The Runaway Debutante — Elizabeth Chater

HER FOOLISH FATHER HAD GONE GAMING AGAIN -- AND HAD LOST HIS DAUGHTER IN THE BARGAIN!

Barely out of the schoolroom, Matilda Mountavon is presented with odious news: her rakehell father has gambled away the family fortune and the only settlement he can offer is his daughter -- to the Earl of Tark, a man well into his fifties and notorious for his licentiousness!

What the negligent Mountavons fail to notice is that the daughter they have always taken for a mousy little chit has grown quite willful. Rather than endure the loathsome caresses of the debauched Earl, Matilda flees the household and brazens her way into a position as cook in a London inn.

So outstanding is her expertise in the kitchen that she is quickly hired away by the dashing Major Robert Bruce, to serve in his manor house in Scotland. But Matilda wonders how far the sympathetic Major will go to save her, for it soon becomes apparent that only marriage to another can quiet the Earl's claims...