Surrounded by the most beautiful scents and potions in the world, The Honorable Miss Clarissant Behn toils away, unconcerned with romance. She doesn’t spend her days planning a wardrobe for the Season or wonder who she will marry. Against all conventions and Society’s rules, Miss Behn spends her days engaged in trade.

If anyone learns that her perfume business is the source of her family’s prosperity, the scandal will ruin both her business and her chances of marriage. Years ago she loved her sister’s forbidden betrothed, Tristan Apking. But he disappeared five years ago and is presumed dead.

But when Tristan returns to England, alive and mysteriously prosperous, keeping secrets could cost Clarissant his love and possibly their lives. Overcoming his deep sense of loss at her sister’s heart seems to be an impossible feat. Juggling everything for everyone else, Clarissant tries to keep the balance while finding love and happiness for herself.

Laurie Alice Eakes fell in love with the Regency at the age of fourteen when a librarian recommended that she read a Georgette Heyer novel. Her decision to set her first novel in the Regency period surprised no one. Friends and family accept that it is her alternate universe.

In the real world, she has an MA in creative writing and lives in Virginia with her husband, two dogs, and one cat.

Family Guardian is her first novel for AVALON.