I’m not quite sure how to categorize The Mistress’ House. It’s not an anthology, but still within its chapters are three discrete stories. The abbreviated, short-story-like form of each couple’s piece is, in many ways, the book’s biggest weakness. Each of the stories would have been more successful as its own novel with greater character and plot development.

The Earl of Hawthorne (Thorne to his friends) is a confirmed rake, and decides it would be much easier and convenient to have his assignations nearby, so he buys the townhouse that backs up to his own — just a quick walk through the gardens from one back door to the other, rather than messages sent back and forth across town, etc. etc. The house becomes useful when Thorne is propositioned by Lady Anne Keighly, a young widow who looks not for marriage, but for a lover.

When that “no marriage” plan fails, Lady Anne offers the home to an old friend, Felicity Mercer, while she stays in London. Felicity is the daughter of a mill owner, clearly not of the same class as Anne, but mourning the death of her aristocratic lover. When she discovers Thorne’s cousin is her late lover’s brother, she decides to take the opportunity to ask Richard, Earl of Colford, to give her what his brother was never able to: a child.

And finally, when Georgiana Baxter, a young woman for whom Thorne has been acting as a trustee after her father died, comes trying to escape a cruel guardian and an arranged marriage, he lets her stay in the house. But when Julian, another cousin and recent Earl of Silsby, comes back from the war an finds a beautiful woman in the gardens, he can’t help but succumb to her requests to show her how to make love, so she can become a mistress.

All three stories follow the same basic track: an awkward proposition; a sexual relationship that has nothing to do with getting married, no sir; the woman falling in love and the man having an unexplained revelation that he wants to get married. I really wish we had enough time in the men’s heads to understand their motivations, because two of the three give absolutely no prior indication of wanting to marry their mistresses.

The characters are also all victims of really, really poor decision-making. Felicity in particular is selfish and blind to the realities of what she asks; it isn’t until after several baby-making attempts that she realizes, oh wait, this child would be illegitimate. Oops. Also, I can’t imagine why Richard or Julian would, in their right minds, accept the propositions of Felicity and Georgiana, respectively.

Despite these problems, though, the stories did have some potential. Each had an interesting premise, at least, but each got stifled by the others. Had they all been individual novels, with the time to expand on motivations and emotions and reactions, they could have been successful. But with three stories in just over 300 pages, none of the characters or plots got the development that they deserved.