Something Like a Lady, Lady #2

When Lady Annabella Price’s mother gives her an ultimatum: spend a Season in London at her stepbrother’s townhouse and hunt for a husband or be forced to marry the local vicar, Annabella chooses option 3. She sends her lady’s maid, Juliet, to London in her place while she hides out in the abandoned Rose Cottage on the Wyndham Estate. Unfortunately for Annabella, her stepbrother Grey cottons to the ol’ switcheroo and sends his best friend, Jonathan Durham, Fourth Earl of Seabrook, to discover the whereabouts of his stepsister. Seeking to avoid thoughts of his grandfather’s will, that is, to marry or forget his inheritance, Jon is more than happy to undertake the task. Finding a maid named ‘Annie’ who acts too much like a Lady ensconced in Rose Cottage, Jon deduces he’s found the errant stepsister. Misunderstandings, lies of omission and by design and a French bottle of wine result in a hasty marriage between the two. And that’s only the beginning.

This is a well-written story with an interesting plot. The descriptions of country life in 19^th century England flow smoothly and vividly across the page. However, Annabella and Jon are hard to like. Jon is a liar. Even when he knows he should fess up, he doesn’t and shows little remorse about it. Annabella is a brat who swings wildly from rage to sweetness so quickly as to appear bi-polar. The quicksilver mood changes are disorienting and make it hard for one to connect to the characters. More stable personalities would have made this one for the history books.

Carol Conley