Emily Goes to Exeter (The Travelling Matchmaker Series Book 1)

This is the first book in the Travelling Matchmaker series, a Regency novel by M. C. Beaton. Hannah Pym, a spinster, inherits five thousand pounds from her employer and leaves her housekeeping position to travel the English countryside by stagecoach. During her travels, she encounters Miss Emily Freemantle, a young woman with violet eyes who has fled an arranged marriage to a rake she has never met. When Emily's betrothed, the darkly handsome Lord Ranger Harley, boards the same stagecoach, Miss Pym becomes convinced he is a worthy match despite Emily's initial resistance. Miss Pym takes it upon herself to play matchmaker, arranging for the couple to share household tasks at an inn, believing this will help them overcome their differences and find romance. Though Lord Harley protests he will not marry an ungrateful woman, Miss Pym persists in her efforts to unite them.