Wexmoor Weddings

Theodore Marchbanks is a forensic accountant. He has never met a figure he could not reconcile, a client who paid his first number, or a woman who made him lose his Latin.

Then the Guild of Matrimonial Artisans hires him to catch Marisol Quenby, a freelance makeup artist who does soft glam for brides without ever saying the word "wedding", and so dodges the Guild's bride tax. She is very good, very cheap and very annoyed.

One disastrous stakeout later, Marisol faces expulsion and Theodore offers her a settlement: pose as an engaged couple, book the most expensive vendors in Wexmoor, and record what each one charges the moment it hears the word "engagement". The contract has receipts, a ban on improvisation, a clause about eyebrows, and one word she can say to end everything.

It has no clause for the moment the pretend kisses stop being pretend. And none for what the ledgers say about the Guild itself.

A witty, sharp-elbowed romantic comedy about weddings, money and the price of saying what you mean.

Marisol Quenby has a new studio on Tallow Quay, one price on the wall, and one rule: every face costs the same, whoever is getting married. Then the most expensive wedding of the season walks through her door.

Lavinia Thorncastle-Pryce, planner to the rich and the photographed, wants Marisol for the Penhallow-Strutt wedding at Hartsmere Hall. She also wants fourteen free trials "for exposure", a penalty clause with teeth, and a budget marshal to keep everybody honest. The budget marshal is Theodore Marchbanks, forensic accountant, owner of a desk calculator with feelings, and the man Marisol loves.

While Theodore maps the wedding like a military campaign and Marisol writes a scholarly treatise on Roman luxury law between appointments, the costs keep multiplying, an engagement video goes wrong in public, and a glossy brochure in the wrong coat pocket convinces Marisol that the man who audits everything is planning to turn her into an occasion.

Snow, a power cut, head torches, a cardboard goose and a wedding that nobody can afford: something has to give, and it may be the one thing in Wexmoor that was never for sale.

A sharp, warm and very open-door romantic comedy about love, money and the price of saying yes.

Marisol Quenby charges one price for every face in Wexmoor, bride or mourner. Theodore Marchbanks audits everything, including his own heart. Their wedding is set for midsummer on Tallow Quay. Then every vendor in the city turns up fully booked, a deposed Grand Warden launches a Restoration campaign, and a venue cartel pays to keep the quay empty.

With a blacklist against them, a binder from 1987, a cake paid for from a laundrette jar, and a borrowed 1969 veil, Marisol and Theodore decide to make the wedding themselves. Mothers go to war and then form an alliance. Friends convert a box room into a bridal chamber. An invoice for nil pounds becomes Exhibit A at a Borough hearing the day before the ceremony.

Funny, sharp, and openly steamy, this final Wexmoor Weddings novel asks what a wedding is worth, and who gets to set the price. The answer is the one they write themselves: one column, published prices, and a blank honeymoon page.

Happily ever after. The Guild ends. The Cooperative begins.