Lady of Spirit (Signet Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, introspective early Layton
Review: Unusual is the first word that springs to mind to describe this Layton novel. She is one of my favourite Regency writers but this one was quite striking for its level of introspection, internal action and fey-ish quality. The language employed by the author is almost quaint; her sentence structure is seems formally old-fashioned which adds to the charm of this story.

The plot has been summed admirably elsewhere so I want only to say that if you like novels that allow you to get inside the head of your hero, here is a splendid example. Our heroine does not become as intimately known to us but we do learn a lot about our hero by how he reacts to her. Cheers for his family and background - here is an earl who once worked with his hands. Cheers, too, for the family of slum-bred children he adopts, takes to his heart and thereby, inadvertently, breaks a centuries-old family curse.

Oh for more examples of such witty, well-wrought prose in the Regency setting!!

Rating:
Summary: Unexpectedly heartwarming
Review: Victoria Dawkins, daughter of an apothecary and a governess, has fallen on hard times due to the thoughtlessness of an aristocrat; she lost her position and, without a reference, cannot get another one. So now she lives in a slum, hoping against hope that she will find a new position. Charmingly, she is 'adopted' by Alfie, the eleven-year-old oldest child of the family next door, who hires her to teach himself and his siblings how to speak 'proper', in return for food and her rent.

In the meantime, Colin Haverford, the new Earl of Clune, hears a confession from his young cousin Theo, Lord Malverne: an action of crass stupidity on his part lost a poor old governess her job. It was some weeks after the event that Theo bothered to tell Clune anything about it, but they at once go to find the governess; Colin is amazed and dumbstruck to find that Victoria is anything but old, and that she is beautiful. Still, Theo promises to call on her to recompense her in some way, so Colon thinks no more of it. Until he discovers a couple of weeks later that Theo did nothing at all. Struck with an attack of conscience - Clune is a far more noble man than the book's cover description implies - he goes to see Victoria, to try to undo the wrong done to her by his family.

But he is overcome with feelings of attraction to her, and since - because of the way Theo explained what had happened to him - Colin believes that Victoria is not as innocent as she appears, he offers her a carte blanche. She rejects it outright, but wonders afterwards if she did the right thing. Learning from his mistake, but still feeling responsible for her, Colin then tries to arrange a respectable position for Victoria. But her poor living conditions and lack of sufficient food means that when she comes to see him to discuss his offer, she collapses and has to be confined to bed in his house.

Which means that Colin then finds himself also responsible for the most charming and amusing family I've encountered in romantic fiction: no-one could help loving Alfie, or admiring the way he takes care of his younger siblings.

However, Victoria is still just a governess, an apothecary's daughter, and as such the only relationship possible between Colin and Victoria is that of master and mistress. And Colin's already made the mistake of offering her that once, and he respects her too much to disgrace her. So, as he tells her, she cannot live under his roof.

As usual with Layton's heroes, Colin is a decent, fair man at heart; despite the jackets of her books portraying her heroes as wicked seducers, almost none of them ever do seriously attempt her heroine's seduction - and never against their will. She does a very good job of portraying Colin's fight with his libido and his struggle to remember his manners and position around Victoria. And likewise, Victoria constantly struggles with her conscience and her attraction to Colin.

And as ever, there is an entertaining cast of secondary characters, including Alfie and his siblings. Highly recommended, if you can get your hands on it!

One thing which puzzled me: just why Colin is called 'Cole' by his family, when the first syllable of 'Colin' is obviously 'Col'.