Caught in a Cornish Scandal by Eleanor Webster
Caught in a Cornish Scandal bt Eleanor Webster.
With her family facing ruin, and desperate to avoid an arranged marriage, Miss Millie Lansdowne must work with smugglers. Millie knows smuggling isn’t going to be plain sailing, but rescuing a mysterious gentleman in a storm embroils her in a thrilling family drama. Millie soon finds her plans, heart and even her life in jeopardy.
As they fight to stop the wreckers working along Cornwall’s coast, Sam and Millie learn that sometimes plans need to be broken and love can grow in tragedy.
Caught in a Cornish Scandal by Eleanor Webster
I wrote Caught in a Cornish Scandal against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. Writing has always been an escape for me; a place of swash-buckling heroes, ballrooms, gowns, the bedazzled and the bedazzling.
I’d avoid those less pleasant aspects of Regency Life; hygiene, teeth (or the lack thereof), extreme poverty and the absence of opportunity for so many.
2020 both heightened my need for emotional escape but, conversely, made me less willing to glamorize a historical time period which was cruel and unjust. Indeed, it is a period which perpetuated and grew a culture of Eurocentric, white, male supremacy.
Perhaps for this reason, my characters absolutely refused to participate in the debutante balls which usually populate a regency novel. Instead, financial desperation drives Millie to smuggle off Cornwall’s barren coast. She rescues Sam but their ship flounders on the rocks. They survive but must struggle to escape both the sea and the ‘wreckers’ who lure ships to their doom.
Or course, this is a Harlequin, so rest assured it doesn’t get ‘too real’. However, there is an exploration of the narrow divide between the functional and dysfunctional, moral and immoral and what an individual might do when deprived of choice or hope.
My own passionate belief in free, quality public education is also highlighted. For me, education is the basis for all other aspects of a just society.
In many ways, this book felt like no other. It was onerous to write and the words came slowly. I felt bereft in a world which felt changed in so many ways.
However, I often turn to the wisdom and wit of others and I collected a few quote that kept me writing and hopeful through the marathon which was 2020.
First, there were the inspirational:
knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom – former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy therefore, is education.’ Franklin D. Roosevelt
And then, those that I would like to live by:
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken – Oscar Wilde
And others were just plain true:
Anyone who has time to clean is not reading nearly enough!
Caught in a Cornish Scandal
ISBN: 9781867229391
ISBN 10: 1867229390
Imprint: Mills & Boon Historical
On Sale: 2021-04-21
Pages: 192
With her family facing ruin, and desperate to avoid an arranged marriage, Miss Millie Lansdowne must work with smugglers. Millie knows smuggling isn’t going to be plain sailing, but rescuing a mysterious gentleman in a storm embroils her in a thrilling family drama. Millie soon finds her plans, heart and even her life in jeopardy.
As they fight to stop the wreckers working along Cornwall’s coast, Sam and Millie learn that sometimes plans need to be broken and love can grow in tragedy.
For more information about Eleanor, check out her website at https://eleanorwebsterauthor.com/.
