Another trope-fest from Mary Balogh: the trapped-in-a-snowstorm story, the hate-each-other couple who instantly fall into bed together, the class differences, proud heroine, irascible hero… stop me if you’ve heard it all before. And yet the author sprinkles her own special brand of magic dust over it and it just works.
Here’s the premise: Frances Allard is a teacher at a girls’ school in Bath, returning there after a Christmas visit to her great-aunts. Her antiquated coach is overtaken in snow by a much faster vehicle, and they end up stuck in a snowdrift. The owner of the other vehicle is obliged to take Frances to the nearest inn, which turns out to be temporarily deserted, the innkeeper and his wife being away visiting. What a strange Regency world this is where everyone travels about in mid-winter. Frances takes charge of the kitchen, since it turns out she’s a wonderful cook, while her rescuer, when he’s not haranguing her, sets himself to chopping wood.
He tells her he’s Lucius Marshall, but he’s really Viscount Sinclair, heir to the Earl of Edgecombe, very grumpy because his grandfather the earl is dying and wants him to marry before he shuffles off the mortal coil. Lucius has enjoyed being free, and he’s not much enamoured of his chosen bride, Portia Hunt, who’s perfect in every way, but cold. There’s no affection between them, just an acceptance that the marriage will happen, eventually. And eventually is coming up very fast. Portia is a little like the proposed bride in Heyer’s The Corinthian, eligible but not someone the hero feels anything for. It would be merely a duty marriage.
In the midst of this situation, Lucius finds himself stuck in the deserted inn with a woman who’s very far from perfect (a teacher! And a spirited combatant, to boot) but there’s a distinct spark between them. After a day of essentially playing childish games in the snow, they end up in bed together, where the virginal heroine is instantly orgasmic, because of course she is. All Balogh’s heroines are, for some reason.
They then continue their journey to Bath, hand in hand in the shared carriage, very happy with themselves, until he offers her a position as his latest mistress and she turns him down in order to stay as a humble teacher. They part on bad terms, half angry and half miserable, expecting never to meet again. Well, needless to say, fate throws them together again, where Lucius discovers that Frances has the sort of singing voice that would make her famous. She’s happy to hide her light under a bushel but he’s determined to give her the career as a star that her talent deserves. Even when she tells him very clearly that she doesn’t want that, he manipulates and organises and makes it happen anyway.
Now, I like a determined hero as much as anyone, and if his energies were solely focused on making her happy and winning her heart, I couldn’t fault him. But when he decides he knows what she wants better than she knows herself, that goes too far. She calls him a bully and it’s hard to disagree. One of the principal requirements in a hero, to my mind, is respecting the heroine enough to allow her to make her own decisions, and Lucius fails completely.
As it happens, it isn’t quite the disaster it might have been, and the legal obstacles that had entangled her were easily resolved. Kudos to the author for getting the legalities exactly right.
I considered knocking off a star for the bullying hero, but in the end the writing is so good and I tore through this so fast that I can’t in all conscience give it fewer than five stars.
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