Ever take a sip of champagne that’s gone just a little flat? It looks right, it smells the same – but the bubble, the sparkle, the excitement are missing. That’s what this book was like for me: all the ingredients for a good story were there, but there was just enough that didn’t work to make this little more than a satisfactory read. Hero and heroine were only marginally interesting, and a confusing piece of backstory didn’t help any.

Lady Agnes DeGuis has agreed to chaperone her goddaughter Cleopatra Renfield for the Season, with the usual goal of seeing the girl suitably wed. And she has just the man for the task: her godson Leslie Petersborough, the new Marquis of Hastings. Cleo, however, has other plans. She’s already got her eye on the handsome Major Cutter, but her stick-in-the-mud sisters would never allow the match. So Cleo forms a plan to make herself completely ineligible, reasoning that her sisters would rather see her married to Cutter than be totally ruined. When she encounters Leslie at a ball, she’s somewhat taken aback that the gangly youth she remembers as a childhood friend has metamorphosed into a handsome young man, but she sets aside the flutters of her heart and recruits him into helping her enact her scheme.

Leslie has his own reasons for agreeing to Cleo’s outrageous proposal. He decidedly does not want to wed, and he figures that by pretending to be entranced by Cleo, he’ll get his godmother off his back about marrying and setting up his nursery. He never thought his old chum Cleo would turn into such a ravishing creature, let alone that he would be in danger of falling in love with her as she cuts a dash in Society, cutting her hair, visiting gaming houses, and – gasp! – dancing the waltz at Almack’s without permission. When Cutter turns out to be the bounder Leslie has suspected all along, there’s nothing for it but to offer in earnest for Cleo, to save her. But will she have him?

The book has its moments, but overall it was disappointing. Cleo and Leslie use the guise of trying to teach Lady Agnes’s parrot Hector to talk as a cover for their planning sessions, and the bird is pretty amusing. Cleo’s unhappy and overbearing sisters provide effective foils for her. But for as bright as she is, I kept wondering why Cleo didn’t see through Major Cutter sooner, and I never really understood what attracted her to him in the first place. As for Leslie, he spends a lot of time wondering whether he’s worthy to fill his late father’s shoes, and it got tiresome after a while. Much time is devoted to an event in Cleo’s past, an obscure incident that happened when she was at school. The author left the truth of the matter hidden for too long for my liking, so that by the time I finally got to the bottom of things, all I could think was, “All that anguish and misunderstanding – for this?”

Readers who’ve enjoyed other of Scott’s books loosely connected to this (The Unflappable Miss Fairchild, The Marquis’ Kiss, The Incomparable Miss Compton, The Bluestocking on His Knee) may enjoy Leslie and Cleo’s story more than I did. The writing is decent and there are no glaring errors I could find. But this just didn’t do it for me. Waiter! Fresh champagne next time, please.