts its shadow across Naples, and Emma’s private transformation begins to touch the fate of kingdoms. When Horatio Nelson first enters her orbit, he is not yet the great scandal of her life, but force itself: urgent, brave, vain, wounded by war and impossible to dismiss.
By the time Nelson returns from the Battle of the Nile, victorious and broken, he brings more than glory into William’s house.
He brings the storm.
The Dazzling Mrs Hamilton: Volume One is a sensual, witty and emotionally rich historical romance about beauty, survival, power and becoming. Perfect for readers who enjoy character-led historical fiction, complicated love, court intrigue, strong heroines, and the dangerous glamour of real history.
