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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 2010
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2017
Copyright © Victoria Connelly 2010
Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9781847562258
Ebook Edition © August 2010 ISBN: 9780007373352
Version: 2017-06-08
Dr Katherine Roberts couldnât help thinking that a university lecturer in possession of a pile of paperwork must be in want of a holiday.
She leant back in her chair and surveyed her desk. It wasnât a pretty sight. Outside, the October sunshine was golden and glorious and she was shut up in her book-lined tomb of an office.
Removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose, she looked at the leaflet that was lying beside a half-eaten salad sandwich which had wilted hours before. The heading was in a beautiful bold script that looked like old-fashioned handwriting.
Purley Hall, Church Stinton, Hampshire, it read.
Set in thirty-five acres of glorious parkland, this early eighteenth-century house is the perfect place in which to enjoy your Jane Austen weekend. Join a host of special guest speakers and find out more about Englandâs favourite novelist.
Katherine looked at the photograph of the handsome red-bricked Georgian mansion taken from the famous herbaceous borders. With its long sweep of lawn and large sash windows, it was the quintessential English country house and it was very easy to imagine a whole host of Jane Austen characters walking through its rooms and gardens.
âAnd I will be too,â Katherine said to herself. It was the third year sheâd been invited to speak at the Jane Austen weekend and rumour had it that the novelist, Lorna Warwick, was going to make an appearance too. Katherine bit her lip. Lorna Warwick was her favourite author - after Jane Austen, of course. She was a huge bestseller, famous for her risqué Regency romances of which she published one perfect book a year. Katherine had read them all from the very first - Marriage and Magic - to the latest - A Bride for Lord Burford - published a few months ago and which Katherine had devoured in one evening at the expense of a pile of essays she should have been marking.
She thought of the secret bookshelves in her study at home and how they groaned deliciously under the weight of Miss Warwickâs work. How her colleagues would frown and fret at such horrors as popular fiction! How quickly would she be marched from her Oxford office and escorted from St Bridgetâs College if they knew of her wicked passion?
âDr Roberts,â Professor Compton would say, his hairy eyebrows lowered over his beady eyes, âyou really do surprise me.â
âWhy, because I choose to read some novels purely for entertainment?â Katherine would say to him, remembering Jane Austenâs own defence of the pleasures of novels in Northanger Abbey. âProfessor Compton, you really are a dreadful snob!â