Governess Abigail Chantry will do anything to save her sister and two dearest friends from destitution, even if it means breaking into an empty mansion in the hope of finding something to sell. Instead of treasures, though, she finds the owner, Lady Beatrice Davenham, bedridden and neglected. Appalled, Abby rousts Lady Beatrice’s predatory servants and—with Lady Beatrice’s eager cooperation—the four young ladies become her “nieces,” neatly eliminating the threat of disaster for all concerned!
It’s the perfect situation, until Lady Beatrice’s dashing and arrogant nephew, Max, Lord Davenham, returns from the Orient—and discovers an impostor running his household…
A romantic entanglement was never the plan for these stubborn, passionate opponents—but falling in love may be as inevitable as the falling of autumn leaves…
The Autumn Bride, by Anne Gracie
It’s been a bit since I’ve sunk my teeth into a good, solid Regency romance. Thankfully, this was a fantastic choice. As is typical for me these days, I picked up the ebook during a sale and let it languish on my Kindle for a while. (We should not talk about the size of my unread pile in the digital space.) I’m wishing now I’d gotten to it sooner.
Be warned, reader, that as the first book of what is clearly a four book series, some time is spent getting to know all the characters and not just the hero and heroine. Indeed, the two don’t meet for quite a bit of time into the novel, as we’re preoccupied by meeting Abby and her “sisters,” along with Lady Beatrice. (Lady Beatrice, by the way, absolutely steals the show as far as I’m concerned, and is probably the character I’m most interested in following throughout the series.)
Lady Beatrice, of course, has been neglected by her servants, who have been living large on the funds that are supposed to be keeping her in luxury. Funds her nephew had arranged for before heading off to make his fortune in the southern Pacific. Word has finally trickled back to him that things may not be as they should be and so he finally decides to return to England, nine years after he left, in order to check on his aunt.
His arrival weeks after Abby has taken charge of the situation means the two of them don’t see eye to eye at the beginning. This tension lingers after the misunderstanding is resolved, in part because Max worries about what the presence of her “nieces” might do to his aunt’s reputation. Eventually it becomes impossible to ignore the attraction between them, however, and the sparks begin to fly. Of course, the path to true love is never smooth and theirs includes blackmail and an inconvenient fiancée.
The story does require you to be willing to believe that society would, for the most part, believe a polite fiction about the origin of the girls. In the modern Regency romance, this is a fairly normal level of deviation from the rules; if you’re a stickler for historical accuracy, however, you might find it to be a bit much.
Overall, while I liked Abby and Max well enough, I didn’t necessarily feel like it was their actions that resolved the conflicts in the book, some of which felt tagged on to create extra tension. The side characters more than made up for it, though. We saw just enough of Abby’s sisters to make their stories desirable, and I loved Lady Beatrice and her new butler and footman; I dearly hope we get some more of their stories in the rest of the series. Add to that the sections that I found laugh-out-loud funny and I have to recommend it for a read.