Sir Gareth Ludlow intends to make a sensible proposal to his old friend Lady Hester Theale, believing that companionship is all he can now offer. On the road to her home, he encounters Amanda Smith, a determined runaway who invents a succession of identities to avoid being returned to her family.
Gareth’s effort to protect Amanda creates increasingly elaborate misunderstandings and eventually draws Hester into the confusion. The adventure overturns his assumptions about duty, lost love and the quiet woman whose feelings he has underestimated.
Amanda's inventions work because Regency society takes family, guardianship and female reputation seriously enough that each new story demands a response. Gareth's attempt to behave honourably traps him in increasingly absurd situations, while Hester's quiet competence exposes how badly he has misunderstood her. The comedy turns social convention into the mechanism through which apparently sensible plans unravel.
C. S. Harris
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