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THE SCANDALOUS SUMMERFIELDS
Disgrace is their middle name!
Left destitute by their philandering parents, the three Summerfield sisters—Tess, Lorene, and Genna—and their half-brother, Edmund, are the talk of the ton … for all the wrong reasons!
They are at the mercy of the marriage mart to transport their family from the fringes of society to the dizzy heights of respectability.
But with no dowries, and a damaged reputation, only some very special matches can survive the scandalous Summerfields!
Meet tempestuous Tess in
Bound by Duty
April 2015
And look out for the rest of the family’s exploits, coming soon!
An idea for a story might come from anywhere. A random event. A place. A character from history. For my new mini-series, The Scandalous Summerfields, the spark came from a previous generation of my own family—my mother and her sisters and brother.
I did not want to tell their life stories, though. They lived ordinary lives, heroic in ordinary ways, minus the drama and conflict of a romance novel. Instead I took inspiration from them.
Like my mother and her sisters, the Summerfields are left to fend for themselves at a young age. My mother’s parents died when my mother was barely in her twenties and her youngest sister was still in high school. Their brother—the oldest—had already married and had children of his own, so the three sisters needed to band together to take care of each other. As a result, my mother and my aunts were extremely close for their whole lives. My Aunt Loraine even lived with us until I was a teenager. There was not a day that went by when she and my mother did not talk on the phone, nor a week that passed without them calling my Aunt Gerry, who lived some distance away.
I wanted my Summerfield sisters to have this closeness to each other, and to their brother. I wanted to honour that special bond I saw in my mother and aunts—a bond I share with my own two sisters.
I hope you enjoy Book One of The Scandalous Summerfields.
Bound by Duty
Diane Gaston
DIANE GASTON always said that if she were not a mental health social worker she’d want to be a romance novelist, writing the historical romances she loved to read. When this dream came true she discovered a whole new world of friends and happy endings. Diane lives in Virginia, near Washington, DC, with her husband and three very ordinary house cats. She loves to hear from readers! Contact her at www.dianegaston.com or on Facebook or Twitter.
To the memory of my mother, Teresa Gaston, a kind and gentle soul who was always quietly there for me, and who would never, ever hurt anyone’s feelings.
Contents
February 1815—Lincolnshire, England
The winter wind rattled the windowpanes of Summerfield House as Tess Summerfield answered her older sister’s summons.
Come to the morning room immediately, her note said.
More bad news, Tess feared. It seemed lately that the only time Lorene summoned her and their youngest sister, Genna, to that parlour was to hear bad news.
The wind’s wail seemed appropriately foreboding.
The morning room on its best sunny days filled with light, but this day it seemed awash in grey. Lorene stood ominously by the fireplace. Genna sat sulkily in a nearby chair.
‘What