Another awesome read, slightly marred by a few issues, but Addey really knows how to create fascinating, unique and yet totally believable characters.
Here’s the premise: Frances Lilley is about to embark on her fourth season, to the despair of her parents. She’s just too different to ‘take’, but she doesn’t mind. All she wants is to be left alone to collect shells and use their unique beauty to decorate her home. If it were up to her, she’d settle happily for spinsterhood and a house of her own near the sea. Laurence Mowatt is the consummate man about town, socially adept and taking advantage of his freedom to enjoy discreet liaisons with married women. As the heir to a viscountcy through his mother—
Wait. Let’s talk about that. Laurence’s uncle (his mother’s brother) is a viscount, and somehow Laurence in his heir, both to his fortune (which is fine) and his title (which is problematic). There are titles inherited through the female line, but mainly in Scotland. In England, it’s so vanishingly rare that it really ought to be explained. And no, the uncle can’t choose who inherits the title. That was cast in stone at the time the title was created, and can’t be changed. But the whole book is built around the title he’s going to inherit, so let it pass.
Anyway, as the heir to a viscountcy from his uncle, and also to his father’s estate, he’s a very desirable match for ambitious mothers and their daughters. He knows he ought to marry, and he’s decided he will do it soon, but he’s not hanging out for a love match. A marriage of convenience will do him very well, and he’s even picked out his future wife, Lady Honoria.
But his benevolent uncle has other plans for him, plotting a little to throw him into the way of his god-daughter, Frances. The two meet at Lord Barrington’s house at Margate, in Kent, where Frances is spending her days happily shell-gathering. At first, she won’t look him in the eye and is monosyllabic, but as they spend more time together he discovers that she’s intelligent and articulate, with a refreshingly honest approach to life.
This part of the book is delightful, as Frances gradually learns that not all young men are worthless fools, and Laurence gradually learns that not all young ladies are simpering imbeciles. But the season beckons, and they both return to the fray, she in increasing despondency and he growing tired of the endless games. Even a house party with an array of suitable young men and the chance for more meaningful interaction than a dance at a ball produces no offers. In despair, her parents accept an offer for her from sixty-year-old Lord Hosmer, who promises to tame her, forcibly if need be. In desperation, she writes to Laurence, offering herself for his marriage of convenience, if only he will rescue her from horrible Lord Hosmer. Which he agrees to, and they have one day of happiness at Margate before Lord Barrington dies and everything changes.
And this is where the book goes off the rails for me. Laurence bundles Frances off back to London and her parents and sets about the business of being the new Lord Barrington, which takes him weeks. And in all that time, he doesn’t write to Frances, doesn’t send word to her, doesn’t write to her father to explain his intentions, doesn’t put a notice of the betrothal in the papers. No, just no. Here’s a nice bloke, shaping up nicely as hero material, drifting away from his hedonistic life, happy to be marrying Frances, in love with her, even, yet he can’t write her a single letter? Even if he thinks she only wants a marriage of convenience, surely he would have at least told her what he was up to, and given her some idea of his plans? Wouldn’t he have wanted to write to have the pleasure of her writing back to him?
So I can’t believe in the slightest in this new, thoughtless Laurence. Of course, it ratchets up the tension enormously, in case she gets dragooned into marrying horrible Lord Hosmer, but it is just too implausible for me.
There’s one other implausibility that also grated on me, in that when Frances finally gains a house of her own, she’s allowed to live there alone. No unmarried woman would be so unconventional as to live alone. She should have had a married woman or a respectable older spinster to protect her reputation.
However, all comes right in the end, inevitably, and if there were a few bumps in the road, these latter troubles were entirely character driven and therefore believable. I loved Laurence’s efforts to please Frances, even if he sometimes got it wrong. Probably it would have been better just to ask her what she wanted, but they were lovely romantic gestures, so I can’t quibble over that. There is some sex in the book, and some misunderstandings along the way, resolved in what sounded like a pretty uncomfortable way.
Normally, the problems that worried me would knock the book back to three stars, but Addey is such an awesome writer that I couldn’t do it. Frances is so beautifully drawn as an autistic character, Laurence is (apart from that one lapse) a wonderful hero, Lord Barrington, with his fascinating but delicately sketched history, is a charming matchmaker, and an honourable mention for Margate and its beaches, a character in its own right. And it’s a pleasure to read a book free of typos and Americanisms. So four stars it is.
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