My new story begins in Cornwall 1785. Constance Abbott, daughter of a scholarly father who was hopeless with money and lost it all on the 'change, is now an orphan and travels to her godfather's castle to live under his protection. She fears what awaits her there, for she hardly knew the haughty man who now wishes to make her his ward. We waste a good deal of our lives worrying about things that never happen, and in Constance's case, this proves to be true. But she finds another set of alarming circumstances awaiting her.
The Georgian ideal of womanhood interests me, she was seen as a practical domestic sort of person, abounding in good sense and judgment. A loveless marriage was infinely more respectable than the pursuit of a congenial profession. When an elegible bachelor presented himself, she felt that it was her duty to love him, or at any rate to marry him. As a contemporary romance writer, I wish to write about a woman who defies convention. Women were regarded as inferior to men, and kept from education because it would interfere with their role as wife and mother, this began to be challenged towards the end of the 18th Century. If you have any learning, a woman was advised, keep it from men.
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