A lovely and quite unusual story of a young widow fighting to keep her independence. Modern Regencies that feature a spirited and feisty heroine who doesn’t need a man to run her life, thank you very much, are two a penny, but this one is definitely out of the usual mould.
Here’s the premise: Mrs Claudia Carstairs is a widow struggling to make ends meet on the estate left to her by her abusive husband. There are a few sheep, and she’s trying to build a horse-breeding business, doing as much of the stable work as the hands. But one day a stranger appears in the village, asking questions about Ravencroft, and a couple of days later he turns up and asks for a job. He’s willing to work in the stables, but he’s also able to act as butler, an odd combination. But he’ll work for board and a bed, and she’s desperate, so she takes him on, and it isn’t long before one of the grooms recognises him as Lord Glenraven, whose father used to own the estate. Jem confesses that it was stolen by Carstairs and he’s come to reclaim it, but he needs proof which is hidden somewhere in the house. He swears the groom to secrecy.
So the whole plot is revealed at quite an early stage. All Jem has to do is find the proof he needs and he can turf out the widow and reclaim his property. But Claudia soon cottons on to what he’s up to, and since she doesn’t want to be turfed out, and loves Ravencroft just as much as he does, the race is on to outwit him. I’m going to be honest here – I disapproved of Claudia’s methods here. I understood why she did it, and in a way it got everyone what they wanted, but it was dishonest and it was hardly surprising that it caused so many problems later.
Along the way, there’s Claudia’s downtrodden sister and her husband, a pair who just want Claudia to accept that a woman can’t manage an estate all by herself and that she needs another husband so that she can retreat to the drawing room and be a lady as she’s supposed to, not to mention a rumbustious boy and dog. After a lot of angry stubbornness from the principals, the ending is a bit contrived, but it does feature one of the best declarations of love I’ve ever come across. Lots of minor Americanisms which didn’t bother me too badly (apart from ‘taffy-coloured’ hair! We don’t have taffy in Britain). Five stars.
This was recommended by Lady Catherine’s Salon member Rabia Bawany in a Sunday Review, and I found it an absorbing read, even though I wanted to bang the principals’ heads together at times. Would it hurt to talk to each other, people?