Jude Morgan

Caroline Fortune is the daughter of a good natured but selfish and shiftless rakish former army officer. She is well accustomed to talk of gambling, likes a tipple, can curse like a trooper and always has a weather eye open for the bailiffs. But her father has reached the point where he can no longer take responsibility for supporting her (though in truth it has been the other way round for some time now) and she becomes the paid companion to the widow of her father’s former colonel.

The widow is a witty but wicked gossip, totally self-centred and cynical. She is childless and delights in tantalising her niece and nephew about the contents of her will. Without giving any of the excellent plot away, Caroline’s employment comes to an abrupt end in unhappy circumstances but she is lucky enough to be taken in by her maternal aunt and her clergyman husband who are a pair of saintly innocents and genuinely nice people. Caroline has a good heart, loves them and wants sincerely to be happy with them in their sleepy little village. But as the Lord of the neighbouring great house tells her she ‘looks like trouble’. And inadvertently she is trouble. I can say no more without spoiling a truly delicious plot. This is historical writing at its absolute best: witty, its learning lightly and appropriately worn, engaging characters, playfulness, an elopement, and, hooray, we end with a marriage proposal.