This book, in a word, is exquisite. Moreover, due to her upbringing with a somewhat cloud-headed feather and a secretively bluestocking radical governess, Regina has the intellectual curiosity and conversational ability of a man.
Yet instead of being tiresome β Oh! The narrative plays with themes of honesty, trust, and most of all, truth. The plot itself is so braided with twists and turns I am not sure how much I can reveal about the ways in which Layton plays with those themes without revealing the unpredictable resolution of the plot. What I loved best and reread several times were the conversations between Regina and Torquay.
Torquay makes no effort to hide his intentions: he wants Regina to be his mistress, and her honesty and frank assesment of his motives and methods throw him totally. The way in which the three characters resolve conflicts with their own honor reveals much about the transactions of marriage at the time: how much is security worth, if one is an unprotected woman? How much would one sell or give away for the knowledge of safe harbor? And how much are appearances really worth against that question of security?
Because holy damn hell. This is a puzzle of awesome. I have another book to point to when someone asks me for older romances that remain part of the foundation of the genre. This book is available from Goodreads Amazon BN. This sounds like a great book to take on my vacationβ¦if I could stand to read it in bite-sized chunks, savoring each little taste.
I literally hid in strange places to find 10 minutes to read more of this book, and the next one in the two-book set. I wish it were available digitally. I have the original Signet versions of these books. Layton proved you could write a darn good book and not need sex to keep things interesting. Because I must have a reading copy to keep my originals from falling apart any further. Love it when you do all the work and find me new books to read.
