Rating: 5 stars
Alice Dearlove works for the secret organisation the Agency of Undercover Note Takers, or A.U.N.T., staffed by spies and agents disguised as ladies' maids, butlers, footmen, and other household staff who mostly go unnoticed by the higher classes, but are usually in a position to see and hear everything. She's one of their top agents, known within A.U.N.T only as Agent A. Usually, Miss Dearlove works alone and gets excellent results while doing so.
Now she faces one of the biggest challenges of her career. Not only does she have to cooperate with someone on her next mission, but her partner is none other than her biggest rival within A.U.N.T., the elusive Agent B, Daniel Bixby. Now Agents A and B have to learn to work together, while also pretending to be married. There's a plot to assassinate the queen, and Alice and Daniel have to pretend to be pirates, happily married, and fool an entire houseparty full of eccentric, murder-happy ladies and their husbands while trying to locate the potential weapon and foil the plot.
Since they're consummate professionals, both Alice and Daniel are determined to complete the job quickly and efficiently while remaining strictly platonic the whole time. When more public displays of affection aren't necessary to play their parts, of course. Obviously, wanting to be convincing in their assumed roles, they might have to practice the duties of husband and wife in the privacy of their own rooms, as well. It's not like they'd get carried away and fall for one another, just because they are forced to be fake married, sharing a bedroom (with just one bed). After all, A.U.N.T doesn't allow for any affection between agents, and once their mission is done, Alice and Daniel will be going their separate ways, possibly never seeing one another again.
This might not be a 5-star book for all readers, but as the culmination of the Dangerous Damsels trilogy that India Holton started with The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels works on pretty much every level for me. Alice Dearlove and Daniel Bixby, whose acquaintance the reader makes briefly in The League of Gentlewomen Witches get their own novel and a chance at their own HEA, since clearly from their first meeting in the previous novel, they are perfect for one another.
Both found in orphanages by A.U.N.T and raised under the strict tutelage of the organisation's teachers and trainers to become secret agents for the crown, neither Alice nor Daniel have ever really felt like they fit in among their fellow spies or people in general. It's quite clear from the description of them, and their reactions to and thoughts about certain things, that they are both neurodivergent, and while this is not something likely to have been acknowledged in Victorian times, be they the real ones or the alternate history one we meet here, it's nevertheless a fact and makes them both excellent at their jobs, but not very good at making personal connections.
Daniel Bixby worked undercover for several years as the butler of charming pirate captain Alex O'Reilly, gathering intel for A.U.N.T and making sure the pirates never caused too much havoc and destruction. He has great difficulty admitting that he and Alex actually became friends and that he cares for both the now-reformed rogue and the witch the pirate fell in love with.
Alice Dearlove is the perfect ladies' maid and can serve the most infuriating of spoiled aristocrats, devious pirate matrons, or meddling witches. She hasn't really ever had any friends since the organisation doesn't exactly encourage emotional attachment to anything or anyone. She also gets very defensive by light touches and has no understanding of idioms or metaphorical language. Once Daniel discovers this, he's very helpfully tells her "Idiom" every time someone uses figurative language that baffles her. It was a very cute recurring gag and endeared me further to the man.
In various flashbacks, the reader is given insight into the rather dark upbringing both agents have had, in an organisation that doesn't really care for its employees as people, only pawns to move about on a large political gameboard. It helps that they share a lot of the same experiences, albeit in slightly different ways, but it also makes them both very aware of how difficult a potential happy ending would be for them, as A.U.N.T certainly wouldn't let them marry and be together.
Of course, Alice and Daniel, helped in parts by Ned, Cecilia, Alex, and Charlotte, end up with a very lovely HEA in the end. Alice has actual friends who care about her and they're all part of a bigger found family they have dreamed of for their entire lives. This book was a very quick read and made me very happy. India Holton's writing has gotten sharper and wittier with each book, and I'm very excited to see what she will publish next.
Judging a book by its cover: Once again, it is an adorable cover and I really love the lavender shade of the background. I especially like the traditional spy movie poses of Bixby and Dearlove, with them in period-appropriate servants' attire instead of evening wear.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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