A fine Madness

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” Jane Austen MISS OTIS REGRETS... The entirety of Miss Elspeth Otis’s inheritance from her wastrel father is a battered old trunk with some scrawled-upon foolscap sheets. Nothing that could free her from a stifling life with her fusty maiden aunties in a musty old cottage in a misty corner of Scotland. Nothing that will give her the life she’s always dreamed of—a life full of kindness and kisses and love. Or will it? NOTHING... Mr. Hamish Cathcart wants more than anything to avoid the hasty marriage to a brewer’s daughter his father, the earl, has arranged to revive his fortunes. Hamish’s only hope is his failing publishing company, whose only asset is a scandalously banned book by an infamous, but unfortunately deceased, author. But when a new novel written by the same man lands on Hamish’s doorstep, he’ll go to any length to secure it—any length but love. ------- This novella was previously released in the anthology Scandal's Daughters.