Steepwood Scandal Books in Order

Steepwood Scandal is a shared world Regency sequence written by several authors and set in and around a quiet English village overshadowed by its great house, Steepwood Abbey. Years ago the debauched Marquis of Sywell won the abbey at cards, a victory that ended in the former earl’s death. His later marriage to a much younger bride and her mysterious disappearance give the series its central scandal.

Each novel follows a different couple while ripples from the abbey’s past disturb village life. The tone combines romance with suspicion, gossip and danger. Local families worry about their reputations, fortunes rise and fall with every revelation and rumours about what really happened at Steepwood Abbey colour almost every interaction.

Elizabeth Bailey’s first contribution, An Innocent Miss, introduces a heroine whose apparent naivety hides quiet strength. Drawn into the orbit of the abbey and the Sywell family, she must navigate unwanted attention, shifting loyalties and the constant awareness that almost any slip could spark new whispers. The romance grows alongside a slow unpicking of what innocence and guilt really mean in a community that rushes to judge.

Her second book, The Captain’s Return, focuses on Captain Henry Colton, long thought dead in the wars, who comes home to find his former love living as a widow with a child. To protect her from scandal and from a husband suspected of murder, he agrees to a risky masquerade, posing as the missing man while they work out who can be trusted. Old love, false identities and village curiosity make their path anything but simple.

Taken together, Bailey’s Steepwood novels offer a slightly darker shade of Regency romance. Passion and courtship share space with questions about justice, memory and the price of respectability. Readers interested in the full arc of the scandal can read the whole multi author series, but her two books can also be enjoyed on their own as atmospheric stories of love under pressure.