Bonus Post: Fortune's Fools (Matchmaker #2)

His Promise

Ready or not, the Honorable Maxwell Darby and his younger brother Tristram must brave the glittering world of London Society to hunt for heiresses, lovely or not. Scurrilous rumors abound: can it be true that their father, Lord Tavistoke, lost the family fortune in a card game? And is the Marquis of Cravenwell, a notorious gambler, behind the artful scheme to marry Tavistoke's sons to the highest bidders? But Maxwell will have none of it, for his heart has been stolen by a certain young lady who is as spirited - and as peniless - as he: Kate O'Connor, the beautiful, red-haired daughter of an Irish horse trainer.

Her Vow

But Kate won't even kiss him - she knows only too well that Maxwell Darby must and will marry for money. His ardent attentions are nothing more than a passing fancy, but she sees no reason to deny herself the innocent pleasure of his company. Her reputation? Well, that is no one's concern but her own...until the handsome young nobleman makes a startling confession. And Kate discovers that her most cherished dreams may be about to come true...

Original Publisher: Zebra
Original Year of Publication: 2004
Page Count: 218

The April 2026 #TBRChallenge is "Fool's Errand." Having no real idea how to choose a book for this prompt, I turned to good old reliable LibraryThing and did a complete search of my catalog for "fool." A couple of books came up, and this sounded the most promising.

As the novel opens, Lord Tavistoke is imploring his younger sons to marry rich, and marry fast, to save his sorry ass from debtor's prison. His heir, Maxwell's twin brother Montgomery, singularly failed in this quest in the first book of this series, instead falling for - and happily marrying - the spinster cousin of his intended target. Max and Tristram will be ferried back to London from their ramshackle estate during the Little Season in order to find wives with large purses, again to save their worthless father's sorry behind. (Do I sound dubious about this reasoning? Because I am dubious about this reasoning.) They will be sponsored by the Marquis of Cravenwell, an old crony of their father's to whom the Darby sons are also apparently in debt, I guess from shenanigans in book #1.

So off to London ride Max and Tris. Upon arrival, Max is extremely angry to learn that Cravenwell lost his beloved horse Thunderlight due to a bet on a race and vows to find it again, no matter what. Tris, on the other hand, is more interested in drawing and writing, and even manages to sell his first novel to a London publisher fairly quickly. It is released to wide acclaim, which only furthers his ambitions as a novelist.

Max tracks down his beloved Thunderlight and finds him with a statuesque young woman with fiery red hair and an excellent seat. This is Kate O'Connor, daughter of the man who won Thunderlight from Cravenwell. Kate loves Thunderlight, too, and does not want to give up such a wonderful horse. Kate is also attending the Little Season at the behest of her mother, though she is already over the hill at the ripe age of 25 and wants nothing more than to return to Ireland and her family's estate and stables. Kate's mother has been very ill and wants nothing more than to give her daughter the Society that she herself willingly gave up to marry the poor Irish horseman who won her heart. Kate doesn't have the guts to say 'no' and goes along with her mother's whims until she learns that her father is going to sell her beloved mare in order to finance the rest of her stay in London. She is having NONE of that, thank you very much, but spends most of her time weeping or wishing she was alone so she could weep.

As luck would have it, the O'Connors are leasing the townhouse right next door to where the Darby brothers are staying. A midnight tryst is thus revealed to be Kate and Max talking to each other through the garden wall, sharing their reluctance about being in Town. They are surprised and secretly delighted when they find out that they are spilling their guts to a supposed enemy, and Kate runs right to Max to commiserate about her father selling her horse. Max comes up with a harebrained scheme to save the mare *and* get Thunderlight back for himself.

Kate is delighted by the idea, but is wary of Max, who has declared his intention to court the richest heiress currently on the market, a young, sweet girl named Phillipa Beauchamp. Phillipa is everything that Kate isn't, and she understands that Max is a reluctant fortune hunter, but she falls for him anyway.

Phillipa's mother is a notorious, vulgar woman who is only barely tolerated by Society because of the wealth of her family. The path to the daughter is actually courting the mother, and Max subjects himself to her come-ons, leaving Tris to build up his character to the young lady herself. (I'm sure we all know where this is going.) Even after rescuing Kate's beloved mare, Max goes and gets himself officially engaged to Phillipa, even though she has said about 2 words to him total and can barely look him in the face. Max is ragingly jealous with all the other men who show Kate any attention, and even gets himself pulled into a duel over Kate's honor. Tris then comes up with an even MORE wacky idea of how to extricate them all from this ridiculous mess of their own making, and all's well that ends well: Max and Kate elope to Gretna Greene on the same trip that Tris and Phillipa do, and all parties involved return to town with nary a hint of scandal attached to any of their actions, over the course of the novel.

This book falls squarely in the middle of the shifting timeline, from traditional Regency romance, where the strictures of Society are taut, every action has a hidden meaning, and the slightest shade of negative talk can leave a reputation in tatters towards wallpaper historicals, where the characters are modern people dressed in "Regency" clothing who can do whatever they want with pretty much no negative consequences. I enjoy trad Regencies; I loathe wallpaper historicals.

This is a very by-the-numbers plot, with loose characters floating around, their backgrounds and motivations flimsy at best and their actions pretty damn foolish. Max decides that he'll have a little fling with Kate during his courtship of Phillipa (and her gruesome mother, ugh), because of course that's how all gently bred men think when navigating the marriage mart. The lot of them basically kidnap Phillipa to take her to Scotland, and she willingly goes - but no male relatives are in pursuit, because both Phillipa and Kate left notes to their families explaining their actions. (Ha!) Henpecked little Mr Beauchamp gets the jump on the gossip by hosting a ball for his daughter, son-in-law, and daughter's former fiancé, said son-in-law's brother. Somehow, everyone ends up laughing and having a good time. Darby family debts are discharged, and Tavistoke ends up having to save his own sorry behind.

This isn't a believable trad Regency, nor a believable farce. It's just...there, a ridiculous plot carried along by serviceable prose along an obvious outline with no variations on the theme. Per the copyright, this is a pseudonym for Donna Bell, who also published trad Regencies under her own name. I have a couple of books by her, and now I'm side-eyeing them. This one is definitely going on the PBS pile. Time will tell if the others will join it.

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