I’ve read several Laura Matthews books, and I’ve enjoyed them all, something that’s not usual in authors of this era, where the catalogue tends to be spotty. But this was a perfectly judged blend of a second-chance romance with a happy family setting and a treasure hunt thrown in for good measure. There’s a half-hearted villain but his villainy never really amounts to much. This is just good old-fashioned fun, with some unusually good writing underneath.

Here’s the premise: Theodosia Tremere is the daughter of a clergyman, who almost married Viscount Steyne some years previously. Her father having died, she’s now taken up a position as governess to the charming Heythrop family, headed by Lady Eastwick. Her husband is abroad, so the family is headed by her eldest son, twenty-year-old Edward, who is finding his new responsibilities difficult. There are two younger brothers and three daughters, and all of them are delightful. It’s unusual and very refreshing to encounter a completely happy family in a Regency, and also one where the governess is not only treated with respect by the family, but has pupils who are lively but not mischievous. For the summer, Theodosia has a plan to get all the children out and about by instituting a search for the long-lost family treasure.

Into this pleasant setting comes the sort-of villain, Uncle James, who, having run through his own money and finding his debts rather pressing, is planning to marry a rich widow. As a way of convincing her that he’s serious, he invites the widow’s brother to view his estate, to prove that he’s not just a fortune hunter. As his estate adjoins the Heythrop family’s estate, and his own is run down, he and his guest stay with the Heythrops. And by happy coincidence, the guest happens to be Theodosia’s former suitor, Viscount Steyne.

Seasoned Regency readers will know the way the romance will go — a certain amount of initial hostility, followed by a gradual thawing and realisation that yes, they really can start again and make it stick this time. There were some wonderful conversations between the two, with real emotion roiling through them, especially in Steyne (I love it when the hero is the one doing the bulk of the agonising). In books of this age, the romance is often a bit staid, not to say downright perfunctory, but not so here. There’s enough angst here that it could have been dropped straight into a modern novel (and although I’m not in general a fan of too much angst, here I mean it as a compliment).

The treasure hunt (and the villainy) is just a lot of fun, and if the solution to the mystery was too easily found in the end, I can’t quite see how else it could have been done, so I won’t quibble. There are not so many Americanisms as in some of the author’s work (the inevitable gotten, and fall instead of autumn, but I didn’t notice anything else). My only big question-mark is over the amount of time the hero spent in the heroine’s bedroom, in some cases uninvited, and in one case refusing to leave. It was treated as a comedy interlude, so she nipped into the dressing room to put her nightie on and then climbed into bed, then punctured his vanity totally by falling asleep! Even so, it raised my eyebrows somewhat. I wondered whether this was the meaning of the title (which is singularly inappropriate otherwise).

But these minor grumbles aside, I really loved this book, loved both Steyne and Theodosia (whom he rather charmingly calls Doe) and can’t give it less than five stars.

Another odd book from Laura Matthews. I enjoyed it well enough, but the quirky side characters were unredeemably awful, I didn’t particularly like either of the two main characters and the intrusive sexual element felt jarring.

Here’s the premise: Vanessa Damery has been a widow for two years, with two small children to raise and her husband’s much-neglected estate to manage, with no help from her fellow trustee. In addition, she’s been inundated with a variety of her husband’s relations and assorted hangers-on, which her kind-hearted parents tell her it’s her Christian duty to support. Into this difficult situation belatedly arrives the missing trustee, Lord Alvescot, very much aware of his condescension in doing so, and quite prepared to find everything in disarray at the hands of a mere woman. And just why are her expenses so high, anyway? His arrival is marred by a collision with the recklessly driven curricle of one of the hangers-on, his expected suitably large bedroom isn’t available, and in the poky room he’s assigned, a flimsy chair promptly collapses under his weight. Not an auspicious start.

I have to say, for anyone who’s a fan of curmudgeonly heroes, Alvescot is a spectacular example of the breed. He dislikes and distrusts everyone, is universally hostile and thoroughly charmless, and then there’s his aristocratic arrogance. But then Vanessa is edgy with him, too, not rude precisely but certainly prepared to give as good as she gets. Meanwhile, the hangers-on are as dismal a bunch as one can imagine, and it’s hard to see why she keeps supporting them, let alone have them living under her roof. In the whole household, only the children and the land steward are nice, normal, friendly people.

I was a little surprised that Vanessa was left so alone to take care of everything. Her husband’s relations are just spongers, not one of them having the commonsense to make themselves useful, or help in any way, apart from the one proposing vastly extravagant menus. And did she have no relations of her own who might have helped out? It would have been very unusual in those days for a woman to be managing an estate of any size. Normally the trustees would all be male. But there is a very poignant moment when she has to take the authoritative role, not one she’s ever been trained for and which goes against all her instincts, but she does it, and ends up shaking afterwards. That felt very real, to me, and was the point where I felt real sympathy for her.

