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The Scandalous Widow
Be tantalized by Elizabeth Rolls’s scandalous Regency romance!
She’s determined never to marry again…
Is he the gentleman to change her mind?
Left penniless by her late husband and disowned by her family, widow Lady Althea withdrew from polite society, and became infamous for indulging in not-so-secret liaisons with gentlemen of the ton. These days, Althea lives quietly with her beloved dog, Puck, and secretly pens salacious novels instead!
Then handsome solicitor Hugo Guthrie arrives, with her orphaned nieces in tow, and turns her life upside down. For the girls need a home, and working with Hugo is making every emotion Althea thought she could live without come crashing back to life!
From Harlequin Your romantic escape to the past.
She’s determined never to marry again…
Is he the gentleman to change her mind?
Left penniless by her late husband and disowned by her family, widow Lady Althea withdrew from polite society, and became infamous for indulging in not-so-secret liaisons with gentlemen of the ton. These days, Althea lives quietly with her beloved dog, Puck, and secretly pens salacious novels instead!
Then handsome solicitor Hugo Guthrie arrives, with her orphaned nieces in tow, and turns her life upside down. For the girls need a home, and working with Hugo is making every emotion Althea thought she could live without come crashing back to life!
From Harlequin Your romantic escape to the past.
- GenresRegency
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published October 22, 2024
7 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Rolls
100 books124 followersWe live in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, in a beautiful lush valley full of apple, pear and cherry orchards. We moved here a couple of years back, escaping from the city and it’s just gorgeous. The property is small, only five acres, but we have room for two small noisy boys, three dogs, two cats and several woolly things masquerading a environmentally friendly lawnmowers. Before that we lived in Melbourne, which was fun, but we always wanted to live in the country and now we do.
I’ve been married to an ex-nuclear physicist – don’t ask! for the last 17 years and we have two rowdy little boys, commonly described as “feral”. Most of our friends think we have far too many animals, and everyone knows we have far too many books.I grew up moving around a fair bit. Dad was in the army and every few years we had to up sticks and move on. I was born in England, expelled from kindergarten in Melbourne, started school in Papua New Guinea and finished school in Melbourne. After taking a degree in Music Education I taught music for several years while my husband finished his Ph.D.
How I started writing
I had the writing bug from a very early age. From the time I could read I loved writing stories. Throughout my school days I was nearly always writing something very quietly, and there were several teachers who encouraged me. One student teacher, whose name I have totally forgotten, when I was in sixth grade, as well as a couple of high school English teachers, Mrs Redman and Mrs Mackay.
I started writing my first book after I finished my Masters degree. For one thing I really, really missed my thesis. I’d enjoyed researching it, and I loved writing it. So it seems inevitable now that when I was looking for something to do in the evenings to unwind after work, I started writing again.
I’d been staying with an old school friend. Meg is a fellow Georgette Heyer fan, and she had a very large collection of Regencies on her bookshelves. Well, that was an eye-opener. I’d had no idea anyone else apart from Heyer had actually written them. By the time I went home I had an idea floating around in my brain and I sat down and roughed out some sort of chapter plan. Then I started typing. Six months later I had a story with a beginning a middle and an end which I sent to Meg. After a great deal of talking, she persuaded me to send it off to Harlequin Mills & Boon. After doing the rounds of all three editorial offices and undergoing a major rewrite and extension while I was about seven months pregnant with the second small noisy boy, it was accepted for publication and published as The Unexpected Bride.
Most of my writing friends have threatened to lynch me over that story at one time or another. Personally I envy them for having learnt an enormous amount about writing and the industry before acquiring an editor who understandably expects you to know what you are doing.
I’ve been married to an ex-nuclear physicist – don’t ask! for the last 17 years and we have two rowdy little boys, commonly described as “feral”. Most of our friends think we have far too many animals, and everyone knows we have far too many books.I grew up moving around a fair bit. Dad was in the army and every few years we had to up sticks and move on. I was born in England, expelled from kindergarten in Melbourne, started school in Papua New Guinea and finished school in Melbourne. After taking a degree in Music Education I taught music for several years while my husband finished his Ph.D.
How I started writing
I had the writing bug from a very early age. From the time I could read I loved writing stories. Throughout my school days I was nearly always writing something very quietly, and there were several teachers who encouraged me. One student teacher, whose name I have totally forgotten, when I was in sixth grade, as well as a couple of high school English teachers, Mrs Redman and Mrs Mackay.
I started writing my first book after I finished my Masters degree. For one thing I really, really missed my thesis. I’d enjoyed researching it, and I loved writing it. So it seems inevitable now that when I was looking for something to do in the evenings to unwind after work, I started writing again.
