If you click on the SB Sarah link, you can see that's quite a ringing endorsement. Especially this gem:
OH MY GOD. THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD I WANTED TO PUT IT IN MY MOUTH AND EAT IT.
While I will not hold a recipe contest to see the number of different ways I personally can eat this book, I have to say that this was one of the more interesting and unique historical romances that I have read in a long time.
Lady Anna Margaret has been tasked by her brothers to spy on the distant cousin who has recently, and publicly, had them all declared bastards so that he can lay claim to their father's Ducal title. So she poses as her dying father's nurse within her own household when Ash Turner shows up to survey what will someday be his.
Ash, meanwhile, believes Anna Margaret (who he has never met) to be a silly, thoughtless extension of her father and brothers' cruel machinations.
As soon as he arrives, of course, Ash decides he must pursue this nurse, who he reads to be mysterious and full of secrets, but also in need of serious validation as a person. Margaret finds herself reluctantly revealing pieces of herself to Ash (including a consummated, failed engagement), and finds that the man is all but handing her information that her brothers can use against him, should she choose to pass it on. Including the fact that he is illiterate.
There is an awful lot of he said/he said in this book. Margaret's father is awful, and I don't doubt that he turned Ash away when he came to the Duke years before, seeking help and relief for his family (yes, friends, Ash's actions are motivated in large part by revenge). What is most interesting is the relationship between Ash's brothers and Margaret's brother's-- years ago fights at school, bullying, near expulsion. While some can very definitely be labelled The Bullies, no one is blameless and, in what I have to assume will be succeeding books, I look forward to learning more about Ash's brothers. Their upbringing with a crazy religious mother, and their time away from school (and Ash) seems to have shaped them into taciturn men who can be at once very bitter and very loyal-- toward the same person.
Margaret and Ash's relationship is the stuff of Old Skool romance; she's got a secret, he's got a mission, and her secret could destroy his mission. But while Margaret refuses to pick between her brothers and the man she has come to love, she never once comes even close to disclosing the case-destroying information she has against Ash, and he never once doubts that he can trust her. Their conflict is not between themselves. It's with all of the external forces around them.
I would highly recommend this book, putting it in the hard-to-put-down category. I thought it go a little long-winded toward the end (a little bit of running-in-circles), but ultimately the story resolved in a manner that was both believable and acceptable for all of the characters.
Yes. I'll definitely be reading more books by this author in the future.
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