Kismet — Serena Fairfax

When a feisty 21st century girl shakes hands with 400 years of history, what happens next? Jo Farrer runs a fashion shop from her home, a country barn conversion. In London on a buying spree from rag trade wholesalers, she wanders into an ancient churchyard and is mesmerized by an epitaph on a gravestone immortalizing a notorious seventeenth century French highwayman and womanizer, Claude Du Vall. Pre-occupied by him, her van skids in an unfamiliar residential area, demolishing the original cast iron railings of an upscale Victorian town house. Dazed and shaken, she's rescued from the wreckage by charismatic Edmund D. Amery, a tycoon. She recognizes him as the man who hounded Kim, her former fiance, out of office. An unlucky gemstone, a masked ball, a fashion shoot, unsavory disclosures, equestrian sketches, a bloodstock auction and the enduring Casanova legend of the mesmerizing highwayman who, it transpires, is Ed's ancestor, mingle to play an intriguing role in the clashes between Ed and Jo. The storyline is set against an idyllic English backdrop of hawthorn hedges, bluebell woods, and may blossom. Happily ever after.