I’d been staying with an old school friend. Meg is a fellow Georgette Heyer fan, and she had a very large collection of Regencies on her bookshelves. Well, that was an eye-opener. I’d had no idea anyone else apart from Heyer had actually written them. By the time I went home I had an idea floating around in my brain and I sat down and roughed out some sort of chapter plan. Then I started typing. Six months later I had a story with a beginning a middle and an end which I sent to Meg. After a great deal of talking, she persuaded me to send it off to Harlequin Mills & Boon. After doing the rounds of all three editorial offices and undergoing a major rewrite and extension while I was about seven months pregnant with the second small noisy boy, it was accepted for publication and published as The Unexpected Bride.
Most of my writing friends have threatened to lynch me over that story at one time or another. Personally I envy them for having learnt an enormous amount about writing and the industry before acquiring an editor who understandably expects you to know what you are doing.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 3, 2025
I love a historical romance about a woman who knows her worth. Bonus points if she has a cool job. That's exactly what we have with The Scandalous Widow by Elizabeth Rolls.
The Scandalous Widow opens with Lady Althea Hartleigh, née Price. She was left penniless when her husband died and has had to figure out how to survive since then. After her year of mourning was up, Althea had an affair that became public and ostracized by her brother and the rest of the family. Althea withdrew from society, decamped to a less expensive neighborhood and took up writing novels as a way to support herself. She's been living quietly in Soho for years when Hugo Guthrie, her brother's solicitor, shows up on her doorstep with her two nieces. Her brother passed away, leaving the estate in severe debt. Their cousin put the girls on a carriage to London alone with instructions for Hugo to put them in an orphanage but he can't do it. Instead he prevails on Althea to take the girls in. Althea does and immediately gets Hugo's help to provide for the girls in her will should something happen to her. She asks Hugo to be a trustee and he agrees and begins to spend time with Althea outside their business relationship.
This book did exactly what I want a category romance to do: it hit the ground running with the plot. It only takes about two chapters to get the girls living with Althea. And we see immediately how taking in the girls has uprooted Althea's careful existence. She has to start engaging with her neighbors and becoming part of some kind of society again so her girls can learn how to be young ladies. I loved that Althea does not live in Mayfair, but rather in Soho, which means her community is more diverse. The women around Althea work, there are people of color and people of different social classes living side-by-side.
I also enjoyed that our hero was not part of the upper classes. He is a middle class, working man who has done very well for himself but does not have the biases of the aristocracy. Because of his position in the world, he's more open to seeing Althea for who and what she is than someone who is part of the aristocracy.
My favorite category romances are the ones that take on a societal issue through the plot. And in The Scandalous Widow, Elizabeth Rolls takes on the double standard that exists for men and women who engage in the same behavior. Althea is criticized by her family for blowing through her fortune when her brother did exactly the same thing and is ostracized by society for having two affairs, when all the men of her acquaintance have done the same with no consequences. It turns out that not everything is as it seems in Althea's past but she does not deny the affairs and doesn't understand why she is shamed for them when she was a widow and the men were single. She pushes everyone to reexamine their prejudices and preconceived notions of how a woman should behave.
Other things I enjoyed in this book include the dog, the sickbed scene and Hugo's aunt Sue, who was a gem. This was my first Elizabeth Rolls and will not be my last. 4.5 stars.
The Scandalous Widow opens with Lady Althea Hartleigh, née Price. She was left penniless when her husband died and has had to figure out how to survive since then. After her year of mourning was up, Althea had an affair that became public and ostracized by her brother and the rest of the family. Althea withdrew from society, decamped to a less expensive neighborhood and took up writing novels as a way to support herself. She's been living quietly in Soho for years when Hugo Guthrie, her brother's solicitor, shows up on her doorstep with her two nieces. Her brother passed away, leaving the estate in severe debt. Their cousin put the girls on a carriage to London alone with instructions for Hugo to put them in an orphanage but he can't do it. Instead he prevails on Althea to take the girls in. Althea does and immediately gets Hugo's help to provide for the girls in her will should something happen to her. She asks Hugo to be a trustee and he agrees and begins to spend time with Althea outside their business relationship.
This book did exactly what I want a category romance to do: it hit the ground running with the plot. It only takes about two chapters to get the girls living with Althea. And we see immediately how taking in the girls has uprooted Althea's careful existence. She has to start engaging with her neighbors and becoming part of some kind of society again so her girls can learn how to be young ladies. I loved that Althea does not live in Mayfair, but rather in Soho, which means her community is more diverse. The women around Althea work, there are people of color and people of different social classes living side-by-side.
I also enjoyed that our hero was not part of the upper classes. He is a middle class, working man who has done very well for himself but does not have the biases of the aristocracy. Because of his position in the world, he's more open to seeing Althea for who and what she is than someone who is part of the aristocracy.
My favorite category romances are the ones that take on a societal issue through the plot. And in The Scandalous Widow, Elizabeth Rolls takes on the double standard that exists for men and women who engage in the same behavior. Althea is criticized by her family for blowing through her fortune when her brother did exactly the same thing and is ostracized by society for having two affairs, when all the men of her acquaintance have done the same with no consequences. It turns out that not everything is as it seems in Althea's past but she does not deny the affairs and doesn't understand why she is shamed for them when she was a widow and the men were single. She pushes everyone to reexamine their prejudices and preconceived notions of how a woman should behave.
