Marriage, She Wrote

She failed to elope. She failed to be forgotten. Now she must prove she deserves a second chance — before the Prince Regent arrives to judge her.

Demeter Mellingham has made a spectacular mess of her reputation. A failed elopement, a vanished captain, and a family in disgrace have earned her the cruelest punishment her father could devise: exile to a rain-soaked estate in North Wales, far from London society, far from her mother's comfort, and far from any hope of redemption. Her only company is a stream of unanswered letters, a Marchioness who conducts trade, and the unsettling warmth of a foreman's smile cutting through the perpetual grey gloom.

Then her father's latest letter delivers a new catastrophe. The Prince Regent is coming — personally — to inspect two exotic creatures placed in Demeter's sole care. It is her one chance to demonstrate the responsibility and good sense she so desperately needs to reclaim. Within hours of their arrival, one of those creatures clears a six-foot hedgerow and vanishes into the Welsh countryside. Of course it does.

As Demeter scrambles to salvage the situation, she finds herself relying on the composed, quietly commanding estate foreman — Lloyd Alwyn – a man whose steady presence is becoming far more distracting than the disaster unfolding around her.

With a royal visit looming, a runaway springbok on the loose, and a heart still bruised from one man's silence, can Demeter restore order — and her reputation — before she loses far more than an antelope?