Knight's Acre

Imagine living at the very end of the 1800s. Queen Victoria is on the throne and has been there for as long as you can remember. Women are beginning to come into their own, taking on professions that historically have always been reserved for men.

The suffragettes are starting up, there is even a female doctor in your village, but you are stuck looking after your parents. First it is just helping your mother, but when she takes to her bed and stays there, you don't love her enough to nurse her and do all the work without complaint.

And you don't have much of a conscience!

Book One - Till Death Do Us Part

Jessica was coming up for twenty, an age in the late 1800s when a girl is almost considered as being left on the shelf. She couldn't work, as that was not what young ladies did. Besides, you were expected to help your mother as running a household was hard in those days.

But when Jessica's mother caught a bad cold and took to her bed, Jessica was left with all the work. But Mother decided she rather liked staying in bed so she stayed put, and she was always calling out for Jessica to leave her work and drag herself up the stairs. So she gave Mother some sleeping draught to make her sleep all day.

Nothing wrong with that, except that she gave her a little bit too much.

Book Two - The Forgotten Witness

Supposing you are a young woman living as a tenant in the village of the bachelor Earl of Harrisford.

Your parents have ideas above their station and keep pushing you to make a play for the Earl. But you are in love with a young man, Michael, of bad reputation, owing to a juvenile sentence when he was very young.

And your friend and neighbour is Jessica, who has troubles of her own. Being under age, Catherine is in no position to marry without her parents' consent, so Gretna Green begins to look appealing.

But there is another girl in the village, Susan, a quiet little thing who adores Michael. Susan doesn't have much of a social life but she has her journals and she writes her dearest wishes as though they were real. It is harmless contentment for Susan, to imagine Michael returns her love.

It is harmless until Susan is murdered and the police find those journals.

Book Three - The Countess of Harrisford

Imagine you are working hard to be recognised in a profession normally reserved for men. And it is a new profession, too, which makes it even harder.

Your career means everything and you've been lucky enough to find work photographing babies and weddings, the sorts of things women would be expected to enjoy.

You have no intention of getting married as married women do not work, not unless they are desperate for money and even then, they have jobs, not careers.

Frances Wentworth is invited by Robert de Longueville, Earl of Harrisford, to photograph and catalogue his collection of valuables for insurance purposes. He is not keen on the idea of a stranger in the house, because he has secrets of his own, and he is even less keen on having a woman photographer.

But his brother, Philip, is rather keen on this young lady photographer and persuades him to give her a try. 

All works out well to begin with, until Robert's secret rears up to endanger Frances and change the lives of all of them for good.

There will be more to this series in the future. I am keen to write it all the way up to the second world war, if possible, so I hope you enjoy it.

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Copyright 2022 by Margaret Brazear