No Place for a Lady

Deb
Stover
Genre: 
Historical

Usually when your mistress finds herself with child after a masquerade ball rendezvous it is a scandal of epic proportions.  For Irish maid Molly Riordan it begins the adventure of a lifetime.  Her spoiled mistress, Lady Elizabeth, is to be wed to her masked American, and the trip to the wild west will give Molly the chance to track down her father, missing since he travelled there to seek his fortune years ago.

Dirk Ballinger has been cleaning up the messes made by his late father for years, and it began with his half-brother Ray Lovejoy.  When he discovers that Ray seduced a woman using his name, his sense of duty compels him to offer that name to the woman who carries Ray's child.  But when the stagecoach is held up on the way to the wedding,  the results are a topsy-turvy mixup of identities, and neither Dirk nor Molly can decide who is who.  

“No Place for a Lady” was published in paperback in 2001.  Polished, smoothly written and without the editing mistakes that riddle self-published work, it is tempting to recommend this on that basis alone.  There are other things to recommend this sweet romance, however - the heroine is a feisty Irish maid and the Hero is a noble man simply trying to do the right thing.  It is slightly far-fetched and a little too predictable but with the stable of secondary characters that fill this novel to the brim, giving the reader. The reader is lavished with not one romance but FOUR to follow through to the delightfully heart-warming conclusion.

Tammy Grant