The House in the Hollow: 1 (The Talbot Saga)

The Talbots are wealthy. But their wealth is from trade. With neither ancient lineage nor title they struggle for entrance into elite Regency society. Finally aided by an impecunious viscount they gain access to the drawing rooms of Englands most illustrious houses.Mrs Talbot intends her daughter Jocelyn to marry well to eliminate the stain of the familys ignoble beginnings. But the young men Jocelyn meets are vacuous seeing Jocelyn as merely a substantial dowry. Only Lieutenant Barnaby Willow sees the real Jocelyn but he is deployed to war.The hypocrisy of fashionable society repulses Jocelyn-beneath the courtly manners she finds deceit dissipation and vice. She stumbles upon and then is embroiled in a sordid scandal which threatens utter disgrace for the Talbot family. Humiliated and dishonoured she is sent to a remote house hidden in a hollow of the Yorkshire moors irrevocably separated from family friends and any hope of hearing about the lieutenants fate.Jocelyns incarceration in the mysterious old mansion forces her to reassess her values - and the values of the society she was so anxious to be part of.