Well, this is fun. A Lady Would Know Better offers a lively heroine with no memory of the past and hero who is loving but weighed down by his memories of same. Throw in an enthralling mystery romance with a lot of humor and heart and you’ve got a winner. 

On his way to visiting his mother’s grave, Jasper Maycott, Earl of Belhaven, is stunned to find a woman lying alone and unconscious on the grounds of his snowy Surrey estate one winter. She wakes, asks him to make sure ‘they’ don’t find her, and passes out again.

Jasper already has enough on his plate with five younger siblings (sisters Helena, Viola and Isobel and brothers August and Freddie) to raise. And he is brokenhearted; the estate and title have fallen unexpectedly to him in the wake of the death of his mother, father and his older brother, Anthony, from scarlet fever. Jasper had planned on marrying Annabelle, a vicar’s daughter, and settling into a moral life. Instead, Annabelle and her father, too, were borne away by the epidemic. Jasper is sunk into grief, and little stirs him. He avoids happiness and fun, to the consternation of his siblings, who want to celebrate the holidays as their mother once loved to do. On top of that, he also must support his cheroot-smoking Aunt Adelaide.

But still, he can’t leave the woman in the snow so he brings her home and dubs the woman Jane (she bears a ring with the initials JHD upon it). Once she awakes–with no memory–Jane is a hit. Her brio, chatter and humor instantly enliven the household. And she’s a fascinating mystery. Her golden ring and fine clothing hint that she could be a lady. Where did Jane really come from? She and Jasper set about trying to find out – and fall in love along the way.

There’s a couple of minor issues of address afoot – servants are far too familiar with their masters and no one uses proper form of address – but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t charmed by the romance and rooting for Jane and Jasper to find true love. I loved her genuinely biting wit and understandable frustration with her lost memory. And while some might find Jasper’s extreme melancholy a bit much, so many people in his life have died all at once. I felt it was natural he’d be scared to emotionally commit again.

The mystery itself was pretty solid – I did have an idea where it was going just after the midpoint of the novel, but it continued to surprise me. Jasper’s servants and siblings alike were great – I liked spiky Helena best of all. But they’re all lovable, and so is A Lady Would Know.