For the first 19 chapters of this book, I was loving it. I loved the setting – Spain during the Peninsular Wars. It gave a good description of the lives of the wives and daughters who followed the drum – something we don’t often see in a Regency Romance. I loved the main characters, Lord Mark Adair and Sophia Featherstonaugh. They were both unusual and intelligent and the relationship between them was developing nicely. Then in the last 21 chapters of the book, Lord Harry’s Daughter fell apart and never recovered.

Sophia Featherstonaugh is the daughter of the late, brave, charming, reckless, feckless Lord Harry Featherstonaugh. Her father’s charm and bravery had made him a good soldier, but his fecklessness had gotten him disinherited by his family and made life hard for his wife and daughter. Finally, his recklessness got him killed. His legacy to Sophia is her ability to ride like the wind and her deep distrust of shallow promises. Sophia, who is a talented artist, lives with her mother and stepfather, General Sir Thornton Curtis. They follow the General and are now in Spain.

Lord Mark Adair is one of Wellington’s exploring officers (read spies). He is the son of the Duke of Broughton. The Duchess was a Spaniard and Mark’s fluency in the language and his dark good looks make him a perfect spy in Spain. He meets Sophia when he comes across her sitting out in the open sketching with only her servant Luis as protection.

Most of the first 19 chapters are taken up with describing the progress of Sophia and Mark’s relationship and the description of life for the women who follow the army. Mark is quite taken with Sophia. She has always looked on the officers as her brothers and is not an eye-batting flirt. She talks to Mark and he to her. Like almost all Regency Romance characters, they have baggage from their childhood – his family was cold, her father was not trustworthy – and they talk to each without whining about their wretched early lives. They are becoming good friends and falling in love. The descriptions of how Sophia and her mother make do in sometimes difficult conditions are fascinating and I wish there had been more of them.

So far, so good.

Then in comes Diane, the Condesa de Gonsalvo y Coruna (and she is referred to by her full title every time she shows up in the novel.) The Condesa is a beautiful young woman who is starved for society. She is French, the widow of an elderly Spanish Conde. Mark is soon taken with the beautiful Condesa and they begin an affair. In the course of this, she starts asking for information about troop strength and movements and Mark (whose brains have descended to his drawers) tells her. When Sophia asks if this is wise, he accuses her of jealousy.

This is where I got very, very upset with this book. Mark is a spy!!! The Condesa is French!! He knows better, and this behavior is totally out of character. If ever there was an example of forced conflict, this is it.

Eventually, the characters end up in London where the book comes to a rushed conclusion that left me not at all pleased.

If this book had been as good as the first 19 chapters, I would have given it a B+ for sure, but the forced conflict and rushed conclusion all but ruined it for me. I might sometime go back and read the first excellent 19 chapters again. But I’m not going any further.