Marriage, volume 1

Lady Juliana, seventeen and insufferably romantic, rejects her father's choice, a wealthy old Duke in favor of pure love and a handsome face. She elopes with the penniless but dashing Henry Lyndsay, imagining herself the heroine of some grand romance. The reality: a crumbling Scottish castle, an eccentric family ofquir relatives, and a husband whose charm fades as quickly as the money. Ferrier's razor-sharp satire dissects the marriage market of the Regency era with Austenian wit and surprising boldness. The novel puncture romantic illusions, exposing how women were traded like property between men while being fed fairy tales about following their hearts. This is a book that knew exactly what it was doing when it first scandalized readers in 1821.