Other things I enjoyed in this book include the dog, the sickbed scene and Hugo's aunt Sue, who was a gem. This was my first Elizabeth Rolls and will not be my last. 4.5 stars.
September 12, 2025
The Scandalous Widow is Elizabeth Rolls at her best. The leads are both good people, the children are written realistically, and the dog is adorable. Moreover, it's the sort of story where the characters are drawn to each other largely because of their mutual respect and liking for each other, not just attraction. (Though there are plenty of physical sparks between them!)
There's plenty of conflict and tension in the story, but most of it comes from the way the leads' desires conflict with their fears, their past, and their present duties. While I didn't always agree with Hugo's view of his professional ethics, I did understand why he felt he had to conceal certain things from Althea. Similarly, Althea's anxiety about the institution of marriage was entirely understandable, given both her personal past and the legal status of women.
What I didn't realize going into this read is that The Scandalous Widow includes characters from both Rolls' "Rakes" books and her "Lords at the Altar" books. I think there's crossover with other books I've not yet read, too. You don't NEED to know all the details about side characters to follow this story, but it would help to have a chart showing the proper reading order.
There's plenty of conflict and tension in the story, but most of it comes from the way the leads' desires conflict with their fears, their past, and their present duties. While I didn't always agree with Hugo's view of his professional ethics, I did understand why he felt he had to conceal certain things from Althea. Similarly, Althea's anxiety about the institution of marriage was entirely understandable, given both her personal past and the legal status of women.
What I didn't realize going into this read is that The Scandalous Widow includes characters from both Rolls' "Rakes" books and her "Lords at the Altar" books. I think there's crossover with other books I've not yet read, too. You don't NEED to know all the details about side characters to follow this story, but it would help to have a chart showing the proper reading order.
October 24, 2024
Lady Althea and the lawyer
Lady Althea is a widow, cast off by her family for well publicised indiscretions, living in her own house, her own mistress - and then Sarah and Kate arrive. Her nieces, her despised brother dead by his own hand as a result of gambling debts, the girls being sent to London by his heir, penniless and on the point of destitution bound for either an orphanage or an asylum. They are brought to Althea by her brother's man of law, Hugo Guthrie, who is determined to find the girls a home with one of their family. What a great story. The plot twists and turns with money grabbing heirs and rude old wealthy matriarchs determined to ferret out the truth about the girls being cast off, and about Althea herself, before the devil and old age claims them. I actually cheered in the final stages when I realised the plot twist that was about to unfold. I really enjoyed this - a real page turner with a clever kind hero and an exceptionally strong heroine. 5 stars all the way for this one. Loved it.
Lady Althea is a widow, cast off by her family for well publicised indiscretions, living in her own house, her own mistress - and then Sarah and Kate arrive. Her nieces, her despised brother dead by his own hand as a result of gambling debts, the girls being sent to London by his heir, penniless and on the point of destitution bound for either an orphanage or an asylum. They are brought to Althea by her brother's man of law, Hugo Guthrie, who is determined to find the girls a home with one of their family. What a great story. The plot twists and turns with money grabbing heirs and rude old wealthy matriarchs determined to ferret out the truth about the girls being cast off, and about Althea herself, before the devil and old age claims them. I actually cheered in the final stages when I realised the plot twist that was about to unfold. I really enjoyed this - a real page turner with a clever kind hero and an exceptionally strong heroine. 5 stars all the way for this one. Loved it.
November 9, 2024
Lady Althea is widowed, and having been being left nearly penniless after her husband stole her inheritance and gambled it all away, has finally reached a position where she can live comfortably, but not extravagantly. But then she's asked to take on her late brothers two daughters after their guardian asked his lawyer to put them into orphanages.
High a lawyer can't put these two young girls into an orphanage, they've lost their home and parents already and can't lose each other. So he contacts all members of their family, and no one will take them in, so he tries Lady Althea, their fathers disowned sister, and if she want take them he'll take them himself. When he meets Althea he's intrigued, and when she comes to him to draw up a trust for the girls and her will, he realised she not the woman the girls father made her out to ne.
Slow to get going, but once it did a good book. A few loose ends left at the end of the book so 4.5*
High a lawyer can't put these two young girls into an orphanage, they've lost their home and parents already and can't lose each other. So he contacts all members of their family, and no one will take them in, so he tries Lady Althea, their fathers disowned sister, and if she want take them he'll take them himself. When he meets Althea he's intrigued, and when she comes to him to draw up a trust for the girls and her will, he realised she not the woman the girls father made her out to ne.
Slow to get going, but once it did a good book. A few loose ends left at the end of the book so 4.5*
November 9, 2024
Readers are sleeping on this book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews