The fourth and final book of the series, and the formula is becoming wearisome: a wildly handsome aristocratic hero, a spiky heroine with a complicated history who dislikes him on sight because reasons, the discovery that that they have the hots for each other, developing slowly into love, but there are some kind of obstacles, necessitating a lot of toing and froing and general angst. There are minor variations but that’s the gist of it. Which is OK but I like a bit more variation in my characters, to be honest. Picky? Yes, absolutely.
Here’s the premise: Claudia Martin is the headmistress of her own school in Bath, proud of her achievements and not in need of a man to help her through life, thank you very much. She needs to take two of her graduating pupils to London to take up employment there, and her friend has sent an escort: the very handsome and charming Marquess of Attingsborough. Claudia doesn’t need an escort but she can’t easily refuse without giving offence, so off they go, and she finds that the marquess is perfectly gentlemanlike, but has an annoying ability to summon the best service merely by raising a haughty eyebrow.
Joseph isn’t much taken with the prim schoolmistress either, but he has a reason to take an interest in her and her school, which has nothing to do with her personally. She’s not very appealing to him, and besides, he’s on the brink of a pragmatic alliance with the very beautiful and eligible Portia Hunt. He’s not mad keen on Portia, who’s a bit of a cold fish, but she’ll warm up a bit once they’re married – won’t she?
The story bumps along in typical Balogh style, that is to say, the principals are thrown together by circumstance over and over again without (apparently) much agency on their part. The drift into love is the usual slow affair, kept from any resolution by Claudia’s conviction that she’s just a schoolmistress and therefore deeply unworthy of a man who’s going to be a duke one day, plus she just hates dukes. All the aristocracy, in fact, but particularly dukes. For his part, Joseph is determined to do the right thing by his heritage and marry the eminently suitable Portia, even though he’s not enamoured by her.
Into this stupidity comes the reason for Claudia’s dislike of dukes, the Scottish Duke of McLeith, who promised to marry her, deflowered her and then, when he unexpectedly went off to become a duke, forgot all about her and left her languishing. No wonder she hated him, and applied her disdain to the whole of dukedom. Anyone would.
Beneath this adult emotional muddle is a hefty dose of sickly sweet sentimentalism, in the shape of a child and a dog. In lesser hands this would be positively indigestible, but Balogh is talented enough to pull it off – just! This leads to the big crisis which might finally get him free of his commitment to the unpleasant Portia – or will it? The question is spun out to the nth degree of course, and meanwhile Joseph and Claudia are getting into bed together, because heaven forfend that a Balogh heroine should ever be sensible.
This is the final part of the series, but in some ways it’s also part of the preceding Bedwyns series, too, because the characters from that turn up all over the place here, as well as the characters from earlier books in this series. Frankly, it made for way, WAY too many characters, especially as they all have Christian names as well as titles. I gave up several books ago trying to keep track of them all, and just let it all wash over me.
I probably sound a bit negative, but Balogh has that effect on me. Her Regency appears superficially to be authentic, but there’s too much modernism in it, too much angst and sentimentalism, and I really, really wish her heroines wouldn’t get their kit off quite so readily, at least until they have a promise from the hero. But really, sleeping with a man who’s promised to someone else or (worse) that she herself has decided not to marry is insanity in an era when having a child out of wedlock was a very quick way to end up in the workhouse, an asylum or on the streets.
On the other hand, the author is still one of the best writers out there, so even as I grumble through each book, I read it avidly, neglecting everything else to get to the final chapter. So five stars it is.
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