Melissa's Mask

Are you a Georgette Heyer fan? Did you ever wonder what happened to Melissa Brandon after Sir Richard Wyndham married Miss Penelope Creed. This is what I think happened and you might be surprised to discover that Miss Brandon is not the cold mercenary figure she that she appears at first to be.

On the Day Richard Wyndham marries Miss Penelope Creed, the bailiffs are knocking at the Brandon door. Lord Saar is dead, his eldest son has escaped to the Peninsula and his mother and sister are preparing to remove to Wiltshire where the Dowager Lady Saar is entitled to use a small house. The younger ladies are mortified at the abrupt change in their circumstances and not remotely reconciled to the move, and their mother who has lived her entire life in the shadow of her dominating but feckless husband has no idea how to go on.

Arriving at their new home they find it dilapidated and in urgent need of attention, the previous tenants having departed some weeks previously under strange circumstances. Having saved the life of their neighbour the dour Marquis of Skelton who drove his curricle into a fallen tree in front of her eyes, Melissa finds herself at the centre of a plot involving murder, highwaymen and stolen goods. Reluctantly she agrees to make a visit of ceremony to the Marquis home where The Marquis' mother offer her a post as companion.

Melissa must prevent her wayward sisters disgracing the family further and at the same time protect them all from Captain Trimble who is trying to blackmail them and has a strange desire to get into their house.

This story takes you from the Wilshire Countryside to Regency London, There are caves and hidden passages, a kidnapping, a sea battle and a puzzle to solve. What is it about the Larches that makes it such a magnet for thieves.

Melissa discovers that despite her years of hiding behind the cold mask of indifference, there comes a time when she must put it away and learn to trust again.