I really enjoyed the last Barbara Hazard book I read, The Scottish Legacy, but unfortunately I found this one terribly disappointing. While the author takes some risks with unusual characters, none of them pay off. There is little romance here, and a last minute separation between the hero and heroine takes the book from merely average to boring and annoying.

Miss Lili Martingale was raised in a French convent until she was thirteen, when she was removed by her distant relative, Cornelia Russell. Since that time she has been living on a farm in the country with some friends, but Lili’s beauty is causing problems. Several local swains are falling in love with her, and some of them are making improper advances. Cornelia decides that the best thing to do is take Lili into London for a season. At seventeen, she seems a little young, but at least she’ll acquire some town brass and get away from those overly-amorous country boys.

They stay at Cornelia’s country home first, and on the way there they get off on the wrong foot with Cornelia’s neighbor, who is Graeme Wilder, Viscount Halpern. Graeme and his friends are blocking the road after causing an accident with a shepherd boy during a race. Since Graeme has absolutely no concern for the injured boy, Lil refers to him as a Levite – an allusion to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Graeme is not particularly chastened, but Lili’s remark does get his attention. When Lili and Cornelia finally arrive at Cornelia’s home, they stay for a few weeks while Lili is fitted for gowns and given dancing lessons. Lili is warned by practically everyone that she won’t catch a noble husband because her father wasn’t anyone important. She is particularly warned that she must not try to secure Graeme, who comes from an illustrious family. Cornelia’s former mother-in-law makes Lili’s life even more difficult with repeated slights and unfounded suggestions that Lili is Cornelia’s illegitimate daughter. Lili runs into Graeme a few more times and generally insults him.

At this point, they leave for town, and I was still not entirely certain that I had met the hero of the book. Finally, around page 50, I decided (correctly) that the hero was Graeme. I thought maybe that the author was attempting an interesting (albeit not terribly romantic) character study. Lili is young, and has very egalitarian views compared to most people in the ton. Graeme is older (twenty-eight), and snobbish. I thought maybe these two would spar and the author would show them each changing: Lili gaining some ton experience and losing some naiveté, Graeme becoming more conscious of the fact that those below him in the pecking order are actual people with feelings. This doesn’t happen. Instead they attend boring ton events, apparently falling in love in the process. A bunch of things happen that really aren’t worth mentioning, and it all culminates when Lili receives a letter that causes her to flee in the middle of the night. At this point the book would have hit the wall if it hadn’t been an unbound manuscript. At the end of the book Lili is still very seventeen and Graeme is still a snob.

This book is a complete turnaround from the likable Scottish Legacy. It’s boring and unromantic, with characters who could possibly be interesting – but aren’t. One can only hope the author’s next effort will live up to her talents.