Customer Reviews

The Undoing of a Lady (The Brides of Fortune)

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Lady Lizzie Scarlett has to be one of the most childish, vindictive, angry, and at times unstable heroines I have ever read about in a romance novel. Her male protagonist Nat Waterhouse is not much better because he has little insight and at times little smarts not only when it comes to Lizzie but also when it comes to blackmail too.

The opening chapter of this book is wonderful, beautifully written and very passionate, but the story went downhill afterward. Nat must marry an heiress and he has found one - sweet, kind Flora. Well, Lizzie knows that Flora would make Nat miserable so she locks herself and him in the miniature folly on Nat's wedding day and Nat becomes enraged, telling Lizzie she was being childish (she was), acting spoiled (she did) and then they make passionate love.

Lizzie realizes after their encounter she loves him, and runs away from Nat, this is a common practice for Lizzie, run from your problem if you cannot shock someone into your bidding. Nat's wedding is ruined so he decides Lizzie should become his bride, after all she was a virgin, they have been friends for years, and she is rich. Lizzie says no.

*SPOILERS* - These two do wind up together and they have a volatile and in some ways unhealthy relationship. When Lizzie is angry at Nat she does something rash. She does not think through her actions or talk about her feelings to Nat or her friends before she engages in inappropriate behavior instead she gambles and gets drunk publicly along with much more inappropriate actions for a lady living in a village during the early 19th century. Nat is inspired sexually when she does these things and they end up making love as he must find her rash behavior a turn on. These encounters are passionate but Lizzie feels they are cold and empty so the reader begins to feel they are too. I never felt they were until Lizzie analyzed them in this fashion.

Lizzie does so many antics beyond the pale. *SPOILER* - One of the worst is riding naked into a gentleman's club to get back at Nick. Really, this is set in 1810 and Lizzie is an aristocrat, I could not even imagine a lady doing this in this time period other than a paid strumpet. Nat is, of course lividly angry, but later that evening gets the hots for Lizzie; I guess having men look at Lizzie totally nude is another big turn on. Lizzie's friends really should have come together for an intervention.

Whereas Lizzie's pouty, stubborn nature is easy to divine, she has amoral brothers and she never got past her mother running off with a lover but idolized her even into adulthood, Nat is a mystery to me. He just cannot figure out how to stop a blackmailer and seems genuinely surprised that an extortionist is never satisfied monetarily. Also whenever Lizzie staged some antic, even so far as running away, Nat takes the blame for her actions or gets a real sexual charge from it. No wonder Lizzie had no idea of his feelings.

Ms. Cornick had a great hit with her earlier work in this series, Scandals of an Innocent, but her latest offering is not in the same league. Lizzie and Nat inspire no empathy; I could not imagine this couple ever being happy with Lizzie's spoiled, immature ways and Nat's lack of insight.

I am an avid reader but this book was awful. The heroine was not likeable at all. The heroine decides to get back at her husband for not being home. She rides naked through his gentlemen's club were his friends were watching and also the husbands of her friends as well. I threw it away after this scene. It was absolutely the most ridiculous display of stupidity a heroine has displayed in the books I have been reading. Do not waste your time reading this "trash".

In 1810 Lady Elizabeth "Lizzie" Scarlett is concerned that her childhood friend Lord Nathaniel Waterhouse is marrying someone he does not love out of a sense of duty. She knows Nat has always been there for her so she decides to be there for him even if he does not appreciate what she does. She kidnaps him to keep him from marrying Miss Flora Minchin of Fortune's Folly as this is no love match with his title in exchange for her money.

Lizzie's attempts to seduce Nat lead to their being compromised. Nat breaks off his engagement, but needs money to pay off a blackmailer. His solution is to marry wealthy Lizzie, which he does. However, though both feel a deep desire for the other and passion blazes between them, neither trusts the other any longer and pride leaves bot hiding their love out of fear of rejection.

Although similar in tone to the previous Brides of Fortune series (see THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS and THE SCANDALS OF THE INNOCENT) especially the lead characters, fans will enjoy this charming regency romance. The amusing story line starts off with a terrific opening abduction by an innocent woman who is seduced by her angry captive leading to THE UNDOING OF A LADY now in love. Fans will enjoy the gender war as neither seems to have the guts to tell the other how they feel.

