Isn’t a shame when a less than appealing heroine gets in the way of what would otherwise have been a very good book?

On the positive side Andrea DaRif is clearly a talented writer with a knack for dialogue, a gift for zesty love scenes, and the ability to create a sexy and appealing hero in the Earl of Branford. Unfortunately, there’s also heroine Portia Hadley with which to contend.

Portia, that oh-so-familiar bluestocking type, is relentlessly stubborn, foolishly impetuous, and, despite her much vaunted “intelligence”, a young lady who never seems to learn anything from her many (many, many) mistakes. And just to make her character even more of a joy, she’s downright unpleasant to the hero for most of the book. Frankly, I don’t like it when a hero is nasty to a heroine for any length of time and I don’t care for it any more when the shoe is on the other foot. It just seems so – well, 80’s.

Determined to discover the whereabouts of her missing father, Portia breaks into the home of a man she believes cheated her father into gambling away her family home. Her purpose, not surprisingly, is to locate any information that might lead to her father’s whereabouts, as well as proof that her family home really wasn’t lost. Unfortunately, she’s interrupted by a drunken Earl of Branford, a former Napoleonic wars super-sleuth now spending far too much of his “retirement” attempting to bury his demons by embracing life as a jaded Regency-era rake.

But Branford is far from a lost cause. Recruited once again in the service of his country, he’s confronted far too frequently in his efforts to ferret out the location and true nature of a missing “riddle” (it’s far too complicated to explain here) with our crabby heroine. Portia disdains the Earl (he’s such a wastrel!) and doesn’t hesitate to show her feelings – even when confronted with behavior that should convince her otherwise. But when matters begin to suggest that what Branford seeks may have a connection to the disappearance of her father (though it takes a long time for either of them to confide in the other), even Portia is forced to admit that some level of cooperation with the despicable Earl could be her best plan of action.

What I did like here was DaRif’s elegant prose and engrossing storytelling. Even more appealing, unlike the stereotypical Portia, Branford is a three-dimensional character whose guilt over the wartime deaths of his two young cousins and resulting descent into alcoholism goes far beyond typical “romance novel” hero torment. (Haven’t we all had it up to here with those pesky post-war nightmares?) Branford is wounded, mind you, but he hasn’t lost his sense of purpose nor his sense of fun. He’s a real man in a less than happy place in his life and watching his reformation here is a pleasure.

And then there’s Portia. While it’s all too easy to enumerate the many ways I disliked her, I will admit that there was one big positive. Daughter of that old standby the “absent-minded scholar,” Portia is understandably resentful of the fact that, with two young brothers to care for, the price for her father’s escapism was her own youth. Ms. DaRif also feelingly portrays the missing father’s thoughtless neglect – neglect that amounted to life-shattering cruelty to his vulnerable children. Despite all of this, Portia and her brothers love their father and their ambivalence felt very much like real life to me. Admittedly, the distracted father is a stock character in Regencies and Regency-era historicals, but Portia’s reaction to him isn’t.

Frankly, I’d nominate secondary character Mrs. Grenville as a worthier heroine for this novel. A resourceful woman who made her own success and place in the world, she’s a far more interesting – and far more mature – character than the heroine with whom we’re stuck. And, unlike Portia, if repeated attempts at that age-old, stealthy-operative-house-breaker tactic always – always, mind you – landed her in hot water, I’m reasonably certain she’d give it up.

Clearly, for me at any rate, the Portia Problem was a big one. Okay, huge. But there’s good stuff here, too, and, in the long run, it narrowly outweighed the bad. The loss of another talented traditional Regency author to historicals may turn out to be a good thing for fans of historicals in the long run. This author shows promise as Andrea DaRif and I’ll be watching to see just where she takes it.