vintageromancereader | Bonus Post: Miss Westlake's Windfall

For Love...or money?

Miss Ada Westlake doesn't consider herself a fool...but everyone else seems. to. Though her family is nearly destitute, she has just turned down another proposal from the best catch in the county. Chas - otherwise known as Viscount Ashmead - has asked many time before and Ada, fearful of ruining their friendship with a marriage of convenience, has made him swear never to ask again. Ada also refuses to hang on to a bag of coins she found in the family orchard, convinced the money is ill-gotten. She appears determined to defeat the possibility of financial salvation at every turn. But Ada doesn't mean to be foolish - only to uphold her principles...

Now, Chas must confined "Addled Ada" to see reason - about money and, most importantly, about him. Because the greatest treasure of all is true love...

Original Publisher: Signet
Original Year of Publication: 2001
Page Count: 216

I've been reading a lot of mystery lately, and needed a change of pace, so I reached for my Signet shelf and pulled this book. This author is known to have a light-hearted comedic touch, which is just what I was in need of. She is certainly true to her talents here, but this story - or, that is to say the main characters - wore thin very quickly with me.

This is exactly what it says on the tin. Ada Westlake is the younger daughter in a destitute family. Her eldest brother, Rodney, gambled away all their money and got himself killed in some sort of accident, so now the baronetcy has fallen to younger brother Emery, who's off fighting Napoleon's army on the continent. Elder sister Tess is considered...er, the family eccentric, so Ada is the only one left who has anything resembling brains. She works the land along with a handful of elderly servants, trying to avoid Rodney's widow Jane and her pestering extended family who have taken up rooms in the old Hall but do nothing to contribute to the family coffers or paying down Rodney's debt.

Ada considers herself practical and principled, but she is actually dumb as a box of rocks and stubborn as a mule. She absolutely refuses to marry life-long friend and neighbor Viscount Ashmead, one of the wealthiest men in the country, because she doesn't want to ~hold him back~ and ~deny him the chance for true love~. When she finds a bag of money in the orchard, she immediately thinks that its the proceeds of smuggling and as such, she can't keep it. Isn't her brother off fighting a war against the French? Taking the money would be tantamount to treason in her eyes. She's determined to give it back to the local leader of the smugglers, one Leo Tobin, and actually does that.

Leo is actually Ashmead's bastard-born brother, so of course he knows that the money in the orchard was actually left there by Charles, in his own dunderheaded attempt to give Ada some funds to get out from under the crippling family debt. He can't tell her that, because Reasons, just like he can't tell her he (romantically) loves her, especially not when she turns down his proposal for the umpteenth time and makes him swear never to ask her again.

When Leo gives Ada the money back, she finds new and even more stupid ways to attempt to rid herself of it. Never once does her supposedly practical nature allow her to just accept the windfall for what it is and use it as would best suit her. This drove me nuts. Ada truly is addlepated and I couldn't figure out why Charles was so gaga over her.

Mercifully, this book has a wealth of interesting secondary characters, including quirky Tess (who has her own ideas of how to regain the family fortune, which is to stage a lavish opera/play in London to great acclaim). Leo immediately falls head over heels for Tess and does everything in his power to make her opera/play/book a success. There's also Ashmead's mother, the dowager viscountess, who's playing matchmaker for her son with a bunch of idiotic debutantes fresh from London; the various townspeople; a mysterious Frenchman; and scads of improbable romances. The pace is very swift and comedic, and honestly, wanting to find out how Tess's play turns out was the only reason I kept reading this.

I enjoyed the author's writing way more than the central romance here, so this one is likely not a keeper.

⭐⭐ 1/2