Excerpted from THE CHARMER WITHOUT A CAUSE, Chapter 2, by Katherine Grant. Copyright © 2023 by Katie Flanagan Benjamin could hardly believe his good luck. Here was his mysterious woman, the one who hadn’t left his imagination for days, and all he had merely needed to ask in order to secure an introduction. And both she and her mother seemed delighted to have him sit with them. Lady Lydia Deveraux. Benjamin soaked her in as she told him about her childhood in Ireland. Blond, fair, and tall, as he had observed in his first glimpses at the musicale. Bright blue eyes slicing through small talk followed by a slim, solemn nose. Hers was not a face that smiled easily at a joke. Yet she didn’t need to smile, not when her whole countenance was softened by a pair of perfect, pink rosebud lips. That mouth had anchored his daydreams this whole week. He couldn’t help but fantasize about running into her at Hyde Park to earn a smile, about dancing with her at an assembly and seeing them part with exertion, about whisking her into the garden for a kiss. “There never was a people more eager for an education….

In your new book, THE GOVERNESS WITHOUT GUILT, your heroine Sophia Preston decides to become a governess. What inspired to create a governess character? Were you a JANE EYRE fan? Yes, I am a fan of Jane Eyre! Beyond that, I am really intrigued with how a woman could assert her independence in Regency England. Earning her own income as a governess is one way to do that. From the start, Sophia has yearned to be independent from her family because she feels different from them, and so she decided to become a governess. However, like many of us, by the start of the novel, she is disillusioned with her job, so the question becomes: are there any other options available to her?   Your hero, John Anderson, is a doctor. How would you describe his personality? John is a very caring, anxious person. When researching accoucheurs (the precursor to a modern OB-GYN), I was struck by how much of the care afforded aristocratic mothers was focused on creating psychological comfort, as opposed to actual medical interventions. That informed who John is – a person who reads the room to see how everyone is feeling and then reacts to do…