The Runaway Debutante

the long version

When her father loses everything in a gambling bet, including her, Matilda can take her role as a passive and dutiful daughter no longer. Inside herself she finds a strength and willfulness she have never recognized before and finds the courage to leave the undesirable situation. Fleeing the kisses of the fifty-year old Earl of Lark, a man notorious for his womanizing ways, Matilda finds work as a cook in London. Her culinary skills so impress the Major Robert Bruce that he hires her as his personal chef. But the earl is still pursing her and Matilda has been trapped in a whirlwind. Her love is beginning to grow for the handsome duke, but does he love enough to give her shelter from the nefarious earl?