It’s always interesting to revisit the bad guy from an earlier book and see him reformed and finding his own happiness. It’s a hard act to pull off, and I think the author cheats a little here – we don’t actually see Thomas reform himself, he just appears at the start of the book, several years later, so far reformed that he’s a curate in an impoverished rural parish, now living a blameless life. He’s then given the living at his old home, where everyone remembers him from his wild former existence, and he has an uphill task to convince everyone that yes, he really has changed. And it doesn’t help that a mysterious woman appears and deposits a boy of eight on his doorstep, before disappearing again. Is the boy Thomas’s?

It’s not surprising that everyone is suspicious. Mary Bates, eldest daughter of the smith and Abbey steward, is willing to believe in him, but her father isn’t and forbids her to have anything to do with him, thus providing basically the only obstacle to what would otherwise be a perfectly smooth romance. There’s a lovely moment when Thomas first sees Mary again, with one of her younger brothers in tow. He remembers her very well as the prettiest of the village girls, but he assumes she must be married, especially as he sees her with a young child in tow (her brother, as it happens). “Mrs… er?” he says, and it comes across as though he doesn’t remember her at all.

From then onwards, things unfold pretty much as expected, with both Mary and Thomas trying very hard to abide by her father’s strictures (which is completely in line with Regency mores, so no problem there), and Thomas trying both to do his best for the boy left in his care, while also convince the locals that he really has become an upright citizen. My only quibble is a legal one: no, you can’t legitimise an illegitimate child by marrying, not in England, at any rate.

A nice read, a suitably romantic ending and a good four stars.

A charming and sweet novella, too short in many ways, but a delightful read.

Here’s the premise: Eloise Blackburn is helping her young sister fly her kite when the pesky thing gets lodged in an ash tree. Eloise is persuaded to discard her shoes and stockings and climb the tree to retrieve it, but there’s a catch – a strange man is already aloft, hidden in the leafy canopy of the tree. He claims to be a cousin of the neighbouring Allen family, from the West Indies, called Crispin, but Eloise has never heard of him. However, her parents, it transpires, recognise him as the son of the eldest Allen brother, James, who was disinherited years ago. All he was left in his father’s will was a chest and the contents thereof. He’s come back to England now that his father has died to claim the inheritance, but the Allen family deny all knowledge of him.

So the mystery is laid out clearly – where is this mysterious chest? And why are the Allens so keen to disclaim all knowledge of their cousin? But alongside the mystery is the romance between Eloise and the flirtatious Crispin. The blurb describes him as ‘cheeky’, but actually he’s more than that, and Eloise is immediately smitten. It appears he’s equally smitten with her – or is he? Maybe he’s just amusing himself with a little light flirtation before disappearing back to the West Indies?

There isn’t much more to say about this, because frankly the book is too short to develop the characters beyond their initial positions, and the romance comes to the boil far too quickly for my taste. But I loved Crispin and his outrageous behaviour, completely understood why Eloise fell for him (I would have done too, like a shot) and only wished he had been a bit more open about some aspects of his history that caused his lady love some unnecessary grief. But then there would have been even less of a story without it, so never mind.

A lovely read from a new-to-me author. Five stars.