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An interesting, very old-fashioned read. I liked the feisty, speaks-her-mind heroine, although I wasn\u2019t at all sure what she saw in the cranky hero, but the writing was lovely and very Heyer-esque, and Harry, the duke\u2019s young grandson, stole every scene he was in.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Charity Wynyate is left (literally) holding the baby when her sister dies in childbirth at the same time as her brother-in-law, Ned, dies at Waterloo. Baby Emily was premature, so it\u2019s a while before Charity can take orphans Emily and her older brother, Harry, back to England. She\u2019s looked after them since Harry was born, but she can\u2019t do it alone, so she takes the children to their paternal grandfather, the Duke of Orme. Since Harry is now his heir, he\u2019ll do what\u2019s right by the children, won\u2019t he? Even though he had quarrelled so badly with Harry\u2019s father that he doesn\u2019t even know of Harry\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n
When she arrives at the duke\u2019s London residence, she meets Harry\u2019s uncle, Lord Alistair Ashbourne, who until that moment had believed himself to be the heir to the dukedom. I\u2019m not quite sure how it was that the family knew that Ned was dead but knew nothing of Harry\u2019s existence, since Ned\u2019s family travelled everywhere with him and everyone would have known about him, even if Ned was so careless of his family as not to inform his father of the birth of a new heir, but let that pass. Alistair\u2019s manner is icy towards Charity, since he sees her as an encroaching female of no account, using the children to weasel her way into the duke\u2019s household. The duke is even worse – he\u2019s the archetypal curmudgeonly, gouty duke, shouting at everyone (and I have no fault to find with this, having written a curmudgeonly, gouty duke myself, once).<\/p>\n
The duke reluctantly accepts the children, orders Alistair to take them to a country estate of his, and tells Charity to go away – she\u2019s to have nothing more to do with them. A free and frank exchange of views ensues, but dukes will have their way, so the children are packed off to the country and Charity turns, rather unenthusiastically, to considering her own future. Her father has remarried and the stepmother doesn\u2019t want Charity around, so she\u2019ll have to find employment as a governess or companion, but wouldn\u2019t it be handy if that could be somewhere close to the children? She needn\u2019t break her word not to see the children, but she might hear about them sometimes. And by the greatest good fortune, she bumps into an old army friend of poor, deceased Ned, Captain Fitzallan (or Fitz), whose mother just happens to live within a few miles of Ashbourne Grange, where the children are. His mother is happy to include Charity in her giant household while she looks around for work, but first Fitz takes her under his wing and squires her about to fancy parties in London.<\/p>\n
This part of the book gave me the heebie-jeebies. A young (well, youngish) single woman being squired about town by a young single man who isn\u2019t even a relative? And not a hint of a chaperon in sight? How did they even get to these parties – in a closed carriage? Eek! But let that pass, too. At least this part enables Charity to meet the lovely Melissa Vane, who just happens to be betrothed to Alistair.<\/p>\n
Now, this is something that puzzles me mightily. We know almost from the first moment she appears that Melissa was not particularly interested in Alistair until his older brother died, making him the heir to the dukedom, and she thereafter drew him into her web. So she\u2019s very beautiful, yes, but how could he not see that she\u2019s only after the title? Does he not care? Is there a connection between the families to make a marriage more likely? And how could a sophisticated man about town be drawn in by a cold-hearted ambitious woman? I just can\u2019t imagine what he sees in her, beyond her appearance, and if that were all, he\u2019d be horribly shallow.<\/p>\n
Whatever his reasons, this whole section of the book seems to be set up purely to have Charity and Alistair quarrel at Lady Sefton\u2019s ball. He thinks she\u2019s encroaching into society (which she isn\u2019t, she was invited), she thinks he\u2019s an arrogant prig (which he is, because what right has he got to judge her?). But this scene does provide an interesting and illuminating shift in perspective. She thinks her home-modified gown looks shabby genteel. He thinks she makes every other woman look overdressed. I wish more authors would use this kind of strategy.<\/p>\n
Then it\u2019s off to the country, where Fitz and his family take Charity under their wing, providing her with a riding horse and generally being good friends to her. I really felt sorry for Fitz at this point. It\u2019s obvious that he rather likes Charity, but she can think only of the children. Oh, and the obnoxious Lord Alistair, of course, whose only good quality seems to be that he\u2019s a snappy dresser. Why is it that otherwise sensible heroines fall helplessly in love with heroes who have never shown them the slightest kindness, when the perfectly nice sidekick doesn\u2019t get a look in? It\u2019s a mystery to me.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, Charity ends up moving into Ashbourne Grange to look after the children, and clashing with Alistair who comes to check up on them (but only after being prompted by Fitz). Whereupon he decides to stay for a while, which had me clutching my pearls, I can tell you. Have these people never heard of chaperons? In what version of the Regency is it OK for a single man and and a single woman, unrelated, to stay under the same roof, with only the servants?<\/p>\n
However, this spell together is where he begins (belatedly) to appreciate Charity\u2019s good points, and she begins to realise he\u2019s not quite as curmudgeonly as his father. But of course, we couldn\u2019t possibly have a simple slide towards our happy ever after, so there has to be a sting in the tail, a reversion to curmudgeonliness for Alistair and a little bit of melodrama before we get there.<\/p>\n
I confess, I really didn\u2019t like Alistair very much for most of this book, but given the character of his father, perhaps some of his behaviour is understandable, and I have to admit he\u2019s a very common type for the era in which this book was written. And the ending was rather sweet. This was so well-written that I\u2019m going to be generous and go for four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An interesting, very old-fashioned read. I liked the feisty, speaks-her-mind heroine, although I wasn\u2019t at all sure what she saw in the cranky hero, but the writing was lovely and very Heyer-esque, and Harry, the duke\u2019s young grandson, stole every scene he was in. Here\u2019s the premise: Charity Wynyate is left (literally) holding the baby […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[229],"class_list":["post-4485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-walsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485","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=4485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4489,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions\/4489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}