Harriet Klausner

Hello all,

So after reveiwing and rating the first book in the series favorably, it pains me a little to one star this one.

The concept of the series is excellent enough, and I thought that the suspense/action plot was seamless within the entire plot (some romances add a suspence story line that just doesnt flow)

Why did I dislike the book? Because Nicola Cornick gave us the heroine from hell! I read parts of the book with my mouth open in shock. The part where the heroine rides her horse NAKED into the GENTLEMAN'S CLUB that her husband was at to get his attention was too much.

Now what struck me as being hollow, was the fact that the heroine kept bemoaning how much she loved the hero, and he does not love her back. But instead of trying to win his love, or get to know him or SOMETHING, she acts like a crazy person!

I don't even think I have read a contemporary romance or even erotic romance where someone parades naked, on an animal to get their spouse's attention! I am sorry- that just reeks of mental instability.

Oh, and there was the part where she ran off with someone else because she (a married lady) was leaving the hero. Because she loved him, and he did not love her. So you know, the adult thing is to leave town WITH ANOTHER MAN.

Throughout the book, the heroine was flighty, mean spirited and immature. I would recommend this book only to find out what happens in the story, not for the romance.

Village squire Sir Montague Fortune reinstated the medieval Dames' Tax which allows him to take half the dowry of every unmarried woman in the village unless she weds within the year. This is the last book of the series Lady Elizabeth Scarlet story. Elizabeth kidnaps Nathaniel the night before his wedding. Elizabeth & Nathaniel have a love/hate realationship and both drive each other crazy... some of the things Elizabeth does even made be gasp and then laugh... Very entertaining, dash of mystery and leave you wanted more stories from this little village.

Nathaniel Waterhouse lived his life with honor, grace and allot of following the rules. He took his position in society as serious and wore the title of Earl with respect. His friend for nine years Lady Elizabeth Scarlet was the flip side of this coin. She was a hoyden who had little respect for honor, stature of any position nor any desire to follow rules as they were meant to be broken - every last one of them. When her mother deserted her and then her father died she has lived an unstructured and undisciplined life with her half-brothers and they let her run amuck.

But one thing Lizzie has always taken seriously is her feeling for Nat and the love she has felt for him since their first meeting even though she was just a child. She has always kept these feelings hidden from him for fear of rejection but knew that they were meant to be together even though she feigned otherwise. So when Nat decides to enter into a loveless marriage to a woman with a fortune that will free him and his family from debt Lizzie decides to take matters into her own hands to prevent this. She pushes her plan of action into effect on the eve of his wedding by asking him to meet with her in a secluded location. Lizzie knows he will come because he always does when she requests it. But after he shows up and she imprisons him until after the wedding a chain of events she never expected occur. Lizzie finds herself compromised by Nat, his marriage called off and herself trapped into a marriage with Nat she was not prepared for. They light up the night with their passion and intense lust for each other but can that keep the fire burning through the years. Lizzie is not convinced of this but Nat is sure she is his perfect match.

Then Lizzie's brother is murdered and everyone becomes a suspect and wonders who did this terrible thing and if anyone might will be next. Monty was not loved by the village due to his reinstatement of the Dames' Tax but is that enough to provoke someone to murder him? Nat has always been the protector of Lizzie and this tragedy forces him to try even harder to get her under control which only results in Lizzie acting more inappropriately and doing such outlandish things that no can believe how brash she is.

This story is a complete and total delight on every page. You have Nat and Lizzie knocking heads at every instance with this intense and overpowering passion, the underlying mystery of who murdered Monty and all the high drama of how the village is going to combat the latest tax scheme. These characters are so endearing and true to form that you are rooting for them to succeed at their individual successes as well as the chance to figure out that they love each other and get on with it already. The back story with Lydia is a tear jerker as you know this woman deserves better than she is getting but all the friends (Alice & Laura) pull together to show that even in the Regency period of time women were strong enough to run the world.

[...]

This is the final part of a hilarious trilogy of romances set in the fictional Yorkshire village of Fortune's Folly.

