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When I came across the correspondence of Lady Mary Bagot and Sir Charles Bagot, I was immediately drawn to them and their remarkable story. Their letters were filled with humor and heartache as they chronicled the highs and lows of married life and international relations. I enjoyed working on this project because Mary and Charles were Georgians in their outlook, believing it was their duty to embrace life and seize the pleasures of the moment. I admired their optimism and sense of adventure. I appreciated their humor, which is surprisingly in step with the twenty-first century. Roy Porter sums up my feelings perfectly when he declares his affinity with the Georgians, asserting: “I savour their pithy prose and feel more in tune with those warm, witty, clubbable men than with say, the aggrieved Puritans.”1 Many factors drew me to this story. Firstly, I adore the Regency period filled with glamour and gossip. Second, I wanted to write about a bold woman who was very different to the heroines created by Jane Austen. Third, I was intrigued by North American history and relished the opportunity to write a book set in London, Washington and Canada, with glittering St Petersburg thrown in for good measure. Mary first captured my attention when I chanced upon a letter she sent her brother proclaiming that his superior officers “have a right to take the piss out of you.” I was surprised by the phrase, which struck me as extremely modern for 1808, and rather vulgar for a refined lady of the era. The etymology of “take the piss” has been traced to the early nineteenth century leading me to believe that this is possibly the earliest written use of this phrase. Intrigued, I searched for more of Mary’s letters, which confirmed that she was an innovative, audacious character who flouted the rules and refused to conform to the restrictions placed on women in Georgian society. When I started this project, I already knew a lot about Mary’s early life because she was the sister of William Wellesley Pole, the notorious “cad” in my first book The Angel and the Cad. I was aware that Mary was similar to her brother in many respects and tended to succumb to her reckless and rebellious nature with disastrous repercussions. I wondered if her story would be one of ruin or redemption? Mary’s boldness also made me wonder what her husband had been like, particularly as my work often focuses on married couples and the dynamics in a relationship. I was curious – would he try to subdue her, or bend to her will?