Bryce Keene, Duke of Amberville, is in a bind. As the second son, he has just inherited the ducal title upon the death of his brother, and he’s also inherited his niece, a headstrong girl who is headed for trouble. A solution presents itself when Bryce becomes reacquainted with lady Cassandra Abbott. Cassandra once wrote an etiquette book for young ladies, so Bryce figures she will be the perfect person to bring his niece in line. He offers her a marriage proposal almost immediately.

Cassandra married a wealthy nobleman at the urging of her parents, but he turned out to be a cruel man who all but imprisoned her and left her penniless when he died. Since her parents are also in trouble due to gaming debts, Cassandra sees Bryce’s offer as a godsend. Still, she wants to protect herself from the type of marriage she had last time, so she writes up a contract for Bryce to sign. He sees the first few items, which are all about allowing her money to buy clothing and other necessities, and figures the rest of the items are pretty much the same, so he signs the contract without reading the whole thing. When he arrives in Cassandra’s room on his wedding night, he discovers that he has also forfeited the right to have marital relations for the first six months.

Bryce isn’t happy about this, and the two begin a cat-and-mouse game, with each giving and taking a little as they seek to achieve compromise. This takes place during the first part of the book, and it’s the best part. Bryce and Cassandra truly like one another, but they are both wounded from previous experiences – she from her marriage to the cruel, controlling older man, and he from his own marriage to a faithless wife who apparently slept with half the ton. The sexual tension builds as they banter and wrestle for the power in the relationship. Both of them get angry with each other, but they seem to be having a lot of fun too.

Then they finally consummate their marriage, and the book begins to fall flat. It sags its way through the middle, only to emerge from its slump as the book draws to a close. The characters, who are both initially likable, become shrill, silly and impractical, and their actions don’t make a whole lot of sense. Really, this would have worked better as an anthology story; it could have ended with the love scene, leaving the couple happily ever aftering instead of bickering their way through the rest of the book. The book does regain some momentum at the end, and there is a really nice scene where Bryce sees something that appears to incriminate Cassandra, but he decides to trust her anyway. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual Big Misunderstanding.

The characters, like the plot, are pretty uneven. Bryce and Cassandra make a cute couple about half the time, but both also engage in behavior that doesn’t make much sense. Even more problematic is Bryce’s niece, Alaina. Alaina is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a duke, and she would have had to grow up with every advantage – and plenty of knowledge about etiquette. But because it suits the plot (Bryce has to need an etiquette expert), Alaina acts like she just fell off a turnip truck. She has no clue about proper behavior and seems argumentative – actually, just like a modern teenager from America, not like a well-bred Englishwoman from the nineteenth century. And since she was so unready for society, I couldn’t figure out why there was any pressing need for her to make her come-out at sixteen, particularly since her parents had died quite recently. The book doesn’t give an exact time frame, but it sounded like she and Bryce should still have been in mourning.

A Proper Affair isn’t a bad book; merely an uneven one. It has some interesting parts, but they don’t come together as a harmonious whole, and in some instances, the author really needed to do a lot more thinking about the details. Still, Malvey is not without promise, and I could easily see her books getting better with time.