How to Marry a Highlander

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Miss Teresa Finch-Freeworth lived in unenviable circumstances.

She did not suffer in penury or even teeter upon the edge of it. She was not the poor ward of a cruel or vindictive guardian and she had not been reduced by circumstances to servile status. She was not unutterably plain or painfully shy. She had not lost her fortune to a gold-hunter or her virtue to a rake.

Instead, the lands of Brennon Manor earned her family above two thousand per annum, sufficient to support Mr. Finch-Freeworth’s four hunters and a kennel of no fewer than ten hounds, treatments for Mrs. Finch-

Freeworth’s frequent invented ailments, too many visits to the track for their three sons, and Teresa’s ten weeks in London with Aunt Hortensia the previous year. Teresa’s parents were neglectful of her and unsympathetic but not unkind. She was reasonably pretty and possessed of a genuine smile.

She had a curious mind and despite her tendency to invent outrageous stories that had all the appearance of veracity—or perhaps because of it—she was well liked in Harrows Court Crossing where she had lived her entire life excepting those ten weeks in London. Her father had set aside for her a marriage portion that was enough to recommend her to a respectable suitor.

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