Miss Adele Russell knew it was sheer folly to attend the Duke and Duchess of Bellingham's grand masquerade. A year ago, she would have been an honored guest - before the disgrace and death of her father. Now she was a penniless shop girl, scorned by society and mocked by the memory of her broken engagement to the elegant and handsome Lord David Latimer.
But when by chance Adele found an invitation to the masquerade, the temptation was too great. What danger could there be in going masked to this dazzling affair? Adele soon found out. First, in the arms of a stranger as mysterious as he was overwhelmingly attractive. And then, face to face with the same David Latimer who had broken her heart once and still had the power to do it again...
Original Publisher: Signet
Original Year of Publication: 1983
Page Count: 224
The
September 2026 #TBRChallenge is "Lush Life." I had to dig through Mount TBR for something suitable, but I ultimately found this, which had all the trappings of being a cross-class read.
Have you ever read a book, by a good author, and found yourself frustrated with stupid, stubborn, obstinate characters who stay stupid, stubborn and obstinate to the literal last page? When you know the author is capabale of being so much better than this?
Ugh. Unfortunately, that was my experience with this book.
We open with Adele Russell waking up on a now-typical morning for herself. She is a shop assistant at a haberdashery run by her former nurse, Miss Cat Rogers. Five years before the opening of our novel, Adele Russell was the wealthy heiress of banker Denzil Russell, owner of the Beech House which sat in the hills of Bath and looked down over the fashiohable spa town. On one horrific night, her world crumbled: Beech House was set on fire, her infirm father caught inside to roast to death. The next day, a scandal broke, alleging that Mr Russell embezzled an enormous sum from his bank before his mysterious death. And, just to add icing on the shit cake, Adele's fiance, David Latimer, sent a curt note abruptly breaking off their engagement. If not for Cat, Adele would have had nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
Her fall from grace wasn't enough for some people - particularly her father's enemies, whom Adele rashly accused of murdering him the night of the fire. One of those people, Sir Frederick Repton, corners Adele in a washroom on the property of the haberdashery and proceeds to twirl his mustache as he gives us all this background while he also informs Adele that he has bought the ruins of her home
and warns her to stay away from Latimer, who is returning to Bath for the first time in five years. Adele hates them, one and all, who she holds accountable for her father's death: Repton, who served as the clerk at the bank and who *really* stole all the money; the Duke of Bellingham, who was Repton's patron and who profited from the stolen money, which magically refilled his empty coffers; and Latimer, who dropped her the second she lost her fortune. She has no problem staying away from Latimer.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the Duke's family. His daughter, Euphemia, has long been an enemy of Adele's. The Duke had worked hard to engineer a match between Euphemia and David, the Earl of Blaisdon, and then he met Adele and immediately fell for her. Their subsequent engagement became a thorn in Euphemia's side; she has fully enjoyed Adele's fall from grace and loves to rub her nose in her poverty now. Euphemia patronizes Miss Rogers's shop and makes Adele wait on her *and* deliver packages to her family home, delighting in all the ways she can torture her former foe. David's rumored arrival back to town is because he's finally going to marry Euphemia. Euphemia makes sure to warn Adele off him, too, making it obvious how insecure and jealous she is.
Adele is absoutely miserable with the idea of David returning. She hates him with the same sort of passion that made her love him before, and does
not want to be in the crosshairs of any of them anymore, especially now that they're all threatening her. She also sorely misses her old life, twirling on the best dance floors of Bath Society. When she finds an invitation to the big masquerade that the Bellinghams are holding in honor of the Waterloo victory, she plucks it up and foolishly decides to attend. Conveniently, there is a costume stored away in a trunk in the attic that once belonged to her mother, complete with a domino mask and veil. She refashions the costume and makes a hood, completely concealing her signature blonde hair, and sneaks out of the house to attend the ball.
She enjoys herself there, making sure to snub David Latimer where
everyone can see her do it (after the scandalous waltz, in fact). She also meets a handsome fellow she dubs Sir Mask, who sweeps her off her feet. She is so enchanted by him that she finds herself meeting him the next day in a nearby park. He sorta looks familiar, but she can't quite place him. She continues to meet with him - even though she knows she's putting herself and Cat in danger - until she learns his identity: he is the son of the Duke of Bellingham, also recently returned to Bath. This knowledge immediately makes her hate him and fully regret all of her stupidity up to this point in meeting and making out with him in public.
When Sir Mask learns of her identity, he is furious, convinced that she tried to ensnare him because of his wealth. His true self comes to the fore, replacing the gallant, light-hearted chamrer with a coldblooded rapist. He vows to make her pay for what she's done to him, no matter what. It doesn't matter that his sister, Euphemia, also hates her - he's going to exact his own revenge on her.
Adele keeps doing very stupid things over the course of the book. She meets with her beloved Sir Mask, until the mask is dropped. She crosses paths with David several times, and they are cold and hateful to each other. David has his own score to setting with Bellingham junior, and he swoops in to save Adele from a very public ruination at the haberdashery. This isn't the end of Adele's problems, though: Frederick Repton is still threatening her, and she still hopes, after five long years, to find the proof her father had that Repton and Bellingham were the ones who stole the money from his bank.
On this score, she realizes one night that there is one place she didn't look, a hiding place in the cellar of Beech House, and she jumps out of bed, shrugs Cat off, and goes there in the middle of the night, desperate for the proof. Bellingham junior spots her and goes after her, and he has her good and cornered when again, David rides to her rescue in the nick of time.
So the proof is shared with the law, the Duke and Repton are arrested, the Bellingham family leaves Bath in disgrace (scatting to the four winds, because their family is nothing but hatred and bile, even to each other), and every place associated with the major players is mobbed by a public crowd baying for details.
It is not until the very last page that Adele (who has now been magically restored to her fortune) and David realize that it was the Duke who broke up their original engagement (intercepting their missives to each other and sending false ones instead) way back when. They finally talk about it - the elephant in the room that's been hanging over every interaction in the book - and confess that they still love each other after all and hey, now the path is clear for their marriage!
I could not stand how dumb Adele was. She kept doing stupid things, even knowing full well that it was stupid, and all in service to her sense of pride, the only thing she could still cling to from her former life. Even though David saves her bacon several times, he is an absolute asshole towards her, as he believes that she dumped him. He never corrects her when she throws his supposed imminent betrothal to Euphemia in his face, even though he has absolutely no intention of marrying into the Bellingham family, considering rapey young Bellingham's exploits in India. It's not until his mother basically sits him down and scolds him for his behavior that he begins to consider that maybe he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does.
I know this author is better than this, which is what made reading this book so frustrating. It's hard to credit that this is the same person who wrote
Fashion's Lady, which had an awesome female lead, and was published a year earlier! But since I know this author can and does write a better heroine than Adele, I will continue to read her backlist. I've never been bored by a Sandra Heath book, to say the least!
⭐⭐
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