Jessica Moore, demure governess to a spoiled young girl who is expecting a marriage proposal from the Earl of Rutherford, a guest in her father’s home, is unwise enough to creep downstairs to the library one night when she cannot sleep, to choose a book to read. There she is discovered, first by the earl, and then by her employer. Though she is quite innocent of any wrongdoing, she is dismissed … dismissed without notice and without a character. The earl, conscience-stricken, tries to make amends by offering her a position as his mistress, but when she refuses, he gives her a letter to take to his grandmother in London. In it he begs his grandmother to find employment for Miss Moore. Neither he nor Jessica expects that the offered employment will be as his wife.
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Okay, my Mary Balogh kick is over now.
Thank heavens these two found each other. It spared some other poor hero and heroine in Romanceland of getting stuck with them.
The hero is a diseased ridden, arrogant, hypocritical cad. If he’s not actually disease ridden it is a miracle of Regency romance fiction. His inner monologuing about all the women he’s had sex with and will have sex with, primarily of the lower class like maids and governesses so he doesn’t have awkward social encounters later, was not endearing.
The heroine is an idiot. It’s one thing to be independent, but it’s another thing to force yourself into a position where you can be dismissed, raped, belittled at any moment when you actually have other options.
PLOT:
While visiting a potential bride’s house he meets the heroine then makes her an offer she can refuse after she’s fired.
Despite a rather intimate moment between the, she refuses his offer to be mistress so he sends her to his grandmother for a job whereupon it turns out she’s the long lost granddaughter of her dearest friend. Of course.
The H is furious when he sees the heroine at a ball, the little upstart and deceiver.
It is no insult, you know, for such as you to be offered the position of mistress to the Earl of Rutherford. There are many females above the rank of servant who would jump at the chance.”
“In that case,” Jessica said, “I am glad I resisted, my lord. I think it most unfair to jump a queue, don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed. “You are impertinent,” he said. “And you have no business in this ballroom. And even less speaking with my mother and my sisters. In fact, I find myself not at all in the mood for dancing. I have a great deal to say to you, Jess, and a ballroom is not quite the place to say it. Come with me. We will find somewhere more private.”
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You may still become my mistress and retain this taste for pretty clothes that you have clearly acquired. That is more the life to which you belong, Jess.”
Cad, bounder etc. It’s okay for him as a manwhore to be there, but her servile status puts her beyond the pale. This attitude goes on and on and ooonnnnnnnn and is probably more accurate than most about real Regency rakes.
The shoe drops and he finds out about her real background and essentially plots with her grandfather to get her hand in marriage. In all fairness, he offered for her hand before he knew she was a Marquess’s granddaughter, but the offer is more a threat and based on lust and the h will have none of it.
“I would have been very careful, of course, not to compromise your granddaughter had I realized who she was. But she has never been willing to tell me. One is not always so careful of the honor of a governess.”
She’s barely better. Her best moments are when she one-ups the hero and gets his goat, but at heart she’s an arrogant idiot too.
He runs away. She runs away and back to the faceless, grinding life of a governess. And they both make a stab at being noble.
Jessica felt far more pain in looking around her this time than she had when leaving the Barries’ home. She had been happy here. She had been treated well. She had felt loved. Once outside this building and she would be completely on her own again, all he
dreams and hopes of the previous weeks finally dead. She would be a governess for the rest of her life, if she were fortunate.
The only redemption is the writing and the HEA of another couple. Barely.
I would love to have seen this in the hands of Barbara Metzger as her whimsical and tongue in cheek approach would have softened the edges of the manwhore hero and upped the banter.