I’m loving this new series of Martha Keyes’. I recommend starting with the free (at the time of writing) prequel, Unrequited, and paying attention to the whole family – they really are an interesting lot. This one focuses on the sister and brother of the previous hero and heroine, one an unreformed rake and the other a girl who’s been buried in the country for years finally making a belated appearance in society. It’s a fascinating pairing.
Here’s the premise: Valentine Donovan is that staple of Regency romances, an out-and-out rake, a gambler, womaniser and thoroughly unreliable sort. He’s butted heads with his Admiral father for years, dropping out of the naval career that was planned for him, and getting himself into all sorts of trouble ever since. Finding himself on his father’s wrong side once more, he escapes to the Brighton home of his newly married sister, Diana. Creeping into the house through the kitchen window after a drunken night out, he encounters a girl enjoying a midnight feast, a girl like no one else he’s ever met before.
Rebecca Russell’s brother has finally married, and at last she’s able to leave the seclusion of her reclusive grandfather’s home, where she mingled only with other elderly gentlemen, and make an appearance in Brighton society. She’s never had a chance to develop the finely-tuned social skills she’ll need in high society, and she has no idea how to behave. Her innocence gets her into all sorts of trouble, but she finds Valentine unexpectedly helpful. He knows he’s bad for her, though, so he does his best to avoid her. But when his father gives him an ultimatum – at least try to behave with restraint and start courting a respectable young woman — Diana coaxes him to squire Rebecca around. It will be good for her, she argues, to learn about society while protected by a gentleman, and it will be good for him to demonstrate his good intentions to his father.
Well, we can see where this is going, can’t we? And two more mismatched people would be hard to find. But if Valentine is a conventional Regency character, Rebecca is anything but. She has no idea about anything, and approaches everything with an infectious joie-de-vivre that’s an absolute delight. Her conversations with Valentine, where she asks in all innocence some very probing questions, are glorious. She learns a lot, and charmingly mangles all the terminology (she talks about ‘foxing’ and ‘raking’, instead of getting foxed or being a rake), making detailed and often wildly inappropriate lists of all sorts of things. And in explaining society ways in uncompromising detail, Valentine is forced to face up to his own misbehaviour. In gently steering Rebecca through the obstacle course of society life, he learns to take responsibility for himself, as well. And needless to say, the two are slowly falling in love.
But the course of true love can’t possibly be smooth (this is a Regency romance, after all), so both Valentine’s father and Rebecca’s brother have to be appeased, and Valentine’s precarious financial situation has to become a lot worse before all is resolved. I don’t recall any Americanisms or anything else to trip me up, although the monetary amounts stated seemed a bit on the low side to me. At one point, eight hundred pounds was quoted as allowing the purchase of a small estate, which seems a bit unlikely. A small house, maybe. But that’s not a big deal.
The only real problem I had was that the story was told from two points of view, but both were written in first person (‘I went…’ rather than ‘Valentine went…’). Even though the chapters were labelled with the character name, I still sometimes got confused with the switches, and ended up at one point wondering why Valentine was wearing a gauzy overdress. Silly me. That’s the author’s stylistic choice, of course, which I perfectly respect, and I understand why it was done, but it can be problematic. I suppose I should read more slowly!
Another lovely read in this series, which gave us some more wonderful characters, a deeper understanding of the family, and especially the Admiral, and a beautifully written evocation of the Regency. Five stars (again). And now on to book-loving brother Phineas…
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