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.