The House of Hardie

Book excerpt: Volume One of the griping Victorian family saga. Midge and Gordon Hardie were the children of a respected Oxford wine merchant, but no matter how charming his upper-crust customers were, the Hardies remained no more than prosperous tradespeople. Midge wanted more. She wanted the rewards that her intelligence should bring, and the sensual pleasures that an affair with a young aristocrat seemed to offer. Gordon's love was botany and travel. He yearned to break free of the cosiness of Oxford and travel to Tibet and China, in search of the rare specimens that seemed to stand for all the distinction he missed in his background. The House of Hardie, first published in 1987, is a sparkling story of Victorian love, class, ambition and loss - a gripping start to Anne Melville's fine saga of a British family's fortunes.