Part of Series
It's a maiden's miracle! Annabelle Quennell, daughter of a poor country parson, gets a chance at a London Season to snare a wealthy husband. But before she sets off, Mad Meg the Gypsy predicts trouble ahead! And it is nothing but woe that Annabelle finds. Godmother Lady Emmeline sponsors Annabelle's spree-and demands she wed the oafish Capt. MacDonald. But things get worse when Annabelle fears she is losing her heart to Lord Varleigh - elegant,well-pursed, but who is taken by another mistress! What a pickle Annabelle had gotten into, and it only gets more sour by the moment! Blessed with beauty, Mrs. Manners had never bothered with the more practical (and to her, lesser) skills of grammar and spelling. So it is, in order to snag a second husband, namely the handsome Duke of Denbigh, she needed the help of Miss Verity Bascombe. Surely the modest chit would be honored to help write her love letters. Poor Verity! Her old school-girl friend remained as selfish as ever. But the lovely girl's gilded pen soon had the duke most intrigued by the poetic Mrs. Manners! But alas, what began as a seemingly minor deception became a larger problem and Verity soon found herself enamored of the handsome duke, wanting him all for herself! ABOUT THE SERIES In this whirlwind series, Marion Chesney brings us spirited, independent women who are at once bewitching, beguiling and determined to have their say and make their mark on both their world and the world at large, be it within their social circle or extending beyond with their arms wide open these women are absolutely original and unforgettable as are the tales in which they are featured. Here is life in all of it's folly and foibles set out for us as we watch on this dizzying place where dreams are both shattered and made. ABOUT THE AUTHOR From 1977 to the early 1990's Marion Chesney wrote over one hundred romance novels. Now writing as M. C. Beaton, she is the bestselling award-winning author of two internationally successful mystery series - HAMISH MACBETH and AGATHA RAISIN. She lives in the United Kingdom.
Author
Like her on Facebook! Learn more on her website! Marion Chesney Gibbons aka: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Marion Chesney, Charlotte Ward, Sarah Chester. Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York. Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, urged by her husband, started to write historical romances in 1977. After she had written over 100 of them under her maiden name, Marion Chesney, and under the pseudonyms: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward, and Sarah Chester, she getting fed up with 1714 to 1910, she began to write detectives stories in 1985 under the pseudonym of M. C. Beaton. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Constable Hamish Macbeth story. They returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. But Charles was at school, in London so when he finished and both tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds where Agatha Raisin was created.
