I am grateful to attorney Sheila Quigley for helping me navigate the complexities of Georgian marriage and estate laws, to Dr. Cheryl Kinney for her knowledge of Regency-era medicine, to Ann Voss Peterson for her horse expertise, and to dancing masters Lee Fuell, Patty Lindsay, and Joyce Lindsey for their patient instruction. I also thank the reference librarians of Wood-bourne Library for so cheerfully and capably tracking down materials and answers to obscure research questions.

Others provided support in ways less direct, but no less appreciated. Many thanks to Sharon Short, Sarah Schwager, Karen Downey and the staff of Carousel House, members of JASNA-Dayton and JASNA-Wisconsin, and JASNA president Marsha Huff.

Finally, I thank Jane Austen for inspiring the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy mystery series, and my readers for inspiring me to continue it. A bookseller once told me, “You have the nicest fans!” and I quite agree. You help make writing a joy.

“There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not

taken in when they marry. .. It is, of all transactions,

the one in which people expect the most from others,

and are least honest themselves.”

— Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park

The Matters at

Mansfield

She was all surprise and embarrassment.

— Mansfield Park

It is a truth less frequently acknowledged, that a good mother in possession of a single child, must be in want of sleep.

Whatever the habits or inclinations of such a woman might have been prior to her first entering the maternal state, in very short order her feelings and thoughts are so well fixed on her progeny that at any given hour she is considered, at least in the young minds of the principals, as the rightful property of some one or other of her offspring.