Her Grace paused for a moment in the doorway of the private sitting room where today’s guest was waiting. Kitty’s attention was currently caught by something outside the window, so Eleanor could examine her without embarrassing the young woman. Her popularity on the social rounds was not unexpected. She had wealth, youth, good looks, intelligence and excellent manners. Her […]
I’m preparing to publish the novel A Raging Madness, which is set in Regency England, mostly on canal boats or in a tumble-down manor house in the Lincolnshire Wolds. The book is currently with the proofreader, and will be released on 9 May. So what does that mean ‘preparing to publish’? For me, it means […]
I’ve just sent A Raging Madness off for proofreading, which clears my mental space for the other stories that are simmering on the back of the stove or still spread out across the kitchen table as raw ingredients. Over the past three years, since I first began Farewell to Kindness, I’ve discovered I’m neither a […]
An excerpt post this week. My hero Rede from Farewell to Kindness has travelled to Margate to consult with his aunt, the Duchess of Haverford. The sun was setting on Saturday evening, and Rede was beside himself with frustration, before the Duchess of Haverford’s coach was finally seen tooling up the road to the castle. […]
Unrelieved black suits few women, but Susan Cunningham is one of those whose beauty it enhances, her guinea-gold hair glowing under the black lace that covered it, her porcelain skin looking whiter by contrast. “I sent my condolences when I heard, Susan, but may I say in person how sorry I was to hear that […]
I like to give my hero and heroine something to do together, and in my novels, at least, the problem they have to solve tends to be as intractable as possible. In Farewell to Kindness, both hero and heroine have their own missions, and each has to choose between their goal and the feelings between […]
“The duchess is a charming, gracious lady, Min,” Viscount Avery assured his wife, when he dropped her to the front entrance of Haverford House. He immediately undercut his own assumption of confidence. “I can stay if you wish. Do you want me to stay?” Minerva Avery looked around the grand entrance hall, the full height […]
Mary was a daughter of the navy, raised aboard ship by her admiral father and a succession of nurses. She had learned her company manners from the gentlemen’s sons who vied to sit at her father’s table, and had them polished almost to breaking point during her one London Season. Since then, she’d become wife to […]
Lady Anne Stocke and her governess present themselves on the terrace at precisely three in the afternoon to find Her Grace already waiting for them. “Anne, my dear. And Miss Henwood. Do take a seat. Are the little girls happily amused?” Anne seats herself next to the duchess. “Indeed, Aunt Eleanor. Kitty has gone down into […]
The headline is a quote from the man I adore: “What have you learned from this experience?” (Not, incidentally, what you want to hear when you’ve just bumped your toe or broken your heart. But I love you, darling.) Two years ago this December, I published my first historical romance, a novella. I’ve since published two […]