Wedlock

"'Wedlock' tells the remarkable true story of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore, who became Britain's richest heiress on the death of her entrepreneur father when she was 11. After an unhappy first marriage to John Lyon, the 9th Earl of Strathmore, who left her a widow when he died of TB, she was lured into marrying an Irish fortune-hunter named Andrew Robinson Stoney. Squandering her money and laying waste her vast estate, Stoney - who adopted the surname Bowes on marriage - reduced Mary to a wretched, starved, petrified shadow of her former self. After suffering eight years of cruelty and torment, Mary Eleanor finally found help in the most unlikely of places. A barely credible tale of survival and triumph against overwhelming odds, 'Wedlock' reveals an eighteenth-century world of sexual intrigue, terrifying adventure and court room drama."--