Leonora — Catherine Fellows

"Leonora, how could you!" cried Lady Constance. "To actually stamp your foot when I swear Sir Mark was on the very brink of offering for you ! Such good fortune can never come our way again."

"I wouldn't," Leonora said with deadly emphasis, "marry your precious Sir Mark if he was the last man left alive ! He's odious and pompous, and seven-and-thirty if he's a day, and I will not spend the rest of my life simpering and watching my tongue just to suit his notions of propriety !"

Getting her daughter married would be no easy task, Lady Constance knew. Leonora was no great beauty; she had only a small dowry--and, what was worse, she had the most alarming tendency to speak her mind. Leonora had even delivered a tongue-lashing to the unfortunate highwayman who dared to stop her carriage.

And though she didn't know it then, Leonora was to meet that highwayman again--at the most exclusive dance of the London season.