Tag: Runaways

July 1819

A most shocking bit of news has reached This Author’s ears regarding none other than the Duke of Ashmore’s sister. Yes, you have read right: Lady Arabella, this season’s Incomparable. They say, gentle reader, that Lady Arabella has mysteriously disappeared from the aforementioned duke’s residence on the evening of June 14 and not been seen since. It has come to This Author’s attention that the duke has sent out bowstreet runners to look for her. The Duke of Ashmore, who is as high in the instep as no other, with a name yet untouched by scandal and gossip, is said to be quite beside himself with worry.

Has she been kidnapped?

Has she run away?

Or has she – oh horror – eloped to Gretna Green?

The ton is abuzz with rumours. One cannot help but wonder how, and in what manner, our Incomparable has finally, and sadly, come to fall.

But oh, let it be known, Curious Reader, that This Author has it on the best of authority that a lady of the same stature, regal bearing and complexion as Lady Arabella has been espied boarding the stagecoach not to Gretna Green, but to Cornwall! Upon inquiring where she was heading, she replied she was answering a position as a governess—with a family of bourgeois origins.

A duke’s daughter as a governess?

This Author finds this so inconceivable that she has concluded this particular rumour to be a vicious falsehood, indeed. It cannot be true.

Or can it?

♥♥♥

About the Book

Arabella and the Reluctant Duke by Sofi Laporte

A runaway duke’s daughter. A handsome blacksmith. A festering secret.

Their lives were built on lies……until they unravelled.

Being a duke’s daughter is not all it’s cracked up to be. Surely there must be more to life than embroidery, balls, and finding a husband?

Running away to work as a governess, Lady Arabella does not count on being hired by a precocious 14-year-old girl who runs the family…. or being swept away by her dashingly handsome father.

Mr Philip Merivale, inventor, blacksmith and widowed father of three lively children, is not amused. Clearly, the beautiful new governess who answered his daughter’s advertisement must be a lady. There is one thing he hates more than anything: the aristocracy.

But challenging the lady who has snuck into his life has unexpected consequences: Philip finds himself falling for a woman whose true identity represents all he claims to despise.

When spats turn to sparks, Arabella discovers that Philip harbours a devastating secret of his own… one that threatens to jeopardise everything.

Arabella and the Reluctant Duke is a standalone and Book 2 of The Wishing Well Series. This is a sweet traditional Regency with simmering romance, mischievous, witty banter, and heart-throbbing happily ever after.

Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/32xRAa1

♥♥♥

About the Author

Sofi was born in Vienna, grew up in Seoul, studied Comparative Literature in Maryland, U.S.A., and lived in Quito with her Ecuadorian husband. She has worked as a journalist, university lecturer, foreign language teacher and librarian. Sofi likes coffee, owls, ruins and books. When not writing – she is always reading – she likes to travel and scramble about the countryside exploring medieval castle ruins, which she blogs about on her website. She currently lives with her husband, 3 trilingual children, a sassy cat and a cheeky dog in Europe.

Visit her website here: https://www.sofilaporte.com

Join her newsletter to receive a free prequel to the Wishing Well series: https://www.sofilaporte.com/newsletter-1

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Mistletoe and Cold Feet

By Bluestocking Belles

On November 7, 2020

In Teatime Tattler

Tender Readers,

The Teatime Tattler office has bombarded with reports of brides developing cold feet and late nerves, calling off, slipping off, and even running off.

We understand that naval Lieutenant Redepenning—yes one of those Redepennings—has chased after the admiral’s daughter pulling her out of scrapes since she was a nipper. Still, one didn’t expect a young man of his standing to pursue the young lady across half of England only to end up at her aunt’s in Oxford. We understand there was gingerbread involved somehow but the details are sketchy.

As to Lady Julia Tate, the world can guess that Oliver Stanton pursues the woman for her money. Still, we heard she’d accepted him, and that the marriage would take place. But now she’s gone, and no one knows where. Fantastically, we heard she fled to the Americans, or to the antipodes, or even—we laugh to contemplate it—the future. Wherever she is, it appears Stanton has gone after her. Should we wish a fortune hunter well or no?

