I liked the heroine of The Wedding Wager, even though she acted like an idiot 90 percent of the time. Cathy Maxwell must be a good writer.

The first thing Mary Gates does in this novel is buy a stallion at auction for a thousand pounds. The only problem is that she doesn’t have a thousand pounds. That’s right – in a historical period when a man’s reputation could be permanently ruined by cheating at cards, she places a bid at an auction that she cannot honor.

Mary feels justified in doing this, because she really wants that horse. Breeding the stallion could replenish her family’s coffers and save their family’s estate. And besides, she was bidding against her enemy and former sweetheart, Tye Barlow. Tye really wants the horse too, and Mary will pay any price to spite Tye.

Mary attempts to bargain with the horse’s owner, and in desperation persuades him to give her a couple months to pay up. She uses that time to leave her village of Lyford Meadows and head for London, in hopes of landing a rich husband. That’s right, she plans to sell herself in marriage to a wealthy stranger so that she can pay for the horse. If you’re keeping score, that would be Idiotic Move No. 2. It won’t be the last.

Tye follows her to London, knowing that if she fails to find a husband – or if the husband isn’t rich, or if the husband is rich but isn’t interested in horse breeding – then the horse’s owner will sell it to him. Of course, Tye has a deeper motive: the idea of Mary being anyone’s wife but his own is repellant to him.

I realize that this plot summary doesn’t exactly sell the book. But as I said, Maxwell is a good writer, and she manages to make this nonsense not merely amusing but quite charming. Mary is an arrogant, hotheaded nitwit, but she’s also wounded and confused, and against all odds Maxwell succeeds in making me empathize with her and enjoy her company. And I loved the hero of this novel. Tye is a sweetheart – good-looking and good-humored – the ladies-man of Lyford Meadows. At heart he is a simple man who wants a simple, ladylike wife, but he is irresistibly bewitched by a complicated and maddening woman.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this novel is that both the hero and the heroine are country people. Tye is not a sophisticated viscount or marquess; he’s a horse-breeder and small landowner, the grandson of a servant, who doesn’t care about pretenses to nobility. Mary is the grand lady of the village of Lyford Meadows, but in London she soon realizes that she’s a simple country miss with nothing beyond her pretty face to recommend her. Tye and Mary both find London to be frightening and immoral and smelly, and they just want to go home to Lyford Meadows. Even when they’re most at odds, their love for their little corner of England is a wonderful connection between them, and it made them feel genuine to me.

The Wedding Wager has some very funny moments, some tender love scenes, and some sparkling dialogue. If the heroine had acted like she had two brain cells to rub together, I’d have loved it. Even though she didn’t, it still made me smile on almost every page.