This is a follow-on to Althea, which I loved. This isn’t quite so good, being a bit scattershot, but still a pretty good read.

Here’s the premise: country girl Jenny Prydd is unexpectedly invited to the wedding of relations of an old friend (the hero and heroine of the previous book). Setting off with a grumpy maid, she stops at a wayside inn for a break and some food. While there, a local doctor declares a quarantine because the innkeeper’s son has measles. Everyone inside the inn is required to stay put until all risk of infection is gone. I’m not totally convinced that Regency medicine bothered with full-blown quarantine, rather than simply keeping the infected person isolated, but never mind. Trapped with Jenny at the inn are Emily Pellering and Adrian Ratherscombe, an eloping couple, Peter and Domenic Teverley, an uncle and nephew, and a clergyman. When they realise what is going on, the rest of the inhabitants conspire to protect Emily from fortune hunter Ratherscombe.

The group spend three weeks (!) trapped at the inn, before setting off again for London, including Emily whose family have been notified of her location and send a carriage to rescue her. Jenny moves in with Emily to protect her, even though she has her own family to do that, and Jenny is supposed to be staying with her friend. But the plot needs her to be with Emily, so there we are. The Teveleys call regularly, since Domenic likes Emily, while she is drawn to the enigmatic Peter. The wrinkle in this particular tale is that Emily likes Peter, too, having been very taken by his romantic and heroic sorting out of the obnoxious Mr Ratherscombe by way of his fists.

In London, Jenny is allowed to enjoy herself hugely at a variety of social occasions, while also acting as wise mentor for Emily, who naturally doesn’t listen to a word she says. The real villain of the piece turns out to be Domenic’s mother, Lady Teeve, who is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, while pretending to be very kind to Jenny and Emily. She’s so ‘kind’, in fact, that she invites them to her country home for a week’s house party, where she settles down to some ritual humiliation of them both. This is where things go slightly off the rails for me. I found it hard to believe any mother who wanted to keep her precious son away from an unworthy female would invite said female to spend a week in the family’s bosom where they are bound to be thrown together, but there we are. It does make for a dramatic interlude.

The house party does throw up one absolute howler of a mistake on the author’s part: Jenny and Emily travel from London to Cumberland (a distance close to 300 miles, which takes the non-stop mail coach no less than 48 hours) in a single day, without even one stop, even to change horses. Magical horses, indeed!

But otherwise, there’s not much to complain about, the plot unravels reasonably smoothly, if you don’t apply too much logic to it, and the romantic denouement is lovely. Four stars.

This one was a joy to read. The exchanges between hero and heroine are genuinely witty, both are interesting characters, the side plots are realistic and it’s beautifully written.

Here’s the premise: Althea Ervine is treated more like a housekeeper than a daughter of the household. Her father and brother seem incapable of managing without her, but when she tires of being taken for granted and escapes to her married sister in London, Mary takes up her cause with enthusiasm and determines to rig Ally out in fashionable style and give her a wonderful time.

And a wonderful time she does indeed have, being pursued by handsome, charming Edward Pendarly, and then there’s Sir Tracy Calendar, with whom she exchanges scintillating and witty banter (which is genuinely funny, by the way, unlike much so-called witty banter to be found in modern Regencies). Sir Tracy — actually, hold it right there for a moment. I hate, hate, hate this as a male name, but I’m told it is an authentic Regency name, so… {shrug}. But authors, please don’t be tempted.

Where was I? Sir Tracy {rolls eyes} makes some cryptic remark about Pendarly, which is actually intended to warn Ally that he is already betrothed (as the reader already knows), but Ally takes it as a curmudgeonly insult against the handsome, charming etc Edward, and decides to dislike Tracy. When she finds out the truth, and Tracy takes the opportunity to rush to a proposal, she accepts in a fit of pique.

So far, so very conventional Regency. It’s a pity that heroines don’t establish, with every offer from the hero, his precise reasons for making it, so that they don’t agonise for endless chapters over it, and would find out at once, instead of waiting for 200 pages, that he loves her, but then I suppose most novels would collapse to the length of a short story. Anyway, Ally doesn’t, but her agonisings aren’t as tedious as such things usually are, partly because Tracy understands her state of mind perfectly and makes allowances, and partly because he displays just that degree of unruffled calm in the face of her turbulence that is so appealing in a hero. I can cope with a heroine who gets in a tizz, but there are very few heroes who are improved by such behaviour.

Tracy lapses into a bit of a tizz himself late in the book, which I thoroughly disapproved of. Heroes who want to win their lady in the end need to stick close to her, and for heaven’s sake, how hard can it be to tell her you love her? But no, Tracy goes wandering off, and then has to do some chasing to catch up with her, and convince her that he really does love her. But of course he does the right thing in the end, and all ends just as expected.

There are a few anachronisms but nothing to stop me enjoying this totally. Five stars.