Author Note

Kit and Martin first appeared several years ago in His Convenient Marchioness. I was always going to write their story, but it turned out I had to write A Marriage of Equals first. This gave me a chance to find out a little bit more about Kit, who appeared in that book as well, and her great-uncle Ignatius Selbourne.

Writing about a young woman who wants to control her own life in the early nineteenth century took me down some interesting byways. It’s worth noting that the Lady Jersey of Almack’s fame was the granddaughter of the banker Robert Child. She inherited his fortune and controlling interest in Child’s bank and acted as a director of the bank for decades as a married woman.

Until the Married Women’s Property Acts in 1870 and 1882, a married woman could not own property in her own name, and if she worked, her earnings belonged to her husband. Before that, the only way to protect a married woman’s property was to tie it up in legal trusts—something only available to the wealthy, such as Robert Child.

I hope you enjoy Kit and Martin’s story as much as I enjoyed finally writing it.