Of Noble Birth is not bad so much as it is thoroughly, horribly depressing. This is a romance with an hea ending, something I had to remind myself repeatedly just to get through the book. Murphy’s Law works overtime here, because until they reach the ending, everything that happens to the characters is awful, and usually violent as well.

It starts out with a bang in the prologue – the hero, Nathaniel Kent, is born with one arm. His father, the Duke of Greystone, tries to smother him because he doesn’t want a deformed heir, but a housemaid saves him and takes him to be raised by her sister. The Duke kills the housemaid when Nathaniel is just seven, and after that he is raised by her heartless, poverty-stricken sister. Eventually he heads for the sea, and soon he is captaining his own ship. He uses his resources to raid his father’s ships and take his cargo – a feat which he accomplishes with remarkable ease considering they are both flying the British flag. When one of his men is kidnaped by the Duke, Nathaniel decides that the only way he can get the man back is to kidnap the Duke’s daughter in return.

Unfortunately, the woman he kidnaps is not the Duke’s daughter, but an impoverished seamstress who happens to be wearing the Duke’s daughter’s dress (yes, this all makes sense in the book). Alexandra Cogsworth, the kidnaped seamstress, has not exactly been living the easy life herself. Her mother has died, and her stepfather is a drunk who beats her and forces her to work long hours. When Nathaniel kidnaps her she is in the process of trying to escape to live with an aunt who is on her way to India. It should be obvious to Nathaniel and his crew that Alexandra is not the right woman, because she shows them her work-roughened hands right away. They refuse to accept this evidence, however, and when they haven’t heard from the Duke after a couple of days, they take Alexandra with them on another raid of the Duke’s ships.

It is during the voyage that Nathaniel and Alexandra are supposed to fall in love, but I never did buy it. Nathaniel comes across as both stupid and cruel during this time. He seems to expect good behavior out of Alexandra even though he treats her like dirt. The fact that he also thinks she is his sister also casts a pall over this “getting to know you” period. Nathaniel can’t understand why he is so attracted to a woman to whom he is related. After a while, Alexandra starts agreeing that she is his sister because she believes that will protect her from rape. In one distasteful scene, Nathaniel tries to kiss her and she tells him to stop. Even though he still thinks she is his sister, he calls her a “heartless wench.” At any rate, they never seem to establish any sort of believable love relationship.

Although the voyage is no picnic, once they get back to England the tragedies start in earnest. I won’t go in detail about all of them, but they are all depressing and one involves a long separation between the hero and heroine during which Nathaniel is jailed on a prison ship. Most books that contain this level of violence tend to be balanced by love scenes. Oddly, this book never moves beyonds “second base,” which certainly doesn’t make the love relationship any more credible. The one scene in which Nathaniel and Alexandra do become semi-amorous is marred by the fact that Nathaniel has just been beaten to a bloody pulp and is half dead. I had a hard time believing that he would be in a romantic mood in that condition.

This book does take place during an interesting time, and the author occasionally peppers the dialogue with interesting political conversations. Still, this can hardly balance out the novel’s overwhelmingly depressing nature. If you enjoy watching the hero and heroine overcome tragedy (after tragedy after tragedy) to reach a triumphant ending, then this is surely the book for you. Otherwise, I’d stick to something with an occasional ray of sunshine amidst the clouds.