Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer
Twenty-nine and quite determined not to marry (rich brothers help with that) Annis Wychwood gets caught up in the affairs of a young couple, Lucilla and Ninian, who, instead of running away to get married, are running away from an arranged marriage. Annis quickly realizes that the central problem is that Lucilla is both overindulged and put under too many restrictions, and so offers to let the girl stay with her until better arrangements (read: arrangements that are less likely to make her run away a second time) can be made. Lucilla’s guardian, Oliver Carleton, who has a reputation as the rudest man in England, is less than pleased with these arrangements, and heads to Bath to yell as quickly as possible.
This is my fourth Heyer, and I think the last Regency she wrote, and is probably my favorite of her books so far, probably because the characters are a bit older (both in years and maturity-I think maybe I’ve finally reached the point where romance-centric plots with 20~ and younger protagonists don’t hold my attention well a lot of the time?) than in her other books, and seem to be on more even ground. I also really like that, instead of having “motherly” feelings for Lucilla, Annis’s eventual reaction was “OMG what was I thinking, taking in a teenager? Make it go away! But only somewhere safe and happy. Visits are ok.”
I think the overall plot and character relationships felt a bit more like a 30s or 40s RomCom than a Regency at times, but not so much so that it lost the right “feel.”
This is my fourth Heyer, and I think the last Regency she wrote, and is probably my favorite of her books so far, probably because the characters are a bit older (both in years and maturity-I think maybe I’ve finally reached the point where romance-centric plots with 20~ and younger protagonists don’t hold my attention well a lot of the time?) than in her other books, and seem to be on more even ground. I also really like that, instead of having “motherly” feelings for Lucilla, Annis’s eventual reaction was “OMG what was I thinking, taking in a teenager? Make it go away! But only somewhere safe and happy. Visits are ok.”
I think the overall plot and character relationships felt a bit more like a 30s or 40s RomCom than a Regency at times, but not so much so that it lost the right “feel.”