Author Note

When I wrote Least Likely to Marry a Duke, I discovered that Verity Wingate had four close friends—Melissa Taverner, a freethinking novelist; Lucy Lambert, a pianist; Prue Scott, a scholar; and Jane Newnham, an artist.

Verity won her duke, but what happened to her friends, all of whom were following their vocations in the face of family disapproval? I had not intended to write a series, but their fates began to intrigue me. So here is the story of one of them, Jane Newnham, although you do not have to have read Verity’s story to follow Jane’s.

How does a respectable young lady from a modest gentry family find herself betrothed to an earl, especially when Jane never intended to marry anyone and the earl in question clearly has a secret in his past? I hope you enjoy finding out as much as I enjoyed writing their story.