Well, the idea about posting more often fell by the wayside, didn’t it?

Real life, sadly, has reared its ugly head and I’ve had some health issues too. Nothing too serious, just enough to delay me from getting on with my writing.

I have, however, finished a new book!

It’s the fourth in the Ruttingdon Club series, following The Incorrigible Annabelle Spencer. Annabelle’s Awakening, Having Faith and Keeping Faith. Technically it’s the fifth book, as Having Faith and Keeping Faith are separate volumes but they tell one story. That will be confusing, I know, so I’m going to refer to it as the fifth book in the series. It’ll be easier.

It’s called Do As The Doctor Orders, and it’s the story of Dr Henry Sutherland, who we met in Keeping Faith. He’s a specialist in female hysteria, and is faced with a patient who is determined to be the most trouble he’s ever experienced!

I haven’t got any cover art yet, but I’ve put the first chapter up here and the blurb is below. It’s out on the 21st December, and is just the sort of Christmas treat you deserve to spoil yourself with!

Enjoy!

Lady Cassandra Martinbury has a big problem – her spendthrift father has bankrupted their earldom and left the two of them nearly penniless. The only way to save what is left of the family estate is for her to marry a man of means, but she draws the line at being forced to submit to the vicious Marquess of Radcliffe, her only suitor.

Feigning illness to avoid wedding Radcliffe, Cassandra comes under the care of Dr. Henry Sutherland, a Ruttingdon Club member and a specialist in the treatment of female hysteria. He can tell immediately that she is faking her symptoms, but the thought of a week with the beautiful woman at his private sanatorium is just too tempting to resist.

But Cassandra needs a decent, agreeable husband, not a week at a remote therapy spa, where there are few people at all to be found, let alone any unattached men of good breeding. Still, that is where she ends up, although she has no intention of remaining there. Her repeated escape attempts from the place find her over the handsome doctor’s knee three times before she realizes that the man to save her and her father might just be right in front of her!