I travel. Sometimes I travel by boat, plane, or automobile. Sometimes I travel by book. Sometimes I explore the real world. This week I continued to ramble around York. I followed Doro Bigglesworth and Chloe Tavistock to a lecture at the ancient Guild Hall. They are good friends in as complicated a relationship as the Earl of Seahaven’s family can manage. Chloe is the half sister of Doro’s younger half sisters, Merry and Emma. They share an irreverent if not entire radical view of life.
The merchant guilds of York were large, rich, and powerful, and a number of such halls were built. The Guild Hall, originally built for the Guild of Saints Christopher and George in the 15th century, evolved into a meeting place for the city government itself. It has witnessed trials (the martyr Margaret Chlitherow’s for example), various councils, and even a royal banquet.
There have been reform movements and lectures as well including the (fictional) one to protest The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1817 that Doro and Chloe attended. Surprising things ensued. Neither expected the meeting to be quite so disordered. Neither expected the intervention of troops. Neither expected to be rescued by handsome gentlemen. Doro certainly didn’t expect Chloe to have a monkey in the basket she carried. At least it ended well.
About the Story Lord Cuckoo Comes Home
When Dom was ten, his supposed father pronounced him someone else’s bastard. Decades later, he longs to finally find a home. A place to call his own.
Chloe has grown up on the outskirts of family and society—unfashionable in her shape, her opinions, and her enthusiasms. She is too old for the marriage market, but she yearns for a place to belong.
Two misfits find that they fit: happiness requires a person, not a place.
About the Book Desperate Daughters
Love Against the Odds
The Earl of Seahaven desperately wanted a son and heir but died leaving nine daughters and a fifth wife. Cruelly turned out by the new earl, they live hand-to-mouth in a small cottage.
The young dowager Countess’s one regret is that she cannot give Seahaven’s dear girls a chance at happiness.
When a cousin offers the use of her townhouse in York during the season, the Countess rallies her stepdaughters.
They will pool their resources so that the youngest marriageable daughters might make successful matches, thereby saving them all.
So start their adventures in York, amid a whirl of balls, lectures, and alfresco picnics. Is it possible each of them might find love by the time the York horse races bring the Season to a close?
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