The one word which summarises this book is charm. It’s a delightful, gentle read, which the author describes as an homage to Georgette Heyer and it really does work pretty well, so for anyone yearning to find a new Heyer, while there’ll never be anyone quite like her, this book is a very acceptable substitute.
Here’s the premise: Mrs Audeley is a widow living a quiet, lower gentry life in Derbyshire with her son Gyles, who is obsessed with roses. She’d rather like to visit London again some time for a little recreation, but Gyles isn’t interested. But one day, a girl appears and tells Mrs Audeley that she’s running away from her tyrannical guardian. Mrs Audeley is quite happy to go along with this idea, pushing her out into the garden to be looked after by Gyles, for who knows what may come of that? But when the tyrannical guardian appears, he’s not a monstrous, wicked sort of man, but the rather handsome and well-mannered Earl of Kendall. And in no time he has persuaded Mrs Audeley and Gyles to accompany his niece Penelope and himself to London to help bring her out. Which fits Mrs Audeley’s plans very well.
And so to London they go, where various things happen, both good and bad, but that isn’t really the point of the book. It’s the gently managing manner of Lord Kendall and the pragmatic and easy-going ways of Mrs Audeley and their wonderful conversations that make the book. I love these two, and the fact that they’re both the shady side of forty makes their romance all the more wonderful.
A perfect Regency read, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I was that Mrs Audeley was (very correctly) called that almost throughout the entire book, and Lord Kendall had to ask what her Christian name is when he proposes. Five stars, but I’d have given it more if I could.
Leave a Reply