vintageromancereader | Love's Lady Lost

He could hardly desert a damsel-in distress

Mr Leopold Savage's rakehell reputation went before him. Thus, when he became stranded at the widow, Mrs Primrose Hythe's home, he was not surprised by her cold reception.

He was, however, surprised to be captured by a precocious six-year-old, a cantankerous cat and chicken-pox under one roof. And to find the widow becoming an agreeable, if not enchanting, companion.

Yet he never suspected her to be hiding a secret so deep and dark that even he was loath to believe it.

Original Publisher: Harlequin
Original Year of Publication: 1991
Page Count: 218

The February 2024 #TBRChallenge is "Furry Friends." I reached into my pile of Harlequin-published traditional Regency romances because I recalled having at least one with a kitty cat side character, and I came up with this.

Leopold Savage is the typical trad Regency Corinthian, footloose and fancy free, but under some pressure from his formidable grandmother to finally marry and set up a nursery. He has a falling out with his father about the same, and goes running off in the middle of a snowstorm to basically tell his grandmother to forget any clever ideas she might have about matching him up with anybody anytime soon. Because its snowing and Leo is an idiot, he breaks a wheel on his curricle in the middle of nowhere. He also spots a very young girl wandering around by herself, so he picks her up and tries to take her home. He's annoyed that she leads him not to her home, but to a nearby village, where they are both summarily shunned. A villager gives him directions to the child's home, and he realizes what's what when the front door is opened and he's greeted by a young woman covered in chicken pox spots.

The little girl, Consuela, is the child of the house; the lady at the door, Primrose Hythe, is the lady of the house in a manner of speaking. She runs a modest little boarding house with one ancient maid and scatterbrained young cousin just down from Oxford. Mercifully, Leopold has already had the chicken pox, so he's okay to stay at this curiously dilapidated house with quite a few objects d'art littered about.

Leo makes himself right at home, especially endearing himself to Consuela when he agrees to bathe Milor', the big black Persian cat who considers himself lord and master. This goes about as well as can be expected; Milor runs off in the wake of the insult and is nowhere to be found. By this time, one of Leo's BFFs has arrived to tell him that not only is his grandmother not at her residence, but she's planned a huge ball in his honor and is prepared to basically auction him off to the highest bidder in the matrimonial stakes. Leo can't have that, so he comes up with a plan to use the "notorious" widow Hythe to basically scare away all comers.

This was an odd read. While competently written (tightly plotted and amusing in the comedy-of-manners way of a trad Regency), I didn't really connect with the characters. The main POV is Leo Savage, but even his motives are opaque when he goes from being the kindhearted funny house guest to a cold, arrogant jerk at the idea of being a matrimonial target by his grandmother. It doesn't help that he constantly calls Primrose "The Spotted Hythe" as a term of endearment, even after the chicken pox fade. When he hears Primrose's deep dark secret (that Consuela is not, in fact, her daughter but her niece, born from a false elopement between her sister and the nefarious Conrad Furness, who only "married"/trapped Primrose's sister because Primrose herself had the audacity to turn him down; Primrose is terrified that Furness will learn the truth of Consuela's parentage and use her to take the family home to restore his own coffers), he basically tells her that he doesn't believe her, but blackmails her into being his "date" for his grandmother's ball by promising to keep schtum if she does so. Her reputation will piss off his family, which he considers a win somehow. Then, at the ball, he treats her abominably and lets those attending do the same, making sure that her reputation is known far and wide and that she's ostracized for it. He's doing this in a plot to "trap" Furness and disgrace him, but does he tell Primrose that? No, he just goes on being cruel to her, explaining afterwards that he had to do it to ensure she had an honest reaction, to make it all the more believable for their audience at the ball and then later during Furness's comeuppance.

It was needlessly cruel, and not until it unfolds on the page do we know what Savage is doing, and why. This is a romance novel?? Ugh.

Primrose is similarly dull, and Consuela is a completely unbelievable child (who apparently has no grasp of personal pronouns whatsoever, which made the dialogue hard to read). Unfortunately even the cat is gone for a large chunk of the book, presumed dead and replaced with a pair of clucking hens, all so that Savage and his BFF can hilariously try their hand at building a henhouse. At least everyone gets a good laugh out of that, before everything turns sour. (The cat does return at the end, and actually takes up residence in the ridiculous henhouse.)

This was not a good read, and it's going on my PBS pile. It is apparently the third in a series by this author, but the wild way this one went pretty much completely put me off trying anything else by her.

⭐ 1/2