Marrying Mattie is Victoria Dark’s first historical romance. I opened it with a feeling of pleasant anticipation, but my hopes were dashed when the characters started acting stupid. The hero did dumb things, the heroine did dumber things, and when even the villain did something really dumb – well I got pretty exasperated.

Mattie Idyll is a young widow with a son. She was married to a minister who was cruel and domineering. He left Mattie with a distrust of marriage and a yearning for independence. Mattie is just barely making a living by selling her needlework and preserving the vegetables from her large garden. She has almost no money and often goes hungry so that her son will have food.

Ty Warburton is a prosperous rancher. He is a widower whose young daughter lives with her grandparents. Ty is a survivor of Andersonville prison and is tormented with guilt because he lived and his younger brother did not. Ty has recently found out that his daughter is coming to live with him, and he has no idea how to treat a young girl.

Ty has known Mattie for a while and has found her attractive despite her prickly personality, so he proposes to her, telling her about his daughter, and that he has noticed her financial straits. Mattie is not too sure – she does not want to be tied down and lose her freedom, but since she is tired of being hungry and seeing her son do without, she accepts.

So far, so good. We have a marriage of convenience between two really likable characters. But Mattie and Ty suddenly start acting like they have no brains. In the past, Ty had been responsible for the arrest of the train-robbing Cratchit brothers. One of them has escaped jail and comes gunning for Mattie and Ty. Does Ty stay at the ranch and defend his family? No. He goes off on a cattle drive leaving Mattie and the children under the protection of a young ranchhand, Esteban. Can’t the cowboys drive them dogies without the boss being there personally?

Mattie and Esteban go into town to shop. When they go to the dressmaker’s store, Mattie catches sight of a young man with red hair. Esteban tells her that Cratchit has red hair. Does Mattie get suspicious? No. She just assumes that the young man is the dressmaker’s bratty younger brother and goes off to buy things. Wouldn’t a sensible person at least check out the red-headed stranger?

Cratchit tries to ruin Ty by infecting his cattle with blackleg. Crachit introduces a sick calf into the herd, and for a short time, Ty panics and is ready to shoot all of his cattle. Then someone notices that the calf is black, while all of Ty’s cattle are red Herefords. When they inspect the dead calf, it has the wrong brand. Wouldn’t you think Cratchit would get the right breed of cow, or does he think an experienced cowboy wouldn’t notice a little thing like one black calf among a herd of red ones?

There was one good thing about Marrying Mattie. Ms. Dark has quite a knack for writing love scenes. Her love scenes are tender and sensual and reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Lowell. They were the best writing in the book. If only the rest of Marrying Mattie had been as good – but it wasn’t.