The Adventures of Robina by Herself — Emma Tennant

Robina is a red-haired young innocent, a Scottish orphan. At the age of fifteen, after a strict upbringing on a Border farm at the hands of her aunt and uncle, she is sent south, first to an eccentric Oxford Boarding school, then to a family in Paris, and finally to the London flat of a bankrupt chaperone who is paid to guide her through the debutante season. But plans laid for Robina tend to go astray. Pursued by rogues, charlatans, fortune-hunters, and all the villains of the Realm of Queen Elizabeth II-for her beauty, her virginity, and for a fortune that isn't there-she in turn pursues her mistaken quest for love and happiness. This book provides hilarious and frequently outrageous proof that among Britain's highest in the land neither manner nor morals are much changed since the early eighteenth century.