Book excerpt: Winner of the 1994 Romantic Novelists' Association Novel of the Year Award, Consider the Lily is now republished for a new generation of readers. When a choice must be made between love and duty, solace comes in unexpected forms... Summer, 1929. The Hinton Dysart estate is dying from lack of money, and Kit Dysart, the heir, sees no way out. Then, at his sister's wedding, he meets the vibrant Daisy Chudleigh and her cousin, the heiress Matty Verrall. In love with Daisy but troubled by his family's decline, Kit chooses to marry Matty, though neither Kit nor Daisy is able to forget the other. When Matty, growing increasingly unhappy in her troubled, empty marriage, decides to re-create the estate's garden, she discovers solace and a gift of which she never dreamed. A haunting, passionate story played out between three people, Consider the Lily is also a poignant and beautiful novel of England between the wars that propels the reader into its own rich and nostalgic world.