Three women, two families, one forbidden marriage. Get ready to fall in love with the brand-new regency romance from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Godmersham Park and Miss Austen.

‘A richly imagined family saga, love story and social comedy’ Times

'Gripping and moving and also so sharp and funny. I loved it!’ Sabine Durrant, bestselling author of Lie with Me

‘Has all the wit and wisdom of a Jane Austen novel’ Red

1820. Mary Dorothea is living under the sole charge of her widowed father, Sir Edward, a man of strict principles and high moral values.

But when Sir Edward marries Miss Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, Mary’s life is suddenly changed.

Mary’s new stepmother, Fanny, comes from a large, happy and sociable family, and Fanny’s brothers are amusing, handsome and completely charming.

One brother is particularly attentive and, as Mary approaches her seventeenth birthday, a bond forms between them that leads, on the last day of the year 1825, to a proposal of marriage.

Sir Edward’s outrage is immediate, his refusal isabsolute. The union will never take place.

There appears to be only one solution . . .