SOLVED. YA Historical Fiction series set in England either in Victorian or regency era. About the lives of two girls, one who is a lady and the other is her maid. The lady falls in love with a Indian man and the servant girl for a duke. Spoilers ahead. [s]

[Meenakshi]

I read the book series in 2016 or 2017. In the first book the lady had just come and to England and she really wants to go to Oxford university but her father won’t let her. He wants her to get married to a rich man because there family is having money problems but I don’t think the girls find out until a later book. When she comes back she meets this Indian man who is like an apprentice to some British dude at a ball I think and she starts a correspondence with him when he goes back to India. She does fall in love wi the him. She gets engaged to a dude who is a liberal thinker and is willing to let her go to Oxford. The other girl is a servant who becomes a ladies maid when the lady comes back. I think as children they were friends and that’s why the lady asked for her to be her maid. At the end of the first book they discover that the servant girls mom had an affair with the lord of house and that she was his daughter and the ladies half sister. I think the dad agreed to acknowledge her as his daughter of the mom left his employment. In a later book, there is a new character who is either a duke or related to the duke. He is a rich guy who came for the current season, which is like a time for girls to find husbands, and in the previous season he was involved in a scandal that resulted in him being known as a rake. He starts perusing the former servant turned lady who isn’t sure what his intentions are. The other girl is getting ready to get married to someone she likes but doesn’t live. I wasn’t to say her cuter husbands name is Laurence but I can’t be sure. The servant girl gets in a romance with the duke guy and goes on a lot of unchaperoned trips with him. There is like a big ball at the end which she almost misses because she was at his ocean side house and he gives her his family jewels. After that he proposes to her but she rejects him because she heard a lot of rumors about how he hated his dad who was a proper guy and he wanted to marry someone that would have made him angry. The day of the wedding the other girl catches her fiancé kissing another women who he still loved. She wasn’t mad at him but she had revived a letter earlier telling her that the Indian dude was in town and so she runs off to meet him. The duke dude proposes agin but this time with a painting that he drew because of her. She accepts and the rush to tell the family who just found that the wedding was canceled because the other girl ran away. The family is in a lot of debt because of the uncle who gambled all of it away and they needed the wedding to help pay it off. The duke dude offers to sell some stuff and pay it off the the dad wasn’t going to accept until he found out that his daughter is getting married to him. Also there are like side stories with the other siblings, another maid, and the servant girls mom. The mom becomes a seamstress after she leaves and secretly publishes a book that becomes super famous. The younger brother fell in love with the nursemaid but she was I taped by the uncle and ends up pregnant. The birth kills her and the baby though. Another servant left the main house to go find her friend who is now a lady but she couldn’t really help her. This isn’t a very famous book so I couldn’t find it anywhere.

[Becca]

Cinders & Sapphires by Leila Rasheed. It's the first book in the At Somerton series.

[☯ DαякєηRнαℓ ❛ ᶜʳᵒᵘᶜʰᶤᶰᵍ ʰᵘᵐᵃᶰ ; ʰᶤᵈᵈᵉᶰ ᵗᶤᵗᵃᶰ ❜]

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[Meenakshi]

Yes that’s the book! Thank you so much! I looked for it everywhere but I couldn’t find the name.