The truth would destroy her only chance for happiness.
At five and twenty, Miss Elizabeth Ashton had turned down any number of unexceptionable offers to marry. She simply refused to wed for reasons known only to herself.
Her quiet life in Bath was all she could have wished for until the arrival of Mr. Charles Carlyle. Try as she would, she found it increasingly difficult to remain insensible to this charming, irreverent and irresistible rake.
Manipulated by well-meaning but interfering relatives, Elizabeth found herself in the position she had most assiduously avoided.. Charles insisted that she marry him or be ruined. How could she tell him that the damage had been done many years ago?
This short, PG-13 Reg Rom has many of the elements of the traditional, with a good attention to historical detail, tone, and convention while dissolving a bit in the end with a tendency towards silliness and the proverbial faux conflict that makes genre readers a bit exhausted.
The H/h are both likeable and familiar enough to the Reg Reader, with the dashing rakehell hero and the older than a deb, impertinent heroine. Their chemistry is undeniable, and the first few scenes are delightfully witty…if not a bit rushed (though not surprisingly so given the limited word count). Elizabeth has, for what she believes is good reason, sworn off marriage and established herself creditably and comfortable in Bath with her maiden Aunt to lend countenance. She enjoys a flirtation with Charles, the younger brother of her Aunt’s bosom confidante, but doesn’t have a thought of marriage until the machinations of the matrons end up stranding Elizabeth and Charles in a snowed in roadside inn.
They seem to think they will brush through the scandal well enough, until Elizabeth opens her budget and Charles lashes out. Enter fifty pages of drawn out silliness.
Despite the somewhat underwhelming ending, I generally liked this short novel that definitely has the retro flavor of a Regency Harlequin.
4 out of 6 A short read with familiar H/h and a bit of silly ending.
| Content Rating/Heat Index | |
|---|---|
| Mature Content |   |
| Some talk of lightskirts, sex out of wedlock | |
| Intimacy | |
| A brief and limited description of seduction. | |
| Violence | |
| Nope. | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| PG-13 for its light adult subject matter and one limited and prematurely over scene of seduction. Otherwise vanilla. | |
