A Hint of Scandal

Fate throws a shy wallflower into the path of a handsome wounded soldier.

Major Max Aubrey, invalided out of the army, has to marry before he turns thirty in a few months' time-or he'll forfeit the property left to him by his late father. Along with his much older brother, the Earl of Westbury, his mother and sister-in-law are determined he should marry forthwith and receive his inheritance. It's with marked reluctance that he agrees to escort his sister-in-law and niece to London for the season.

Serafina Gilbert, the orphaned half-sister of Sir Ogden Gilbert, is very much the poor relation in the Gilbert family. When the parsimonious Ogden takes a small house in London for the season, he and his wife, who hates Serafina, bring her along so she can act as an unpaid companion to their oldest daughter. Being already twenty-two, Serafina has had it drummed into her that she's an unattractive old maid.

At her first ball, Serafina bumps into Max. When they both inadvertently end up escaping to the safety of the dark summerhouse, Max offers to escort her to the British Museum. Each acknowledges, without saying anything, that they're attracted to one another.

After Serafina accepts Max's almost businesslike proposal of marriage, his mother invites her to visit Bratton Park, the seat of Max's ailing brother. There, they discover the earl has a problem that could cause a terrible scandal: a woman is claiming to be his lawful wife. And now, it seems, she's determined that her adult son is the true heir to the earldom.

Suddenly, it falls to Max and Serafina to discover the truth before they can even think about the growing-and real-feelings between them.

The Mismatched Lovers

Book 1: A Sham Engagement

Book 2: A Hint of Scandal

Book 3: A Duchess of Mystery

Fil Reid lives four miles from the sea in Cornwall with her husband and a rescue dog from Romania called Bella. Her books have been published by Dragonblade in the US since she won their Write Stuff competition. Her first six books comprise the Guinevere series - an innovative retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of a modern origin Guinevere. Her short stories have been shortlisted in several competitions and won a few prizes. She has a new series set in Cornwall coming out this year, starting with The Cornish Mermaid.Apart from writing, the great love of her life has always been horses, and when she was younger she worked with them for a number of years - on the stud attached to Highclere Castle (where Downton Abbey was filmed), as a stable girl in a flat racing yard (when she was young, brave and thin), and in a riding school. She also ran her own riding school when her children were small.She speaks fluent French after having lived there for ten years, after which she lived on a widebeam canal boat before her move to Cornwall. One of the things she loves to do is to visit the sites she uses in her stories. However, she has acrophobia, a morbid fear of heights, so one or two places are out of reach to her. Too scary!She's been fascinated by all things Arthurian since she was a small child and saw the Disney film The Sword in the Stone, but didn't find out until she was an adult that she has Asperger's Syndrome (as do two of her sons). She now believes her ASD accounts for her obsessions with both horses and King Arthur.

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