This lively novel is set during the Regency. It involves two sisters - and two men - who chase each other up and down the road between East Kent and London in the middle of a cold February.Cynthia and Amabel's father has died recently and they face having to leave their home when his heir arrives to take possession. Both are upset; Amabel, at fifteen, is an impulsive girl and takes matters into her own hands. This drives Cynthia to run after her with the intention of saving her from ruin.But things are not quite how they look and very soon Cynthia finds herself in a perilous situation, both emotionally and physically, although she doesn't recognise either until it is too late on one front and nearly too late on the other.The sisters' adventure veers between hope, despair and romantic love. Along the way they have a great deal of fun and not a little danger.It is written in an ironic and sophisticated style, which harks back not only to the period in which it is set but also to the literary form prevalent in the early to mid 20th century.
About the Author: Catherine Bowness has only begun to write novels since she retired. Partly, this was lack of time; mainly, it was lack of confidence. Now, living in the country with several cats and two dogs, she is able to indulge herself. She says she writes escapist novels because that's what she wants to read and there never seem to be enough of them. Her parents lived abroad and she went to boarding school. She spent the holidays with her Victorian grandmother and thinks that she would have been a different person - and might write different books - if she had not been alone so much during her childhood. She passed the time reading 19th century and early 20th century novels and suspects this may be the reason why she writes in the way she does. She is a counsellor and hypnotherapist. It was when she began writing scripts for her hypnotherapy training that she realised how powerful and soothing escapism can be and how images, led by the hypnotherapist but conjured by the client, can open the mind and soothe the soul. It was this, and the joy she felt when writing them, that inspired her finally to start writing the novels she had always wanted to since early childhood. Practising hypnotherapy gave her the courage to share her writing with others. She is enjoying her new career enormously.