Makepeace Hedley Series

Few of those Philippa loves in London return her affection. Not the love of her life, who has a new bride. Not even her widowed mother, Makepeace Burke. So Philippa decides on a marriage of convenience to a prudish, if kind, man. Across the Channel in France, the Reign of Terror is causing the beheading of thousands from the French nobility. Among those in danger is Philippa’s friend, the Marquis de Condorcet. Not only has Philippa the means of rescuing him from the guillotine, she’s got the courage. And as fate would have it, Philippa will find love where she least expects it-while staring death in the face.

From the author also known as Ariana Franklin-the thrilling sequel to A Catch of Consequence that “moves at a cracking pace.”( London Times)

Makepeace Hedley is frantic when she learns that her young daughter, sailing home to England from the rebelling American colonies, has been taken prisoner by the British. With her usual determination, Makepeace sets out for Plymouth to rescue her child.

And when Countess Diana Stacpoole is asked by an American friend to help his son, also a British prisoner, Diana responds quickly and leaves her genteel past behind.

In the chaos of wartime Plymouth the two women face social outrage, public scandal, and even arrest. Amidst docks and prisons, government bureaucracy and brothels, they forge an unlikely and unshakable friendship. And in freeing others, they discover their own splendid liberty.

A captivating historical novel from the national bestselling author, as Ariana Franklin, of Mistress of the Art of Death.

Makepeace Burke serves Patriots at her late father’s tavern on the Boston waterfront in 1765 and hates the redcoats with a vengeance. But even she can’t watch an angry mob drown an Englishman. She rescues him and nurses him back to health-and falls in love.

In Patriot Boston, hers is an unforgivable sin-made worse by the fact that her Englishman turns out be the aristocratic Sir Philip Dapifer. Philip must smuggle Makepeace aboard a ship bound for London and save her life at the expense of the world she knows.

Rich in period detail, bringing the years of colonial rebellion to vivid life, A Catch of Consequence is a stylish novel of Boston and England, and of a woman who defies convention in both worlds.