The Trouble with Trifles

By Madeleine Keane

October, 1792. France is in revolution, the royal family has been imprisoned, and Marguerite de Kermerrac's world is crashing around her.

Facing almost certain death, Marguerite flees to England with her family--and the dashing American, Simon Fanshawe.

While awaiting word of Marguerite's father, Simon's chaperoning turns personal. He and Marguerite develop a friendship that blossoms into love.

Relief turns to heartache when Marguerite's father returns. He disapproves of his daughter's relationship and refuses to consent to the marriage. Heartbroken, Simon returns to America.

Years later, Simon and Marguerite reunite. Free from disapproving eyes, can they rekindle the love they once shared, or will a second chance only lead to heartache again?

Please let me know if you have any questions,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madeleine Keane
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201163020

Madeleine Keane

Madeleine Keane writes stories with dashing heroes and spirited heroines. Follow her on her author website and social media.

Book preview

The Trouble with Trifles

Madeleine Keane

Published by Madeleine Keane, 2022.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIFLES

First edition. March 9, 2022.

Copyright © 2022 Madeleine Keane.

ISBN: 979-8201163020

Written by Madeleine Keane.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

The Trouble with Trifles

About the Author

To my family, who never stopped believing in me.

In August of 1792, what remained of Marguerite de Kermerrac’s world came crashing down around her.

Things had begun to fall apart before that. The Bastille had fallen in July of 1789, and while some of the nobles had regarded it as the end of everything, Marguerite’s father, the Baron de Kermerrac, had been optimistic about it. He had had the privilege of becoming acquainted with Benjamin Franklin while the latter had been at court on behalf of the American colonists seeking assistance from the French so that they might break from England.

It had been at a dinner given in the venerable American’s honor that Laurent de Kermerrac made the acquaintance of a Miss Kitty Colegate, whose father, William Colegate, had accompanied Franklin so that he might help convince the French nobles to counsel their king that it would be most advantageous for France to take the colonists’ part in their quarrel with the English king. Laurent married Kitty after a brief courtship a few months later—rather scandalously, some might say—but the story of the planter’s daughter who had accompanied her father to France so that she might attend the convent school at Penthémont and who became a baronne instead thrilled the more romantic hearts of the discontented American populace. Upon his return to Philadelphia, Franklin embellished the story each time he told it, insinuating that it was he who had engineered the marriage between the dashing young baron who would later serve as a lieutenant in the French army during the war and the charming, delectable Kitty Colegate.

When the royal family had been forcibly escorted from Versailles to Paris, in October of 1789, Marguerite was ordered to leave her convent school in France for Paris at once, and her two younger brothers had been brought from the family chateau in Brittany to the family hotel so that his wife might attend the queen and