Mira Stables is one of my go-to authors. I can usually depend on finding a great read, although the plots and characters and styles vary wildly from book to book. Some work in spite of quirks, but this one has no quirks at all – it’s a straight down the line traditional Regency that sticks closely to the tropes and manages to have a certain amount of drama without a villain and without the usual kidnapping at the end, so thank heavens for that.

Here’s the premise: Graine Ashley comes from a good family but there’s no money to support an unmarried sister of twenty-seven. She’s obliged to become a governess, but she’s too good looking to escape becoming prey to the master of the house, the younger generation or the male guests at house parties. So for her latest position, she’s adopted a disguise to protect herself, using greasepaint, fake shoulder humps, a limp and a mouse-like demeanour. The resident male is the Earl of Valminster, and thankfully he’s very proper and treats her with suitable disinterest.

The plot runs on predictable rails, so inevitably there’s a troublesome boy who likes to play pranks on the new governess, which (since she’s the heroine) she deflects with aplomb, thereby winning the respect of the children. But inevitably the disguise is uncovered and the real Graine is forced to step forward. The earl wants to know the reason for the subterfuge, and when she explains, he assures her that she will never be importuned while under his roof. And then he promptly falls in love with her but can’t speak out because of that promise. How very Regency.

And basically, that is the whole plot. She is the perfect governess, he is the perfect nobleman, and anyone looking for the now customary deeply flawed main characters, with daddy issues or a Deep Dark Secret – well, you’ll be disappointed. The servants are the usual benign old retainers, the relations are friendly and even the troublesome children turn into little near-paragons of juvenile virtue by the halfway point. There is some drama, but it’s all designed to show the hero and heroine in an appropriately heroic light. The romance inches steadily towards its inevitable conclusion, and in the end, only that promise and a stupid misunderstanding (yes, that old chestnut) keep them apart for long.

This makes it sound very dull, but actually I found it a relief from the overwrought and highly improbable antics of most Regencies. Two sensible and likeable leads with a very believable romance made for a very pleasant read, and all beautifully written with not an anachronism in sight. Five stars.

This was the third in a cheap box set (three Mira Stables books for a pound, how cool is that?), and for me it was by far the best. Both Emma Disposes and A Match For Elizabeth had flaws which (for me) kept them to four stars. But this one was engaging right from the start, with a delightfully independent heroine, a hero who knows his own mind and some melodrama that, for once, made absolute sense and wasn’t just tacked on to give the hero a chance to be heroic. It also features one of the most original proposal scenes ever, so there’s that.

Here’s the premise: John Longden is minor gentry with a reasonable income of his own, and a wealthy wife. He was blinded in a shooting accident, but he doesn’t repine, and his three grown daughters (Clemency, Prudence and Faith) help him manage. But four years ago, his wife set out on a journey and vanished into thin air, her money is now unavailable to him, and his own investments have gone disastrously wrong. The family is practically destitute, the only valuables remaining are the mother’s jewels.

The daughters, however, are resourceful. They are determined to find genteel employment of some sort, but they need someone to help them with references and the like. Clemency has the bright idea of calling upon their neighbour, Piers Kennedy, a former naval captain and now a sheep farmer and wool merchant, for help. Mr Longden saved his life many years ago, so he will surely feel under an obligation to help them. Her sisters cannibalise their mother’s fine silks and velvets for suitable clothing to rig Clemency out for a formal visit, but it doesn’t go well. The two end up in a battle of wits, he grabs her wrist to stop her leaving and ends up kissing her.

Now, normally I strongly dislike supposed heroes who ruthlessly impose themselves on gently brought up young ladies just because they can, and he has less excuse than most such instances. He doesn’t mistake her for a serving wench, for instance (not that that excuses such behaviour, but given that this book was written fifty years ago, it’s in line with the prevailing morality of romances of the era). But somehow, the way the scene is written makes the kiss almost inevitable, and not as reprehensible as it would otherwise be. In fact, for me it’s the fact that he grabbed hold of her that I find most shocking. A kiss might be construed as a romantic gesture, but a Regency gentleman should never, ever lay a hand on a lady’s person.

