Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Official book description:
Cassandra Pomfret holds strong opinions she isn’t shy about voicing. But her extremely plain speaking has caused an uproar, and her exasperated father, hoping a husband will rein her in, has ruled that her beloved sister can’t marry until Cassandra does.
Now, thanks to a certain wild-living nobleman, the last shreds of Cassandra’s reputation are about to disintegrate, taking her sister’s future and her family’s good name along with them.
The Duke of Ashmont’s looks make women swoon. His character flaws are beyond counting. He’s lost a perfectly good bride through his own carelessness. He nearly killed one of his two best friends. Still, troublemaker that he is, he knows that damaging a lady’s good name isn’t sporting.
The only way to right the wrong is to marry her…and hope she doesn’t smother him in his sleep on their wedding night.
It's been nearly three years since Ms Chase's last historical novel was published, but thankfully, she's proven herself worth the wait once again. I think that if I rate them against each other, A Duke in Shining Armor still has the edge, but once this book got going and the heroine and hero started bantering, I was very charmed by Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, which follows on almost immediately from the final scenes of the previous novel in the series (I suspect this would still work as a stand-alone, but why would you want to deprive yourself of the joy of reading a really good historical romance?). It also takes inspiration from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, not to mention the excellent high school comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. One of the three Dis-graces, the Duke of Ashmont was too drunk at his own wedding to keep his bride, who ran off and ended up married to one of his best friends instead. Ashmont and Ripley fight a duel to settle things, but having been such a shambles that he first lost the regard of a nice woman, followed by almost killing his friend, forces a man to start taking a closer look at his life choices.
Before Ashmont really has too much of a chance to repent and change, however, his pity drinking causes not only an accident but nearly a high society scandal. Ashmont fires his gun in the air to break up a fight, which causes Miss Cassandra Pomfret's carriage to run off the road. Her personal manservant Keefe (a retired jockey of great renown) is injured, Cassandra's maidservant runs off, and leaves Cassandra entirely unchaperoned at a country inn with one of the most scandalous rakes in England. If anyone discovers what has happened, Cassandra's already patchy reputation will be utterly ruined.
Cassandra and Ashmont knew each other as children, and Cassandra once felt infatuated with the beautiful boy that he was. Now, however, she is simply disgusted with how much he wastes his privilege and refuses to take his life and position seriously. It doesn't help that she's already angry, as after Cassandra publicly dared to voice her opinions in a most critical manner, her father has declared that her beautiful younger sister Hyacinth will have her season canceled, and won't be allowed to go out or receive callers until Cassandra is married. Cassandra was on her way to visit her aunt when she was waylaid outside of London. Even with scandal looming, she refuses to leave until she knows Keefe will be well again.
Ashmont is fully aware that he's screwed up badly, and offers to marry Cassandra to save her reputation. She, however, utterly refuses to hear his ludicrous suggestion, and he has to actually use his brain to try to fix the situation so Cassandra can return to London, with her reputation hopefully unbesmirched. While most other men are put off and intimidated by Cassandra, who's not only intelligent, outspoken, and combative, she's also taller than average, Ashmont is utterly smitten, especially because she refuses to in any way be charmed by him. He totally understands why she rejected his offer of marriage just to get out of a possible scandal but decides that no other woman will do for him, and if she's currently appalled by him and thinks him exactly the dis-grace he's worked for years with his best friends to appear, then he'll just have to do the work to prove himself worthy of her.
Ashmont is very much in the mold of a number of former Chase heroes, a big, handsome lug who appears more stupid than he actually is, mainly because that makes his surroundings underestimate him. Of course, Ashmont, along with his fellow dukes, have used their wealth and position in society to truly live a life of excess, pranks, decadence, and debauchery. He's not exactly particularly likable at the start of the book, but one of the reasons the romance works so well is that Ashmont himself chooses to change and better himself. He understands why Cassandra wants nothing to do with him, and why even their casual encounters can hurt not just her reputation, but the marriage chances of her younger sister. He also knows that while he's a duke and very wealthy, a discerning and intelligent father, like Lord de Griffith, who actually cares about his daughter, not just status, won't want him as a son-in-law unless he cleans up his act rather a lot.
I'm always going to be partial to romances featuring smart, capable, and dedicated women, paired with big, strong men who love them exactly as they are and have no need or wish for them to change anything about themselves. One of the arguments that Ashmont uses when trying to persuade Cassandra to be his wife is how much of a difference she could make, and how much could she can do as a duchess. He has his work cut out for him, however, as Cassandra has observed Ashmont for years, and doesn't really dare believe he has changed, at first.
One of the reasons this doesn't get a higher rating from me is that I didn't really like the subplot involving the two "villains", who create a number of obstacles for our couple (but in some ways of course end up forcing them together even more).
Because I really prefer to try to end on a positive note, two of the supporting characters I really liked were Cassandra's mother and sister. Hyacinth has all of her fun taken away (temporarily) because of her father's rash threat towards Cassandra, yet doesn't complain or blame her at all. While she is soft-spoken, demure, kind, and much more the image of proper Victorian womanhood, she is clearly also very clever and observant, if a lot more subtle about it than her older sister. Cassandra's mother is another example of the power women could wield within their assigned spheres. Lord and Lady deGriffith seem to have a very strong marriage, based on love and mutual respect, and while Lord deGriffith is the head of the household, he clearly consults with his wife on important matters - she's his partner and support behind the scenes.
I'm guessing that in the next Loretta Chase novel, we'll finally discover what's the cause of the tensions in the marriage of Lord and Lady Blackmoor. I'm hoping I won't have to wait three more years to read it.
Judging a book by its cover: A Duke in Shining Armor had a woman in a white wedding dress running, facing away from the camera, which while an anachronistic dress colour at the time (wedding dresses didn't tend to be white), at least fit with the plot of the book. Here we have a lovely redhead with long flowing hair, in a purple gown, running away from the camera - and while I see that the book covers complement each other, I think they could have chosen a better cover image for this one.
Crossposted by Cannonball Read.
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