The romance has a lot of ground to cover to get from mutual hostility to happy ending, and frankly I never found it very convincing. He gradually comes to see that she’s doing a good job with both the estate and the children under difficult circumstances, and inch by inch he begins to want to relieve her of some of the burdens. And of course, if he’d been remotely doing his job as fellow trustee from the start, she wouldn’t have had nearly so much to contend with. What she sees in him is less obvious. He starts off disliking her quite intensely, and when that starts to change into something else, he starts touching her. Now, holding her hand at a moment of stress is one thing, but he rests his hand on her shoulder at one point and starts playing with her hair, during an otherwise rational conversation, and frankly that just felt creepy to me. Then he kisses her and goes away without a word, leaving her uncertain, and sends her only businesslike letters. Foolish man.

Needless to say, the two do sort themselves out eventually, as well as seeing off the hangers-on, and the final night-time shenanigans with one particular lady are almost worth the price of admission alone, and single-handedly dragged the book from a grudging three stars up to four. I’ve mentioned the sex, which is not particularly graphic but didn’t add much to the story, although to be fair, with a widow, there ought to be some acknowledgement of it, and particularly whether the first marriage was satisfactory or not. For pedants out there, be warned that there’s a good sprinkling of Americanisms, especially ‘gotten’, but generally this felt very Heyeresque in tone. Despite the criticisms, I still enjoyed the read, and if this is a bit different from the usual Regency fare, I’m always happy to wander away from the familiar roads.

An odd book that I enjoyed, but it had some worrying elements, not least a surprising amount of sexual content for a book of this age, plus a wife dallying with a man other than her husband. But an interesting read, nonetheless.

Here’s the premise: Elspeth Parksone is 26 and determined not to marry. Her mother died ten years ago, and ever since then her father has been merrily fathering bastards on every willing girl in the neighbourhood. Elspeth takes the opposing path of becoming ever more puritanical, taking care of the bastards and devoting her life to good works about the parish. Having accidentally encountered her father in flagrante delicto with a local wench, and misunderstanding the groans of passion, the horrified Elspeth has decided that marriage is not for her. Meanwhile, David, Viscount Greywell, has just lost his beloved wife in childbirth and his son is sickly and not expected to live. When a mutual friend suggests that what he needs is a wife used to dealing with infants, and he knows just the person…

So Lord Greywell arrives to take a look at Elspeth, and after some manoeuvring, they reach an accommodation and marry. He immediately takes off for Vienna and the political negotiations going on there, leaving Elspeth to take care of the child, the household and the estate.

I confess that this is precisely the sort of situation that fascinates me. Modern marriages are almost exclusively based on romantic love, but the Regency was full of pragmatic marriages which were more a business arrangement than anything else. In this case, Elspeth only agrees to it on the understanding that it will be a marriage of convenience only, and she won’t have to participate in any of that nasty man/woman intimacy that so repels her. Lord Greywell is still too grief-stricken over his wife to care much. So long as his son and heir survives, nothing more will be demanded of his wife.

Their first few days together are a master-study in the difficulties inherent in such arrangements. He finds himself constantly comparing her with his late wife, unfavourably. She is constantly bumping up against the traditions of the household, and wondering what she can change and what will annoy her new husband too much. Their interactions are edgy and sometimes downright hostile, and yet they are both smart enough to understand and make allowances for the other. There’s a continual process of adjustment between them, but it’s not clear at first whether this will end in a rapprochement or whether it will descend to outright war.

But then Lord Greywell goes off to be a diplomat, and their only communication is by letter, a very unsatisfactory means of communication for two people with so wide a gulf between them. He fades out of the picture somewhat at this point, and Elspeth is left to her own devices, stymied somewhat by the conventions of the neighbourhood from carrying out her usual charitable projects, and at somewhat of a loose end. Into this void comes Francis Treyford, the effete son of neighbours and a poet, who falls into a kind of infatuation with Elspeth, writing her impassioned poetry and generally hanging around her. And with her husband away, she is vulnerable to his attentions.

I confess to a certain queasiness about her behaviour at this point. I can understand a roving eye before a couple get together, and even something a bit more physical than that, but once there’s a definite pairing, the two should not be looking elsewhere, and certainly not doing anything more than looking. Elspeth and Francis get beyond kisses into something that would certainly have ended up in infidelity, except that Elspeth draws back at the crucial moment. The interlude serves to awaken her to the possibilities of physical intimacy, however, so when her husband returns, she is far more open to the idea than she was, and this smooths the path to the final rapprochement between the two.

I can respect this as an interesting choice by the author, and perhaps in the real world a wife in this situation, effectively abandoned by her husband, feeling lonely and unwanted, might indeed be vulnerable to another man. But frankly, I wonder how likely it would be that a well brought up Regency woman, especially one as buttoned up as Elspeth, would proceed quite so far down the path to an affair. And as a reader I would much rather it had been her husband who opened her eyes to the possibilities of marital intimacy. For that reason, I feel I can only give this four stars. The subject of sex pervades the whole book, and there’s a mildly graphic interlude towards the end. In addition, there are a number of Americanisms (gotten, write him instead of write to him, etc) which also detracted from my enjoyment. A great pity.