1815:
Grace Ellis has been working as companion for Lady Florence,
but now Lady Florence has died. The servants are all getting
small legacies, but Grace’s inheritance is somewhat
different. She will only inherit if she weds her former employer’s
nephew, an elderly brigadier with a dodgy reputation. Grace’s
doctor father has left her penniless through his own profligate
ways, so she must either find work or marry. Maybe she could
do the accounts for Dominic LeSayres, who has come to help
get the house ready for the new owner.
This author consistently comes up with entertaining Regency
romances that are filled with incident, and this is a good
example of them. There is plenty of romance as Grace and Dominic
fall for each other, but also a fair bit of adventure. To
say too much would spoil the plot, but Grace gets into a fair
number of scrapes and has to work out whom she can trust.
The two protagonists are likeable characters and although
Grace does do a couple of silly things, Dominic is not too
much of an overbearing alpha male, which pleased this reader.
All this keeps the story rolling along nicely, although unlike
the Regencies set in London, there is not much period detail,
and without the date it would not be easy to guess exactly
when it was set. However, as this is a romance (and adventure)
rather than a straight historical novel, it ticks most of
the boxes and is a good page turner.
|