From then onward, the lines are drawn. She despises him thoroughly for his reprehensible behaviour (as she should!) and he is riven by guilt and determined to find some way to help the family. And (the part that makes me like him rather a lot) he sees all the positive elements of her actions and is half way to being in love with her before she’s even left the house. Even though he stoutly maintains that he’s never going to marry because reasons, he’s still drifting towards it with every single meeting. And he doesn’t do anything stupid along the way, like kissing her again, for instance.

I’m not going to spoil the plot by telling you how it all turns out. Suffice to say that the missing wife subplot is resolved in a satisfactory way, and ties in neatly with the melodramatic ending, which seems to be de rigueur in books of this era. The hero gets a chance to be suitably heroic, the heroine gets a chance to be suitably resourceful and there’s the most glorious proposal scene which made me laugh out loud. And everything is settled in the best possible way. A lovely traditional read that made me smile all the way through. Five stars.

A pleasantly undemanding book that runs on predictable rails from the outset, marred only by some minor plot contrivances and one eye-rollingly bad decision by the heroine. Fortunately, the hero is my favourite kind, the sensible and honourable sort, who more or less redeems everything single handedly.

Here’s the premise: Richard, the Earl of Anderley, is called to the deathbed of an old friend, to discover that he’s been named as guardian to the friend’s daughter. Not that she needs a guardian, since she’s twenty-three, but let that pass. Elizabeth has been under the impression that she was illegitimate. Now she’s to be told that she is actually legitimate, although in a secret and underage ceremony of dubious legality, but let that pass, too. Richard is charged with bringing the girl to her rightful place in society and finding her a husband, and quite why her father neglected to do that himself is beyond me.

Richard accepts the guardianship and sets about his appointed tasks. His sister Mary is called upon to rig Elizabeth out in suitable style, but refuses to introduce her to society. Maybe next year, she says. So Richard whisks Elizabeth off to the country, but he’s not prepared to wait a year, since she’s 23 already. Happily, he has a nephew, Timothy, (Mary’s son) who is the right sort of age, and a pleasant, agreeable sort of man. He’s a bit rakish, but no doubt he’ll settle in time. He’s also Richard’s heir, so it all seems very providential. Elizabeth is very antagonistic towards Richard, resenting being torn away from her simple farming roots and his control over her, but she seems to take a shine to Timothy. So, marriage problem solved. Or is it?

Two problems emerge to mar this seemingly perfect arrangement. Firstly, when Timothy is invited to get to know Elizabeth better at a house party Richard has helpfully organised, he falls madly in love with the brainless but very pretty daughter of a neighbour. So… back to the drawing board on the marriage front, but there’s a young marquis who might do…

The second problem is that Richard finds himself falling for Elizabeth himself. Now, this seems a bit skeevy in a man with a nephew of 25 or so, whom everyone (including himself) talks about as if he were practically in his dotage. He tells himself he’s far too old for Elizabeth and resolutely suppresses his feeling, soldiering on with his project to find her a husband her own age. Whereupon we discover that he’s a full twenty years younger than his sisters, and is actually only 35. Since when is 35 too old and decrepit to think of marriage, especially to a 23-year-old?

Eventually, like the reader, he comes to realise that he’s not too old for her at all, she seems to have dropped her initial antagonism towards him and so he decides to try his luck. And she promptly refuses him, because reasons. What possible reason can there be? The usual one – the author wanted to spin out the plot and introduce some melodrama, so the heroine gets to have her outbreak of stupid, while I restrained the impulse to hurl my Kindle at the wall. Sigh.

Needless to say, everything comes right in the end, although not before another deluge of highly implausible melodrama, but the final scenes are beautifully romantic, so the story ends on a fine high note that had me grinning in delight. As with all Stables’ work, this is beautifully written and despite the overwrought plot contrivances, worthy of four stars.

