A Wicked Gentleman

I love Jane Feather's books. I enjoyed this one too and will continue to purchase her interesting books.

Lady Cornelia Dagenham, her sister-in-law Aurelia, and their friend Liv Lacey, are off to London on an adventure. Combining their sparse funds, the three plan to spend a few months in the home Liv recently inherited. Although the home is in terrible condition, they are determined to make it habitable and enjoy their London vacation. Harry, The Viscount Bonham, has made several bids to purchase Liv's Cavendish Square property, which is a mystery to the three ladies. The viscount is wealthy and has no need for the shabby property. When Harry turns his charm on Cornelia, to her amazement she finds her self responding. Unbeknownst to Cornelia, Harry is a code breaker for the Crown. His interest in her not only exposes her and her friends to danger, it also raises a distressing question. Does Harry truly desire Cornelia, or is his pursuit of her part of his mission for the Crown? I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Wicked Gentleman. In fact, I am really looking forward to the next book in this trilogy. These women are smart, engaging and funny. I have been hooked! A Wicked Gentleman is amusing, sensual and terribly romantic. I can't think of a better way to spend a summer's afternoon than stretched out on a hammock lost in the romance of Jane Feather's A Wicked Gentleman. Annmarie Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

Lately, I've been enjoying some lighter reading, namely several new historical romances by authors that I know will usually turn out a good product. Long time author Jane Feather is one of those writers that I trust; while a few of her novels have bombed for me, most of the time she can keep me interested and entertained enough to finish her stories. Ms. Feather has started a new series with A Wicked Gentleman, set in the Regency period of London, England. Three ladies, Cornelia, her sister-in-law Aurelia, and their cousin Livia, decide to go to London, each one for different reasons. At first uncertain how they will afford it, a surprise legacy from an unknown relation provides them with a house on the fashionable Cavendish Square. This particular story centers around Cornelia, the widowed Lady Dagenham. Desperate to keep her two young children with her, Cornelia happily agrees to chaperone Lady Liv, and London provides a welcome respite from the threats of her uncle, who seeks to keep her son, Lord Stevie, from any hint of trouble. The idea of having her son taken away from her haunts Cornelia, especially when the proposed tutor is a bit of a sadist. But London isn't seeming to be that much of a haven either. For one thing, the townhouse is a wreck, along with three aged servants who have their own attitudes about how things ought to be run. But what may be worst of all is the presence of Harry, Viscount Bonham. Besides being devastatingly handsome (aren't they always?), Harry has quite a few secrets of his own, and he and Nell keep crossing paths. Unhappily for both Nell and Harry, his secrets, including the rather lurid death of his former wife, and his own reasons for seeking out the trio of ladies may prove to be too much for any hope of romance to survive the ugly truth. It's a tried and true plot that is usually found in romantic historicals, but Jane Feather manages to breathe some new life into the story. For one, the heroine, isn't the usual sort of ninny that is found in this novel. Cornelia is a grown-up, with a previous life that has left her with children, a touch that is rarely found in these sort of novels. She also has another rare trait -- a sense of humor, and there are several scenes in the novel that are laugh-out-loud funny. Harry is a little too perfect, always managing to show up at just the right moment with hardly a hair out of place, but by the end of the story, there's enough emotional tension going on to overlook that stumbling block. Too, the author doesn't fall into the pit of turning this into yet another book where it's nothing but sexual bouts between the leads, and the plot goes to the wayside. While there are quite a few dangling issues left at the end of the book, it's satisfying enough that it can be read as a stand-alone novel. The main plot besides the romantic aspect involves a band of French spies trying to get into the house on Cavendish Square to find an object that is hidden there at the begin

To escape from the demands of her late husband's father, widow Cornelia "Nell" Dagenheim, accompanied by her children, heads to London to spend a month with her widowed sister-in-law Ellie and her children and their best friend Livia. The house the three country mice and their offspring plan to stay in belongs to Livia, who recently inherited the home. To their shock, the house is in bad shape as if someone deliberately tore it apart in search of something. Just after her arrival she meets Harry Bonham who offers to buy the townhouse. Harry is a royal cryptographer, who fears that somewhere in the house is a code breaking device that the French want. As he courts the widow to gain access to where she is staying, someone abducts her oldest son, heir to an earldom. Whereas she assumes ransom money and he considers the French involvement, either way they work together to rescue her child even as they fall in love while doing so. The lead couple supplemented by a horde of family and friends turn A WICKED GENTLEMAN into a superb Regency romantic investigative tale. The two prime subplots, the mystery and the romance blend together into a cohesive save the child thriller. Fans of the author already know she is no featherweight but instead a sub-genre superheavyweight as this team up of a frantic amateur sleuth mom and the spy she loves proves. Harriet Klausner