The first book in the Regency series, 1992

‘Mmmm.’ Dorothea closed her eyes, savouring the taste of sun-warmed wild blackberry. Surely the most delicious of summer’s delights. She surveyed the huge bush. Burgeoning with ripe fruit, it stretched across one side of the small clearing. More than enough to fill tonight’s pie, with plenty left over to make jam. She settled her basket on the ground and set to. Working methodically over the bush, she selected the best berries and dropped them into the basket in a fluid stream. While her hands laboured, her mind went tripping. How childlike her sister still was, for all her sixteen years. It was at her suggestion Dorothea was here, deep in the woods of the neighbouring estate. Cecily craved blackberries for supper. So, brown eyes sparkling, golden ringlets dancing, she had begged her elder sister, about to depart for a ramble to gather herbs, to make a detour to the blackberry bush.

Her elder sister sighed. Would London erase that dazzling spontaneity? More importantly, would their projected trip to the capital free Cecily of this humdrum existence? Six months had passed since their mother, Cynthia, Lady Darent, had succumbed to a chill, leaving her two daughters to the guardianship of their cousin, Herbert, Lord Darent. Five interminable months spent at Darent Hall in Northamptonshire while the lawyers picked over the will had convinced Dorothea that no help and much hindrance could be expected from that quarter. Herbert, not to put too fine a point on it, was an indefatigable bore. And Marjorie, his wife, prim, prosy and hopelessly inelegant in every way, was worse than useless. If their grandmother had not appeared, exactly like the proverbial fairy godmother, goodness only knew what they would have done.