I don't want to die, she thought, I just want everything to be different, to get away from it all.


Charlotte Comlyn is running away. From a marriage proposal, from her fortune, and from a series of misunderstandings with her parents.


Disguised in her brother's clothes, she appears at the London home of her mother's estranged best friend, the actress Beth Prior, whose beauty and talent are exceeded only by her terrible reputation.


But Beth is more than just an infamous celebrity. She has a mission: to befriend the exiled Hapsburg Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and convince her to ally with Britain against a looming threat from Napoleon.


Short on options and in need of companionship, Charlotte agrees to follow Beth to Palermo, plunging them into the glittering world of aristocratic games and political intrigue.


Beth is questioning her choices and Charlotte is questioning everything, but can they find peace when nothing is quite what it seems?





Escapade was first published in 1993.