Not as frothy and funny as the first in the series (The Gentleman in the Ash Tree), and more conventionally set against the backdrop of the season, but still a lovely read with two appealing romantic characters, a villainous villain, some surprisingly deep business to do with slavery and a suitably happy ending.
Here’s the premise: William Allen is in pretty miserable shape after losing a hand at Waterloo and burning through what little money he had in drink and gambling. None of which served to cheer him up. Down to his last few coins, he’s desperate enough to turn to a moneylender for help. But while waiting to see him, he encounters an old acquaintance, Margaret Blackburn, the sparky younger sister from the previous book. She’s there to raise money to pay a publisher to publish a book she’s written. Horrified, William offers to help her stay out of the moneylender’s clutches. He’ll pretend to court her to ensure her mother doesn’t whisk her away from London before she’s raised the money for the book by some other means. It means he’ll have to turn to his rich relations for help (a duke and duchess! Why ever didn’t he ask for their help before? That’s what well-connected relations are for), and he’ll have to become respectable again, but he’s sensible enough to realise that’s no bad thing.
And so they start their cunning scheme and needless to say, it quickly become obvious they’re made for each other, they just don’t realise it yet. And of course there’s the tricky business of her thinking he’s just helping her out in a gentlemanly way, and him thinking a one-handed man with no income is hardly a proper suitor for a beauty like Margaret. And into this awkward situation comes a certain Lieutenant Charles Russell. He has some history with Margaret, having made an assignation to elope with her in a previous season, which she had no intention of keeping (she slept peacefully through it). Russell was only deterred by William, who punched him on the nose when he found out about it. So Russell still wants Margaret, and also wants vengeance on William. Cue much villainous villainy.
Running in the background to all this is the issue of slavery, which was a real hot potato in the Regency. Even though slavery was illegal in Britain (and had always been so), many plantation owners and shipping magnates had made fortunes from the slave trade, but the tide was now turning in favour of the abolitionists. A lot of modern Regency authors throw in a sympathy for the abolitionists to demonstrate that their hero or heroine is a right-thinking person, but Lortz has done her homework here. Not only is the slavery issue woven into the whole plot, rather than being a throw-away line or two, but she’s also made use of real historical events to illuminate the subject. It’s very elegantly done, so kudos for that.
The hero and heroine suffer through the usual shenanigans by the villain, and overcome them in surprising (but very believable) ways before cruising to the inevitable happy ending. A thoroughly enjoyable read, with no noticeable issues to tweak my oversensitive pedantic historical accuracy meter. I missed the lightness of the previous book, however, which keeps it to a very good four stars.
Leave a Reply