Customer Reviews

Once A Mistress

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

He won, he lost, he wondered. Four years later, wonder turned to wonderful. Andrew Ramsey is now the sixteenth Marquess of Templeston after the untimely and unexpected death of his father; a man he loved very dearly. Drew is to follow the directives firmly set in his father's Last Will and Testament and its codacil regarding the care of his many mistresses. One such mistress, Kathryn Stafford, is living at Swanslea Park, the family's private estate. Drew finds this totally unacceptable. He travels to Swanslea for the sole purpose of evicting her.

Drew finds Kathryn dangling from a tree branch, in the throws of rescuing her pet fox from the dreaded hunters. When their eyes meet it is magical. Four years earlier they were deeply in love and betrothed to be married. Kathryn left Drew standing alone a the alter. He was so devastated he joined the war effort never knowing the reason why.

Kathryn now stands in front of him more beautiful than ever. Was his Kathryn really one of his father's mistresses? Did Kathryn and his father really have a son together? What is the feeling he still has in the region of his heart? Drew and Kathryn play no games. They still love each other fiercely. As they face many obstacles and unanswered questions, their love is rekindled and has no limitations. There love is gentle and touching but also sizzles with passion.

This tender and truly wonderful love story is incredibly written with characters you fall in love with. As ONCE A MISTRESS is the first book of Ms. Lee's regency trilogy, it is a triumph! Read it slowly and savor every word. Now we must patiently wait for EVER A PRINCESS, the second Templeston tale coming out in the Spring of 2002. I'm already looking forward to it.

When Andrew Ramsey loses his father in a tragic accident, he discovers that his father has left very specific instructions as to how he is to care for his father's various mistresses and bastard children. One of these mistresses appears to be living on the estate, and intending to bring an end to this scandalous situation, Andrew hastens to the estate. Only to discover that the mistress in question is his former fiancée, who left him standing at the altar four years ago. And that she has a child who looks remarkably like him who is clearly recognized as his father's illegitimite son. Is it possible that his fiancée jilted him to become his father's mistress?

So begins Andrew's journey into a nightmarish past, that causes him to question the character of his father and the woman he himself had planned to marry. As incredible as it seems, Kathryn had borne a son and the father of that son was his own father! Any man would be angry to discover this situation, but how many would be angry that his father had not MARRIED her! After getting over his initial anger at Kathryn's faithlessness, Andrew wonders how his father could be so crude as to make her his mistress instead of his wife.

It is only a small step from there to realize that he still loves Kathryn and wants to be her husband and the father of her son, his half-brother. But there are still many unanswered questions. Why did she jilt him and then refuse to see him or explain why? Why did his father never tell him about her? Why does Kathryn--in spite of being a mother and a scandalous mistress--seem as innocent as ever in the lovemaking department? It is truly amazing that Andrew is willing to marry her without finding out all the answers to these questions first, or that Kathryn waits so long to tell him the truth.

Frankly, I devoured this book. I cried several times while reading this book. It's fantastic! I'd give it five stars, except that there were some flaws. For example, the assumption that the father's bastard child could be Andrew's heir. The father's willingness to subject Kathryn to scandal seems out of character. Kathryn insists that she can't bear any children for fear of an inherited disease and then she expresses the desire to have children with Andrew. But even though not all of the t's were crossed, this book is exceptional and I strongly recommend it.

Some needless repetition and a highly convoluted situation with Kathryn as a mistress (both interesting and irritating) create some problems in this otherwise interesting tale.

Lee makes the 15th Marquess's many mistresses seem like a virtue; in the end, the reader has to like him. Drew is even more complicated in some ways than his father; he is still understandably angry with Kathryn for leaving him at the altar, but he still loves her. She has never stopped loving him, but circumstances do not look good. It takes almost the entire novel to sort out all the various misunderstandings, secrets, adn half-truths. In fact, not all of them are revealed in this book; more are revealed in book 3 (Always a Lady), and I recommend reading it immediately after this one.

