![\"\"](\"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/No1NobodysLady.jpg\")
Michael Redmond, now the Duke of Cortland, has been ambushed on his way to London by highway robbers, who have stolen his coach and horses. He makes his way on foot to an inn, where he bumps into a face from the past, Lilly Bridges, now the widowed Lady Beauchamp. There\u2019s a lot of history between them, but he\u2019s now embarked on an urgent political mission and is betrothed, to boot, so that past must stay buried – if it can.<\/p>\n
So right from the start, it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s a whole heap of sexual tension between these two. We see their past history unfolding in parallel with the present day events, but we\u2019re already aware of their tragedy – that they should have married, but because of a misunderstanding, it never happened. She married the widower of her older sister, and he never married, although he\u2019s recently betrothed himself unemotionally to the daughter of a political ally.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not normally keen on the overworked trope of the Great Misunderstanding, but the author here makes it more credible than most such scenarios. There\u2019s one major flaw in the logic, though. Lilly married her dead sister\u2019s husband (a baron), a union frowned on by the church, because when a man and woman marry, they become \u2018one flesh\u2019. This means that her sisters are theoretically his sisters too, so a marriage to the deceased wife\u2019s sister becomes incestuous. In theory. In practice, this was such a pragmatic solution to the problem of a widower with children that it actually happened quite a lot. One of Jane Austen\u2019s brothers did exactly this. And, contrary to the statements in the books, such marriages are not illegal. It\u2019s far, far more complicated than that. Such a marriage was voidable. That meant that it was perfectly legal until someone challenged it, at which point it became void, the marriage no longer existed and any children were rendered illegitimate.<\/p>\n
That uncertainty made it unlikely in the extreme that any responsible nobleman would contract such a marriage because of the risk that a male heir might be suddenly disinherited. On the other side of the coin, no responsible father would push his daughter into such a union, either, because of the risk that she would be left without the protection of a husband. It would be disastrous. The whole premise of the book is that Lilly\u2019s father persuades her to marry for security, when in fact he was putting her into a very uncertain and potentially ruinous situation.<\/p>\n
That aside, the question of whether such a marriage would be scandalous is an interesting one. Lilly\u2019s baron husband would have been listed in Debrett\u2019s Peerage, together with the names of both his wives, so the matter could hardly be kept secret. It wasn\u2019t a sensible choice for a peer, but I don\u2019t know just how much of a scandal it would cause. These are interesting questions, and I applaud the author for treading in such murky legal territory, even if she doesn\u2019t quite get all the complexities straight.<\/p>\n
But this is just the background to the romantic difficulties faced by our two protagonists. Michael and Lilly find themselves thrown together by circumstance, and increasingly unable to keep their hands off each other. Neither of them is the restrained Regency type so beloved of Georgette Heyer. Lust overcomes them with increasing frequency and in a range of implausible al fresco settings. The sex scenes are tastefully done, but moderately graphic, so beware if that\u2019s not your thing. It\u2019s fairly obvious where things are going, but how they get there is always interesting. The ending is fairly dramatic, with a huge coincidence and an over-the-top villain, but I enjoyed it nevertheless, and everybody got what they wanted in the end.<\/p>\n
Of the characters, I liked Lilly very much. She was enchantingly natural and genuine, following her heart more than her head but never regretting what she\u2019s done. Michael I had a bit less sympathy for. Considering the position he was in, with his marriage fast approaching, he really was very bad about keeping his breeches buttoned with Lilly. He was constantly overcome with uncontrollable lust, and then swamped with guilt afterwards. Pro tip: feeling guilty doesn\u2019t excuse the lapse in behaviour. By contrast, compare the actions of Michael\u2019s friend Danbury. He\u2019s a very contented bachelor, but he happily agrees to pretend to be a suitor to Lilly to deflect attention from her relationship with Michael, and when things go pear-shaped, he gallantly prepares to marry her to get everyone out of the pickle. That is a true hero.<\/p>\n
Now, for those who are sensitive about anachronisms, this book is riddled with them, and the Americanisms are so egregious that I can\u2019t believe the author even tried to avoid modern usage. The one that made me shudder from horror is \u2018go potty\u2019 (in a toilet context). This isn\u2019t a British expression even today, and certainly not in the Regency era. I found myself sufficiently swept up in the story not to mind too much, but if swathes of \u2018visit with\u2019 and \u2018passed\u2019 and \u2018off of\u2019 and \u2018gotten\u2019 would upset you, this author is best avoided.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually a pity the author didn\u2019t let a (British) proofreader loose on the book, because if the anachronisms could have been ironed out, this would have been a fine story indeed. The romance and the heart-breaking situation the protagonists find themselves in are examined in unswerving detail, the other characters are quite properly kept in the background, and there\u2019s plenty of angst and deep emotion to satisfy even the most discerning reader. I loved it, and only the horrible anachronisms keep it to four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Redmond, now the Duke of Cortland, has been ambushed on his way to London by highway robbers, who have stolen his coach and horses. He makes his way on foot to an inn, where he bumps into a face from the past, Lilly Bridges, now the widowed Lady Beauchamp. There\u2019s a lot of history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-anders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1953,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}