A Sense of Duty - Hardcover

The first of a new Yorkshire trilogy of novels by the bestselling author of SHODDY PRINCE and A COMPLICATED WOMAN.

Monty Kilmaster, his wife Sarah and their children live in a mining village in Yorkshire. Since Monty’s parents died his siblings have been living with him making the house very overcrowded. Following family tradition Monty and his brother Owen have gone to work down the pit and their sisters into service. One by one the girls have married – except Katherine, or Kit as she is known.

Kit, six foot tall, plump and curvaceous, is the sort of woman men find attractive but do not want to marry. Her flamboyant style and preference for men above her own station are a source of embarrassment to her family. Her sisters warn her that she should forget any idea of attracting a man and instead devote herself to the service of others.

Feisty Kit, however, has other ideas, and sets out to prove her sisters wrong. But when, in due course, she finds a man to love he lets her down and she is forced to come home in shame with an illegitimate son. Kit has a long and rocky road before her. Has she destroyed all chance of happiness?

Set in Yorkshire against a backdrop of social struggle, hypocrisy, ignorance, camaraderie and humour, 'A Sense of Duty' follows the lives of the Kilmaster family. Her childhood blighted by tragedy, Katherine Kilmaster’s dream is to have a family of her own. Alas, the voluptuous and flamboyant Kit is not the sort men wish to marry – or so her sisters declare in their efforts to curb her fun-loving nature. Blessed with a generous heart, but an indolent and covetous streak which is to tempt her into dangerous situations with young men above her own station, she is dismissed from one job after another, often in the most humiliating circumstances. Worse, her well-meaning efforts against injustice bring yet more calamity and a lifetime of guilt.

Fearing that her sisters might be right as, more than once, she is let down by those she admires, Kit determines to embark on a life of hedonism, her brazen attitude shocking her kin who try to instil in her a sense of duty. Each of her siblings has shouldered their burden with stoicisim: Monty, who has sacrificed personal happiness to keep his family together; Owen, battling to form a miners’ union against an uncompromising master; her capable elder sisters, all resigned to their lot of domestic drudgery.

But gaily Kit refuses to heed their warnings. Fighting restraint, both of her Methodist upbringing and the insular mining community, she uses the experience she has gained in service to the aristocracy to launch herself upon London Society. For a time there is great material reward, which the big-hearted Kit is happy to share with those who condemn her – until an unexpected consequence of her profligate lifestyle stops her in her tracks.

Thrust back into claustrophobic village life, Kit falls prey to malicious gossip, and even greater tragedy. Overwhelmed by events, she succumbs to the manipulations of her well-meaning siblings, but is almost destroyed in the process ... until a chance encounter promises to deliver the husband and children she has always craved.

Will Kit be allowed everlasting happiness, or will her shameful secret be revealed?