I really wanted to like this book. I mean, I really did. With the opportunities to read newly published Traditional Regencies dwindling, I really wanted to be able to recommend this one. Unfortunately, I cannot.

Hugh Brooks, the Earl of Rayfield, is trying to catch a traitor who is supporting the Luddites in the North of England with the aim of fomenting a revolution. Viscount Treadwell, whose son was killed bringing a French spy into England, is a prime suspect. In a private gaming session, Treadwell, already up to his eyeballs in debt, wagers his daughter Charlotte. (Aren’t you tired of this plotline? I know I am.) Of course, he loses the wager and Charlotte is sent away with Rayfield in her nightclothes. Treadwell lost on purpose, having selected Rayfield as an honorable man who would protect his daughter. I didn’t buy this.

Charlotte agreed to the wager, figuring that her father had some plan to retrieve her later that night. When he doesn’t, she escapes, returning to her home to find that her father has fled – from his creditors, she presumes. She quickly finds a job as governess to two daughters of a mill owner whose mother wants the girls polished for social advancement. Charlotte’s quick removal to Yorkshire, which lands her in the middle of Luddite Country, convinces Rayfield that she is involved in the revolutionary plot and he hies off to follow her.

There, in addition to her governessing duties, Charlotte finds the time to help the mill families with medicines, start up a school for the mill children, and convince the men out of joining the Luddites. How does she have the time for all this? And her employer is the mill owner, for goodness sake. Does he not mind her meddling with his workers? Or does she think that word of her activities won’t get back to him? I don’t buy it.

Meanwhile, Rayfield arrives and takes a job as a groom in the same household where Charlotte is employed. While she has an immediate physical attraction to him, one that matches what she felt in Rayfield’s company – hmmm… – she doesn’t recognize him. Do you buy that? I didn’t either.

And all this takes us just up to page 50. Twenty pages later, she has left her job and is back in London, where Rayfield settles her with his sister who will sponsor her Season. A Season where she is accepted everywhere and has suitors enough to make Rayfield jealous. I didn’t buy this either. A woman whose brother died a traitor and whose father has fled the country to avoid his creditors is accepted everywhere?

The whole book is like this. It is all over the place – literally. People run here and they run there, merely to add one more circumstantial block to the case Rayfield is building against Charlotte. And Charlotte is a great runner – but all the way to Yorkshire for twenty pages? I can’t even tell you where she runs to – alone, in the middle of the night, of course – when she realizes Rayfield thinks she’s a traitor. It’s too preposterous.

Rayfield seems overly concerned for Charlotte’s reputation, given the fact that he states – again and again – that he is days away from arresting her for treason. Doesn’t he think that something like that will affect Charlotte’s reputation?

Charlotte and Rayfield never struck me as being real people, and I found the situations in The Lady in Question to be implausible at best, and downright silly at worst. Very disappointing. I’m glad I didn’t buy it.