The Earl of Chadbourn spent this season rusticating near Wheatton in Wiltshire. Rumors from there are that a local squire’s daughter caught his eye, but she played coy. One hears there are family secrets in his sister’s household. Can they have driven the chit away?

Even vicars’ daughters are not immune, as Mr. Templeton, he that has the holding in Edington, discovered to his distress. His Margaret seemed likely to marry Captain Morledge, an perfectly respectable union, until Viscount Beacham appeared on the scene. Could a man of his standing be serious? Whatever the case, she went missing. One can only shake one’s head.

About the Book

Holidays, relatives, pressure to marry—sometimes it is all too much. Is it any wonder a woman may need to escape? The heroines in this collection of stories aren’t afraid to take matters into their own hands when they’ve had enough.

The Ultimate Escape, by Susana Ellis

On the eve of her wedding, Julia needs to take a moment to consider what she is doing, and where better than 100 years in the past? Unfortunately, Oliver finds a way to chase her through time.

Under the Mistletoe, by Sherry Ewing

Margaret Templeton will settle for Captain Morledge’s hand in marriage, until she sees the man she once loved at her second-best bridegroom’s Christmas party.

Gingerbread Bride, by Jude Knight

Travelling with her father’s fleet has not prepared Mary Pritchard for London. When she strikes out on her own, she finds adventure, trouble, and her girlhood hero, riding once more to her rescue.

A Dangerous Nativity, by Caroline Warfield

With Christmas coming, can the Earl of Chadbourn repair his widowed sister’s damaged estate, and far more damaged family? Dare he hope for love in the bargain?

These stories are republished here at 20% of the cost of collecting them all from each individual author

Two bonus short stories round out the collection.

Buy here!

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3lQYfU8

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Misplaced or Runaway Fiancé?

By Bluestocking Belles

On October 10, 2020

In Teatime Tattler

A friend of The Teatime Tattler in Shropshire sent word this week of a delicious bit of naughtiness. Lady B—’s cook’s cousin’s daughter serves as an upstairs maid in the house of a rather notorious baroness so we know this report to be true. The baroness and her nephew, we’re told, departed the manor in a rush last week in pursuit of the nephew’s fiancé, who had disappeared. How, we may ask, does on misplace a fiancé.

We will not mention the baroness by name, but she is well known as the daughter of a wealthy mill owner, mills well known for their ghastly employment practice and filthy premises. The woman, Lady B— insists is a jumped-up mushroom who bought a titled husband and now— But perhaps that is a story for another day. Suffice to say, the young woman perhaps had her reasons for departing such a place in a hurry.

We would have left it at that, but one of Lady B—’s happened to follow a similar route and reports that the baroness and the nephew inquired after this person all along the road from under Wrexham to Birmingham and back. One might have ignored the incident except at every stop they queried not only about a gently bred—but distraught—young lady and—this is the important part—a shabby coachman. What sort of well brought up innocent runs off with a coachman? Perhaps she’s no better than she should be. Or perhaps the cad has nefarious designs on an innocent.

Kindly forward any word about the fugitive pair to our offices in London.

About the Story, “The Fugitive Fiancé”

What can a penniless orphan do, when faced with a malodorous baron and an authoritarian baroness? She can run, that’s what.

Alone and without family, Alice Pennysmith puts up with a lot: an unpaid position as companion, waiting on a demanding baroness, people mangling her name, the scorn of superior servants… She almost lets herself be pushed into marriage with the vile Reggie, but his behavior is the last straw. How can she escape?

With his year of service to at an end, Grant Lambert is eager to leave his contract with Lord Reginald Buffton, Baron Albright——a foolish agreement to settle a bet. He already found far better, well-paying, respectable employment. He just can’t bring himself to leave the charming Miss Pennysmith in the clutches of his despicable employer. There’s only one thing for it—he’ll have to take her with him, even if he has to “borrow” the baron’s carriage to do it.

***

“The Fugitive Fiancé was written to order from story element specified by a contest winner. It was given away to subscribers of Caroline Warfield’s newsletter. She gives original stories to her subscribers two to three times a year. To receive this one and others, subscribe to her newsletter:

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About the Author

Caroline Warfield – Author

Traveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she is now a writer of historical romance, enamored of owls, books, history, and beautiful gardens, who sits in an office surrounded by windows and lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.