I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, because so many people whose opinions I respect love it and recommended it to me. Well, now I’ve read it and… meh. If you like lyrical descriptions of a rather idealised life on a remote Yorkshire farm, this is definitely the book for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a compelling romance with credible obstacles to overcome and actual tension between the couple, best look elsewhere.

Here’s the premise: Patrick Delvercourt is struggling to make a go of his small farm in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, after he inherited a house but no money. With the house let to tenants, he has to make a go of the farm, with the help of a small number of loyal workers. But his housekeeper is becoming too frail for the work, and there’s his young brother to be watched over and given some education. His attempts to advertise for a housekeeper-cum-governess have fallen apart when the women discover just how isolated and primitive the farm is. But Patrick has the good fortune to stumble across Ann Beverley, clearly a lady, but reduced to governessing and newly dismissed from her post. Cautiously, the two agree to give it a try.

The early part of the book is a paean to the beauties of Yorkshire, and a detailed description of just how farming people lived in whatever year this is set (I’m not sure whether it’s Regency or Victorian, to be honest). It’s interesting, but frankly it doesn’t move the plot along very much. I’m all in favour of a bit of description, but I do like something to actually happen as well. But this part of the book is all about describing just how beautiful Yorkshire is (yes, we got that) and establishing the relationships. There’s nothing to dislike about it, but it didn’t set me on fire, either.

The middle part picks up a bit with the reveal that the tenant of the house he inherited is none other than Patrick’s lost love, the woman he nearly married before losing his house and fortune. She promptly married someone else, and rented Patrick’s house (which was why she wanted to marry him in the first place). So now she’s his nearest neighbour and a perpetual reminder of what he’s lost. She’s also a cow of the first degree, so he’s better off without her, frankly, which he’s surely smart enough to see. She’s typifies one of the major problems with the book, in fact, which is that all the characters are either too good to be true or out and out villains. It’s true that Patrick and Ann are not without flaws, but they are sneakily positive flaws like pride and being over-sensitive about matters of rank and fortune.

And here in a nutshell is the biggest problem I found – that there is no real obstacle to the romance at all, apart from the aforesaid pride and a perceived discrepancy of rank. There’s some slight tension between them at times, but it’s largely because of misunderstandings (yes, that old chestnut), and therefore not very convincing. And there’s a major fail in all this, in that both hero and heroine are keeping big secrets from each other, and one of them, at least, would remove every vestige of an obstacle at a stroke, if it were revealed. But that would spoil the story, so it isn’t revealed until the very end. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was by it.** (Spoiler below, if you want it.)

I have one other quibble. Ann left home to be a governess largely because her vastly rich stepfather was so horrible to her. But then at the end of the book he turns up, is as nice as pie to everyone, essentially engineers the marriage and gives Ann a tidy dowry as well! Believable? Not in the slightest.

Despite all this, I have to confess that there was a lot that I enjoyed about the book. Ann and Patrick were both lovely, sympathetic characters, pride and secrets notwithstanding, and little Philip was fun. There were even moments when the lyrical descriptions quite won me over. Still, the lack of much plot, the implausibility of the stepfather’s change of heart and that huge secret kept me from unreserved enjoyment. With any other writer, I might give this three stars, but I’m a huge fan of Mira Stables in general and the quality of the writing gets it four stars.

**

This was a difficult one to rate. I liked the premise, the characters and the fact that there was no out-and-out villain, only some social spitefulness. On the other hand, the romance was understated, nothing remotely surprising happened and the writing style was as dry as dust. I enjoyed it, on the whole, but a bit of sparkle would have made it so much better. When reading, I frequently feel the urge to slap the characters upside the head, but this is the first time I can remember wanting to slap the author upside the head.

