‘Scandal’ By Sasha Morgan

Sasha lives in a village by the coast in Lancashire with her husband and Labrador dog, Zac, and she has one grown up son. She has always written stories from being a very young age and promised herself that she would one day write a book.

Her debut novel, ‘Bellebrook’s Secrets’ was published in 2014 and her latest book ‘Scandal’ is the first in the Treweham Hall series, being represented by Aria Fiction.

Sasha also writes articles and short stories for newspapers and magazines and is on the writing team for a children’s publishers.

As a teenager she loved reading Jilly Cooper, which may explain the ‘spice’ in some of her novels!

Sasha also writes under the name of Helen Stafford.

Keep up with all the latest news at Sasha’s website

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Aria Fiction and Sasha Morgan would like me to share this short extract from ‘Scandal’, as my contribution to the Blog Tour. These lines are also the opening passage of the book …

It was day break. A rosy, warm sunrise glowed over the valley. Galloping through the early morning mist, Tobias Cavendish-Blake finally slowed his horse to survey the sight before him. Treweham Hall stood proud and majestic against the smooth, rolling hills. The imposing building was made of sandstone with four corner turrets and sturdy buttresses that gave it a castle-like appearance. Gothic windows with stained glass twinkled in the sunlight. He sighed heavily: would it always remain so resilient, the fortress of his family?

That seemed dubious, going through the estate accounts. His father, the late Lord Richard Cavendish-Blake, had looked after the place well – too well. All the contingency funds had haemorrhaged, bled completely dry relentlessly maintaining the upkeep of the Hall. The outgoings far outweighed the incomings. The payroll of the staff alone made Tobias’ eyes water, not to mention the colossal energy bills. Tobias had suggested shutting down the many vast unused rooms, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. Lady Cavendish-Blake had been sheltered by her late husband, leaving her totally oblivious to the fact that her home was a money pit and the current state of affairs could only be described as dire. As the new custodian, it was down to Tobias to keep the place running. He was responsible not only for the staff, but the village tenants too. Feeling the burden weighing down on his broad shoulders, he realised it was time to grow up. Time to settle down. The future meant kissing goodbye to the wild parties for which he was notorious.

His thoughts turned back to his thirtieth birthday bash, making him wince. It hadn’t been so much a party, more a two-week brawl around Europe with a few friends, including his oldest childhood chum, Seamus Fox, son of a millionaire racehorse trainer. The two of them together had been a lethal combination, each egging the other on, the more daring and outrageous the exploits the better, resulting in the occasional brush with the tabloids. The picture of him and Seamus plastered over the front page of a newspaper showing them tumbling out of a St Tropez nightclub, legless (and trouserless) with a beauty on each arm, was one he couldn’t forget. His father wouldn’t let him. They’d been dubbed ‘the Heir and the Fox’. Ironically, Tobias wasn’t a natural wild child, the opposite in fact.

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