Both the hero & the heroine are strong characters, and there's a excellent cast of secondary characters. Drew & Kathryn are faced with an extremely difficult situation and must struggle with numerious complications to resolve things. If it were all a little less confusing, it would be a better book; more needed to be revealed to the reader earlier. I am still not convinced about Kathryn's reasoning for leaving Drew at the altar and never telling him why; I suppose she didn't know him well enough to trust him with it, but she should have tried.

It's a good book, just not Lee's best.

This was my first book by Rebecca Hagan Lee and I absolutely loved this story. I find stories where the couple our kept apart for some reason or another usually an interesting read and this one might be the best ever. I truly was glued to the plot and though I had some thoughts on what truly happened 4 years earlier in Wren's life I was still a bit surprised by the ending. And oh my do I love Andrew's father - he really would have made a great book all on his own. You just have to love his creativity to get his son back to the love of his life. I can absolutley recomend this book - it was just a great romantic story!!

I love a good twist. I love not knowing how a book will end. But with that being said, I almost didn't finish this book because the twisting was so extreme I was lost. Kathryn has a child who looks just like Andrew, but it's not his. And it's not his fathers (cause if you believe all the author has to say about his character then it can't be his), but there is no hidden evil brother who could have slept with her. So who the heck is the father??!!! Kathryn was raped (this won't ruin the book for you) and since the author leads you to think the child is Andrew's father's you are left with the fact that his father raped his fiance. I was so confused, I thought the marquise was a good guy who loved Kathryn and his son. So either the author's description is wrong or the author's plot is wrong. I was so frustrated that I couldn't enjoy and I didn't know which characters I was supposed to like and which ones were bad. I finally skipped ahead and read the ending so that I could find out.

My advice for anyone reading this book is: read the last chapter first and then read the book. I reread it after I read ahead and it was very good. I even liked the characters and understood their struggles. Poor Kathryn. And the plot twists made sense once you are given all the information, but you can't figure it out without any clues. It's like a murder mystery book and you think you know who the killer is and in the last chapter you discover it was Mr. White who wasn't even introduced until the end when he is revealed as the villan. How am I supposed to figure that out????!!!

My advice to Ms. Lee---please don't write something so twisted I can't focus on the character development and their struggles. There was just too much twisting with no clues given along the way to help us cope with your slowly unraveling plot. I can't help but wonder if she wrote this book backwards, knowing the ending but not wanting to give it away. Well, it worked. I didn't get it and she almost lost a fan.

In 1818 England, Marquis George Ramsey apparently dies while sailing on the Irish Sea with his mistress. George stuns his son Andrew with the codicil added to his last will and testament. George insists that his legitimate heir take care of his mistresses who comforted Andrew ever since his wife died.

Andrew plans to evict one of George's women from the family home. However, when he arrives he finds the last person he expects to see, Kathryn Markinson, who jilted him years ago. To his amazement he still wants her even after she introduces him to his young half-brother. Andrew orders Kathryn to become his mistress, but quickly decides he needs more from the woman he still loves. However, Kathryn has deep secrets that she knows she must share with the man she cherishes, but once he learns the truth he will discard her as unwanted baggage.

ONCE A MISTRESS is an engaging Regency romance filled with passion and love so much so that sub-genre fans will enjoy feasting on the tale. Though a bit thin, the story line engages the reader because the audience empathizes with the lead couple and the late George. Fans who relish an emotional character-driven plot will find Rebecca Hagan Lee's latest story enticingly fulfilling.

Harriet Klausner

I'm not an expert on Regencies, however, I've read enough (and have studied history enough) to know that:
a. A child born out of wedlock can never inherit--even if the current heir marries the mother in order to give him a name--he wasn't born in the marital bed=not the rightful heir.
b. In the will of the Marquess that died, he leaves this Park (assuming that to be the whole spread) to Kit's mother (Kathryn, the woman that was presumably his mistress). Also before that, he'd gifted the dowager cottage to her father, then to her. Neither of these things could happen. Why? Because they're entailed, they actually belong to the title, therefore they cannot be sold or gifted.
c. I was under the impression that a person in mourning was not to marry unless extreme circumstances, Ms. Lee says that it's okay, as long as they don't announce. I really couldn't find a right answer on that, so I accepted what she wrote. However, I've only read two books where it happened when only the man was in mourning and he'd impregnated a woman and had to make things right.

