Catherine J Bowness

Beatrice or Romantic Vicissitudes Catherine J Bowness

It's a hot summer's day and Beatrice is celebrating her seventeenth birthday with her brothers and cousins - as well as two friends her brother Bertie has invited for the vacation, the Earl of Lamberhurst and Lord Augustus Marn. Beatrice and Bertie are not a fond brother and sister, but he organises a boat trip down the river for her birthday. They take a picnic but not a chaperone, and what had promised to be an agreeable outing soon becomes perilous in several senses. The ancient tension between the two families increases when the parents, the Duke of Tallent and his cousin Mr Mainwaring, join the young people in the evening and the dramatic culmination of the festivities has far-reaching consequences for everyone. The reader will have met some of these characters in Bowness's previous novels, particularly 'Priscilla or a Harebrained Enterprise'.