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4.0 out of 5 stars
Charming Regency romance encompassing the social turmoil of the time, December 27, 2010
This review is from: The Chaperon Bride (Mass Market Paperback)
Since this charming little story is a romance set in 1816, it is literally correct to describe it as a Regency Romance. And in some ways - particularly the fact that the plot includes elements of social comedy, the central characters are of noble birth, they are very concerned to to do the right thing by one another - it does fit the template which those words imply.
However, in other ways this story is quite a bit broader than the traditional regency romance. It is set in the author's native Yorkshire rather than the ballrooms and meeting places of London. And it captures some of the social unrest and turmoil which really did follow the end of the Napoleonic wars, as veterans came home, often to unemployment, while the progress of the industrial revolution often carried a high social cost.
The heroine of the story is Lady Annis Wycherley (not Wyncherley), who is both the daughter and widow of naval captains. Her late father and husband left her a small competence, including a beautiful house and small estate called Starbeck, near Skipton. However, far from providing her with an income, Starbeck costs more than the estate brings in to maintain. So she uses her connections as the grand-daughter of a Marquis to act as a chaperon to earn the money she needs to support herself and Starbeck.
And as a chaperon, who makes her living escorting and guiding young ladies on their come-out, and helping them to make a good marriage, Annis's reputation is very important to her. So when the handsome Lord Adam Ashwick, who has a reputation as a rake, takes an interest in her, Annis has to discourage him.
Meanwhile there is simmering local discontent, which is in constant danger of exploding into violence, caused by the activities of a ruthless businessman called Samuel Ingram, who has given the poor and the nobility alike excellent reason to hate him. Annis has nothing but contempt for Ingram, but has difficulty in keeping her distance from him because her cousin, Charles Lafoy, is Ingram's lawyer. By chance Lord Ashwick is on hand to rescue Annis when she is caught up in a near-riot against Samual Ingram's activities, and she realises it is becoming harder and harder to keep her growing attraction to him under control ...
An enjoyable and interesting tale, which includes a mystery as well as a romance.
Two little caveats, one of which is the responsibility of the publisher and not the author. It really annoys me when publishing houses entrust the job of writing the precis on the back of a book to some incompetent ninny who can't be bothered to read the book properly, and when the book makes it all the way to being printed without anyone noticing that the blurb on the back is wrong.
I'm afraid Harlequin have provided an egregious example with this edition. The back cover states that Lord Adam Ashwick "made his daughter's chaperon the target of his relentless seduction."
Having read this, and because we learn early in the book that Lord Ashwick is a widower, who had married young but whose first wife had tragically died, I spent the first half of the book waiting for him to ask Lady Annis Wycherley to bring out his daughter.
But he never did, because the note on the back of the book is poppycock. Lord Adam doesn't have a daughter: when he and the heroine become friendly enough, in the middle of the book, to discuss their respective first marriages, we learn that Adam's beloved first wife died before they could have children. The heroine is chaperon, not to his nonexistent daughter, but to those of another local magnate, Sir Robert Crossley.
How difficult is it to read a book properly when you are given the job of drafting the blurb for the back cover, and write something accurate? Sadly Harlequin is not the only publisher who seem to find this far more difficult than they should. And the mistake is repeated in the "product description" quoted on this Amazon site.
My other niggle is with the statement in the book that the heroine's maternal family do not recognise her because she is the product of a marriage in which her mother "ran away with a sea captain." Although it is possible that a Marquis would have considered Annis's father a less glittering match than his daughter could expect, completely severing relations would be a more extreme reaction than most noble families would have taken because it's crystal clear from the book that the late Captain Lafoy was very far from being some penniless nobody.
He was a Captain RN, which then even more than now was a position of considerable status in society, and he obviously had enough "interest" at the admiralty to have been almost continuously employed up to his death in a naval battle about ten years before this story.
The Royal Navy being at this time far and away the most meritocratic part of British society, it wasn't quite impossible to earn that kind of influence through actually being good at the job - indeed, commanding a major sailing warship was such an exceptionally difficult job that nobody was trusted with it, no matter how exalted their birth, unless they were also at least reasonably competent. This doesn't actually negate the argument that, whether he had acquired his "interest" by impressing a patron through professional skill, or partly in that way and partly by family connections, any Captain RN with a command at sea would by definition have powerful friends.
The late Captain Lafoy also came from a well-established gentry family in Yorkshire, and had been wealthy enough to buy the Starbeck estate. Overall he was sufficiently eligible that a daughter of a noble house who was determined to marry him would probably have been allowed to do so.
This comparatively minor niggle aside, this is an enjoyable and well-written book.
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