These three books are set between 1809 and 1810, which is about five years after the same author's book "Unmasked" the main events of which also took place in Yorkshire. Many of the characters in that book reappear in the three books in the "Brides of Fortune" series. IMHO it enhances the reader's enjoyment of this trilogy to read all four books in sequence

In other words I would recommend that potential readers should read "Unmasked" first, treating this trilogy as the second, third and fourth part of a quartet, which would therefore consist of:

1) "Unmasked"
2) "The Confessions of a Duchess (The Brides of Fortune)"
3) "The Scandals of An Innocent (The Brides of Fortune)"
4) This book, "The Undoing of a Lady"


The pretext of the "Brides of Fortune" trilogy is that the obnoxious and greedy squire of Fortune's Folly, Sir Montague Fortune, discovers that the village was not included in the legislation which repealed a whole range of ancient medieval laws in the seventeenth century. And that he can reactivate them, claiming outdated and absurd feudal dues.

In particular, Sir Montague reactivates something called the "Dames Tax" whereby any unmarried heiress in the village must pay him half her fortune. Under the terms of the tax, every widow or maid in Fortune's Folly who has or stands to inherit any property must marry within a year or pay half of it to Sir Montague.

Needless to say, this infuriates the maids and widows in Fortune's Folly: and it also causes them to look around for possible husbands, making the village into "a veritable marriage mart." And needless to say, all the male fortune hunters in England, from impecunious aristocrats who need money to maintain a bankrupt estate to young men on the make, flock to Fortune's Folly in the hopes of snaring a wealthy bride who needs to marry or give half her wealth to the greedy squire.

Ironically, one of the female residents most affected by this ridiculous tax is Sir Montague's own half-sister, Lady Elizabeth Scarlet, who inherited a modest fortune from her father, the previous Earl of Scarlet. Elizabeth is a golden hearted but somewhat wild young lady, who is often getting into silly scrapes, or worse, getting her friends into them. For example. Elizabeth was the real culprit when one of her madcap ideas resulted in her friend Alice Lister getting into terrible difficulties in the previous book in the series, "The Scandals of an Innocent".

Elizabeth has been extremely close since she was a girl to Nathaniel Waterhouse, who has the courtesy title of Earl of Waterhouse and is the son and heir of the Duke of Waterhouse.

PEDANT ALERT: let me get off my chest at this point that one of the mistakes in this trilogy and many of Nicola Cornick's other books is that the Dukedoms in her stories have titles which match the family surname. There isn't a single Duke in the British peerage whose family surname is identical to the title: all the English Dukes take their title from a place, usually a county or county town. One Scottish Dukedom is almost an exception - the town of Hamilton is named for the family whose head is the Duke of Hamilton, and not the other way around - but even in this case, thanks to a dynastic alliance the family surname has for centuries been Douglas-Hamilton.

Elizabeth thinks she regards Nat Waterhouse as a friend, but when he got engaged to Miss Flora Minchin in the previous book she was obviously consumed with jealousy: several of her friends commented that she was obviously in love with him.

This book begins the night before the wedding. Elizabeth, who has convinced herself that Nat is making a mistake by contracting a loveless marriage for financial reasons, decides to "kidnap" him so that he misses the wedding. But her scheme goes disastrously wrong ...

Meanwhile, romantic intrigues are not the only thing going on in this trilogy - there is also an ongoing murder investigation. Lord Liverpool, the Home Secretary, saw the the host of young men travelling to the village in seach of a wealthy bride as the perfect cover for a covert investigation into a suspect death.

Liverpool suspected that Sir William Crosby, a local magistrate who had been shot in what appeared to be a hunting accident, may have been murdered by local criminals to whose nefarious activities he was getting too close. And three of the "Guardians" - a (fictitious) group who investigate crimes for the Home Office - were young single men who have inherited serious debt problems from profligate parents.

So Liverpool orders them to go to Fortune's Folly on the pretext of looking for a bride, and to investigate Sir William Crosby's death while they are about it. One of the three Guardians sent to Fortune's Folly is none other than Lady Elizabeth's childhood friend Nat Waterhouse, which is how he comes to be in the village - but not just looking for a wife.

During the first two books, Nat and his colleagues Dexter Anstruther and Lord Miles Vickery investigated first the murder of Sir William Crosby, then that of Warren Sampson who they suspected of the killing but was murdered himself. At the start of this final book it appears that the Guardians have finished their work in Fortune's Folly and can concentrate on finding a bride (in Nat's case) or making a home with the brides they married in the first two books (in Dexter's and Miles' cases.)

