Читать книгу The Governess Heiress - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 4

Author Note

During the Regency period a governess wasn’t regarded as an equal by her employers, but she didn’t belong in the servants’ hall either. She had to earn the respect of her pupils and employers, and teach young ladies all the accomplishments that would fit them for high society, but not turn them into blue stockings. Then she had to hand them on to a suitable chaperon and find a new position where she could do it all again with another set of strangers—if she was lucky.

The moment I began to wonder if any of them enjoyed taking on such a challenge Eleanor Hancourt turned up, as if she’d been waiting for a chance to have her say. With enough secrets in her travelling box to keep a novelist happy for months, and a hero who tells almost as many lies as she does, she has been a joy to write about.

So this is Nell’s story. Anyone who read The Winterley Scandal, in which Nell’s brother Colm meets the love of his life, will recognise some characters in this book, but The Governess Heiress is also intended to stand alone—just as bright, determined and ever-so-slightly bossy Nell Hancourt had to when her wicked uncle turned her out into the world to earn her own bread.