Here’s the premise: Julian (unknown surname) has been deprived of his ancestral home by his father’s profligate ways and sheer spitefulness. Even though he knew that Julian could bring it back into good order, and wanted to do so, he deliberately sold it. So when he dies and Julian inherits the barony, and is wealthy enough in his own right to buy back Wellasford, he makes the journey there to try his luck. The new owner, Mr Morley, won’t sell, but although he’s restored the house to its former glory, he’s been less successful in managing the estate. He realises that Julian has that skill, in spades. And Julian is unmarried, and Morley has a daughter, Anna… And so a marriage is arranged.

So far, so conventional. But both Morley and his daughter are very far from conventional. He’s a historian, who makes his daughter dress up in various historical costumes for his own pleasure, and although she doesn’t mind it and in fact rather relishes being different, it’s still a pretty weird thing to do. He’s paranoid about her health, too, feeding her up and insisting she drinks a ton of milk, so that she’s overweight. He also has never let her ride side-saddle, only astride, although that’s fairly illogical. When in history did women ever ride astride? But that’s perhaps beside the point. Anna agrees to the marriage, but she insists on some conditions. She wants a season in London to compensate for her less-than-successful previous season, she wants to lose weight first and she wants a fair degree of freedom, so the marriage won’t be consummated until after all this is accomplished.

Julian sees no reason not to agree to all this, but the reader can easily foresee the sort of problems which might (and do) arise. The plot ran on rails from this point onwards, and it could have been a much more exciting book with a bit of effort from the author. Or it could have been heart-rending, perhaps, as the two protagonists spiral into unhappiness. But no, because the book is written in such a flat narrative style that it lost a great deal of its drama and all of its emotional depth. It was frustrating that such good potential was largely wasted, and the ending was too abrupt for words. I’m not a huge fan of long, schmaltzy epilogues, but a cutoff the instant they kiss is too short. In other circumstances, I might have gone for three stars for this, but I still enjoyed it and was invested in the characters, and I’m a Mira Stables fan so she gets the benefit of the doubt, and four stars.

This was a very pleasant surprise. It’s an old book, previously released in 1976, and now available in ebook form, so it’s very much old school. That means it’s pretty wordy with not a huge amount of action and the characters conform to the expectations of the day – the hero is a domineering rake and the heroine is delightfully feminine and demure… no, wait. These two are nothing like that at all, both being intelligent and mature, and thank goodness for a story about an older-than-average couple.

Robert Develyn married badly and went off adventuring in foreign parts when his wife ran off with someone else. Now she’s dead and at the age of forty, he’s returned to England to settle into rural retirement and raise his young daughter. He’s been left an estate in Kent, but he hasn’t seen it or its previous owner for donkey’s years and he finds that a few things have changed.

For one thing, there’s a new house just inside the gates, inhabited by the household of one Miss Francesca Thornish, past the age of looking for a suitor and eccentric enough to enjoy dressing up in men’s clothes when she feels like it. She is thus when Robert first encounters her. He thinks she’s an idle gatekeeper, and she thinks he’s excessively rude, and so they get off on quite the wrong foot.

But the rest of the book chronicles their slow progress towards grudging respect, tolerance, liking and eventually love. This is, to my mind, quite the best kind of romance, and there’s no silliness, no misunderstandings, just two sensible people, set in their ways, slowly coming to realise that their lives have utterly changed.

Both characters are interesting, but Francesca is fascinating. She’s something I thought was impossible – a Regency heroine who has all the independence of spirit of a modern woman yet is completely true to her era. When she does put on a pretty gown and become the lady of society, the effect is heightened by knowing what she’s like the rest of the time. She’s a pattern-card of respectability only when and if she chooses to be, and nobody forces her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. And while we’re on the subject of characters, a round of applause for the deceased Earl of Finmore, the previous owner of Robert’s new estate and Francesca’s protector, who (despite being dead) is one of the liveliest characters in the book.

The end is complicated by some contrived business with the horse and a not very plausible villain, but by this point it didn’t matter. This is a lovely, old-fashioned Regency that I highly recommend. Five stars.