For the inconsistency: (Major Spoiler below)
Kit, the little boy, is nearly four, Andrew and Kathryn's marriage was supposed to take place four years ago...how can that be? I know, I know that Kit was given to Kathryn three months after her other son died. However, that would still make him two instead of three, nearly four. She had nine months to carry her first, then he died at 8 months, that's nearly a year and a half. Then three months later, George brought her Christopher, who had to have been a young baby for people to have actually believed she'd just had him...I don't know how nobody would have questioned it otherwise. It's not like three months after burying her first son who was eight months old, she could show up with a child more than a month or two in age and be able to pass him off as hers as well as she did. Plus with her husband having died only six months earlier, that would have branded her an adulteress as well.

Finally, to my way of thinking it was just plain gross to think of sleeping with father and son or from his point of view sleeping with the woman you've always loved while thinking your father had. The ick factor of that made me cringe. Thank goodness we finally find out she did not sleep with both, however until page 268 (out of 309) we're under the impression that she did. And several times Kathryn even says something about it by asking that Andrew if he doesn't mind his father's leavings or making mention she was his father's mistress.

The only way I actually finished this book was because someone ruined the "surprise" for me. Otherwise I wouldn't have made it past page fifty thinking of a woman sleeping with father and son.

Setting ? England, 1818 --- After a tragic sailing accident kills his father and his current mistress, Andrew Ramsey, now the new Marquis, found himself the executor of an intriguing codicil to his father?s last will and testament. The codicil stated that Andrew would assume the care of any illegitimate offspring born within nine months of his demise, from any of the many mistresses he?d taken to comfort him after the death of his beloved wife. Planning to bury his father and his companion together, Andrew traveled to evict his father?s live-in mistress, a Mrs. Stoddard, from the family estate. The intention being that Andrew wished to avoid any more scandal of having one mistress presiding over the burial of another mistress! He was then devastated to find that Mrs. Stoddard was in fact, Kathryn Markinson, the one and only woman he had ever loved, who had jilted him at the altar four years before.

Andrew was hurt beyond belief, that his beloved father - who knew of his pain at being jilted ? would take his former fianc?e as his mistress. The pain and betrayal only intensified once he discovered that she was also mother to his father?s illegitimate son Kit, his step brother ? a child that should have been his! Not only did he have to deal with these feelings of betrayal, but also was amazed to discover that in spite of it all, he still wanted her! Kathryn, still loved him even though she had married another who was old enough to be her father, then became the mistress to bearing his father a son. The mystery of how Andrew could still love and desire this woman after all she?d done was incidental to the puzzles the reader will feel compelled to solve as to why Kathryn didn?t show up for her wedding and what motivated her behavior afterwards.

Once again, the reader will benefit from another well-written and engaging historical novel unfortunately, with the one blatant error of naming an illegitimate child as heir apparent to a marquis ? uh oh ? big slip-up there! The mystery of why his father didn?t marry Kathryn to legitimize Kit, and why Kathryn couldn?t tell Drew the truth of that fateful period, will propel the reader into furiously turning the pages to discover the secrets in an emotional edge of the seat finale. Fans of Ms. Hagan Lee will not be disappointed in this passionately poignant and heartwarming tale. --- Marilyn Rondeau, Official Reviewer for www.historicalromancewriters.com ---

Once a Mistress by Rebecca Hagan Lee was a very good story. The characters are fun to get to know. I'll have to try more books by this writer soon.

I read this book practically in one sitting and found it delightful! Drew and Wren were unique. They interacted like real people with interesting problems. Their attraction to one another was deliciously played out and I love the way the author kept me guessing about the mystery of Wren's past until the very end. Overall, a marvelous, intelligently written Regency!