Consequences Of Sin

Sins of the past turn an Edwardian lady's bright future into a nightmare.

Oxford graduate Ursula Marlow is a suffragette fighting her industrialist father's dearest wish to see her married, preferably to his up-and-coming assistant, Tom Cumberland. When a friend awakens, with no memory, to find her lesbian lover murdered in their bed, she asks for help. Ursula calls in her father's trusted lawyer, the handsome Lord Wrotham, but he and the police dismiss her with platitudes. Turning sleuth, resourceful Ursula digs up some mysterious maneuvers involving her father and several of his wealthy friends. All too soon, however, her father is shot dead and Lord Wrotham is appointed her trustee. In shock, she agrees to marry the unloved Tom in order to honor her father's wishes. The papers of Ursula's long-dead mother hint that the murders are related to an expedition to the Orinoco in which a botanist who worked for her father's group was killed. So in a last-ditch effort to discover the truth, she disguises herself as a man and travels to the jungle. Lord Wrotham traces her and shows up just in time to save her from the crazed botanist, who's very much alive. They return to London as lovers, but there is one last danger to overcome before the mystery is solved.

An engaging heroine, the lure of romance, a rapid pace and the requisite period detail.