in which sisters, Lucia and Christabel Venables, sell hats and conduct discreet inquiries on the behalf of the lovelorn in 1890s Cambridge.
Once in a while, a story comes along and just has to be written. An Utterly Unsuitable Lady began as research for the next Vita Carew murder mystery, but then refused to behave itself and became a romance instead. I don’t quite know how it happened, but the result is a touching story about a young woman who can’t escape a scandal in her past, and a professor who barely looks up from his studies for long enough to notice that time is passing.
There is water everywhere in this story. It’s set in a hot Cambridge summer in the 1890s.
It will bring a tear to your eye, but I hope it will also make you laugh. There are some spectacular hats and even a nicely malevolent cat.
This first book in the series goes live on Amazon on April 30th. I have lots more Moth Agency romances planned.
Incidentally, I’m using the pen name Lucy Greenhill because I don’t want readers of the murder mysteries I write as Fran Smith to be disappointed when nobody is killed in one of my books!
There are a lot of similarities in style and setting, it’s just that in Lucy Greenhill books, love takes over from crime.