But then the most hated person in Fortune's Folly is killed and the Guardians have an even more difficult mystery to solve ...

This book, and indeed the whole trilogy, is quite ridiculous, often funny, distinctly sexy, and highly entertaining. It definately is not Georgette Heyer, let alone Jane Austen. But neither does it read like an insipid attempt to copy their work for a lowbrow audience, a pitfall which all too many modern attempts at a regency romance fall into.

If you are looking for a light-hearted romance to relax with, without making too much of an intellectual demand on the brain and with few pretensions to detailed historical accuracy, this trilogy is very good fun, and on those terms I can recommend it.

I bought this book without having read the previous novels in the series, but it was fairly simple to pick up what had gone on before. The first half of the book was okay, but I read the second half only because of the time I had already put into it. Character development is shallow. For example, Nat's jilted fiance and a gentleman farmer have two emotional encounters, but their relationship is not explored again until the end of the novel, and then only when someone who observed them briefly explains what happened.

Nat doesn't seem very bright; he cannot make a decision and is governed by lust when it comes to Lizzie. How many times does he need to go out and leave her home alone before he realizes that she doesn't like being left home alone? I find it hard to believe that he is a trusted government agent. For her part, Lizzie does the stupidest things without sufficient provocation.

What I disliked most about this book is how its plot depends upon the lead characters' failure to actually talk to one another. For example, one or the other decides that they will absolutely not discuss their relationship because he or she is in love and thinks the other is not. This is a tiresome and contrived plot device that is way overused. I doubt that I would go back and read the first two books in the series.

*THE PLAYER is a re-issue of Jessica Bird's (J.R Ward's) HIS COMFORT AND JOY which she wrote for Harlequin.*

This is book 2 in the Moorehouse legacy trilogy which I discovered through being a fan of JR Ward and her Black Dagger Brotherhood. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this romance, although its within this instalment that you really begin to hear Ward's voice (and some of the Brothers too. ) The level of sexual tension throughout the story is such that I couldn't put it down. It's clever, interesting and Wow, can Ms Bird ever write a tortured love scene.

Joy Moorehouse has fantasized about Grayson Bennett for ages but not once during the 5 or 6 times a year that she sees him has he ever really noticed her. Truthfully, she realizes he probably doesn't even know her name. I mean she's being ridiculous right? Why would a wealthy political consultant and playboy extraordinaire notice her? She's just a small town nobody working in the family's B&B and looking after her ailing grandmother, he's a Washington big shot, several years older and experienced in the ways of the world. In fact the last couple of times Joy saw him he was just down right rude. What Joy doesn't realize of course is that Gray has to keep his distance; he simply doesn't trust himself when he's around her anymore.

Ever since he saw her in that bikini he can't seem to get her out of his head. Gray can barely breathe when she's near and is filled with raging, unexplainable jealousy (among other things.) Worst of all, nasty thoughts have been swimming around in his head, thoughts of what he'd like to do to her sweet virginal body given the chance. Yeah he'd better keep far away from Joy because the two of them together could only spell disaster he'd eventually wind up hurting her and Gray doesn't think his heart could take it.

Bird's build-up to this couple's first kiss (or in this case first dance) is well done and had me turning the pages in a fever of anticipation. When they finally touch during the slow dance it's well-- amazing. As a whole this story kept me entertained and was just different enough from the normal Harlequin formula to keep me guessing. It contains a movie-worthy moment on a train and Bird's usual expertise with multiple POV's. I enjoyed the updates on our past couple as well as the continual development of future storylines. Book 3, FROM THE FIRST is next and I can't wait to see how Joy s wounded and grief-stricken brother Alex finally finds happiness. Yay for me, another tortured hero.

I would highly recommend that fans of JR Ward check out this series and all of Jessica Bird's earlier writings. Cheers

Here's the correct reading order for the series
~The Moorehouse Legacy~
1-Beauty And The Black Sheep(Reissued as THE REBEL)
2-His comfort and Joy (Reissued as THE PLAYER)
3-From The First
4-A Man In A Million

~The O'Banyon Brothers~Bird/Ward has never completed series
1-The Billionaire Next Door

Already reviewed this writer. All I can say is READ HER WORK if you like romance novels.