‘Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight’ by Grace Burrowes

STORY: ‘Tis the Season for Scandal…

Years ago Lady Louisa Windham acted rashly on a dare from her brother, and that indiscretion is about to come to light. She knows her reputation will never survive exposure. Just as she’s nearly overwhelmed by her dilemma, Sir Joseph Carrington offers himself to her as a solution…

But Sir Joseph has secrets as well, and as he and Louisa become entangled with each other, their deceptions begin to close in on them both…

REVIEW: It’s no secret to any of you how much I love reading Grace Burrows’ novels. She infuses her love stories with so much heart that once I’m done with the story, I’m already missing the characters. It’s no different with this story. Last Christmas we saw Lady Sophie get her Christmas wish, and this Christmas Lady Louisa gets her Knight.

Sir Joseph Carrington is a retired soldier, a farmer and quotes poetry. He is one of the best Beta heroes around! I loved his mild manner and thoughtfulness. As much as he liked and was attractive to Louisa, he would have never presumed that she would like him back, and especially because of the difference in their stations.

As a favor to her brothers, he takes their place as her protector and that’s where all the trouble starts.

I don’t know about you, but I love when the story ‘breathes’…Like the bottle of a very old wine…you open it, let it breathe…inhale it, and just the aroma gets you intoxicated.

That’s exactly how I felt reading this romance. This is a tender, mature love story of two smart, witty and very normal people and that in itself was so refreshing. The secondary characters were interesting as well, but having their Graces and their children around was such a treat.

There’s a bit of comedy and plenty of romance as our hero quotes his poetry, so get that cup of hot chocolate and spend a day with Lady Louisa and her Knight!

‘Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight’ by Grace Burrowes

BOOK BLURB: ‘Tis the Season for Scandal…

Years ago Lady Louisa Windham acted rashly on a dare from her brother, and that indiscretion is about to come to light. She knows her reputation will never survive exposure. Just as she’s nearly overwhelmed by her dilemma, Sir Joseph Carrington offers himself to her as a solution…

But Sir Joseph has secrets as well, and as he and Louisa become entangled with each other, their deceptions begin to close in on them both…

EXCERPT:

Lady Louisa Windham has come upon a neighbor from Kent, Sir Joseph Carrington, while out for a morning ride in Hyde Park. Sir Joseph is taciturn, honest, and much better company than the bachelors panting to get their hands on her marriage settlements…

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“Louisa and Joseph reached the point on the bridle path where His Grace had separated from his daughters, and there was no sign of the duke. “Papa has gone off somewhere. If we can’t find him, I’ll simply make my own way home.”

“Not without an escort, Louisa Windham.”

Now Joseph used her given name, now when his tone was as stern and uncompromising as the duke’s when discussing the Regent’s financial excesses. “I did not mean to imply I’d go anywhere in Town without a proper escort. What do you know of Lord Lionel Honiton?”

She lobbed the question at him in retaliation for his peremptory tone, also because he’d give her an honest answer.

“I know he’s vain as a peacock, but other than that, probably no more given to vice than most of his confreres.” This was said with such studied detachment, Louisa’s curiosity was piqued.

“Many young men are vain. Lionel is an attractive man.”

“Perhaps, but you are equally attractive, Louisa Windham, more attractive because you neither drape yourself in jewels nor flaunt your attributes with cosmetics, and I don’t see you lording it over the ladies less endowed than you are.”

He was presuming to scold her, and yet Louisa couldn’t help feeling a backhanded sort of pleasure at the implied compliment. “Beauty fades,” Louisa said. “All beauty. If Lord Lionel is vain, time will see him disabused of his beauty soon enough.” Unbidden, the memory of Sir Joseph reciting Shakespeare came to Louisa’s mind: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold, when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang on boughs which shake against the cold…”

“So it will.” Sir Joseph held back a branch for Louisa to pass. “While yours will never desert you.”

“Are you attempting flattery before breakfast, Sir Joseph?”

His lips quirked up at her question, a fleeting, blink-and-she’d-miss-it suggestion of humor. “I am constitutionally incapable of flattery. You are honest, Louisa Windham, loyal to your family, and possessed of sufficient courage to endure many more social Seasons than I’ve weathered. To a man who understands what matters most, those attributes grow not less attractive over time, but more. Will I see you out riding again some morning?”

Now he was changing the subject, after calling her brave, loyal, and honest. He’d told the truth, as well—he had no talent for flattery. None whatsoever.

“I take it you prefer to ride early in the day?”

“Of course. The fashionable hour provides no real opportunity for exercise, and the Sunday church parade is even worse. Then too, there’s something to be said for showing old Londontowne at her best, for seeing it when ‘all that mighty heart is lying still.’”

She cocked her head. “Is that Coleridge?”

“Wordsworth. ‘Composed on Westminster Bridge.’ It makes a pastoral study of even a dank and teeming metropolis, so great is the poet’s ability in that regard.”

A line of poetry for Louisa was like a shiny lure to a raven, even a line casually tossed off by Sir Joseph Carrington. Maybe especially a line from him. “I don’t think I know this poem, and I’m more than passingly familiar with Wordsworth.”

While Sir Joseph sat on his black horse, the leaves shifting quietly against the frozen earth, and sunlight glittering on the Serpentine, he recited for Louisa a sonnet. The poem he gave her described a fresh, sparkling morning in London as something beautiful and precious, even to a man in love with nature and the unspoiled countryside.

When Sir Joseph fell silent, Louisa felt as if the hush of a great city at dawn enveloped them, and in the ensuing beats of quiet, she realized three things.

First, Joseph Carrington’s voice was made for poetry. Like a violoncello switching from lowly scales and droning exercises to solo repertoire, when he put his voice to poetry, Sir Joseph spoke lyrically, even beautifully.

The second thing she noticed was an inconvenient and utterly stupid urge to cry. Not because the beauty of the spoken word moved her to tears—though occasionally it could—and not because the poem itself was so very lovely. It was a short, pretty sonnet about a single impression of the city gained on a clear autumn morning.

Louisa’s ill-timed lachrymose impulse was the result of the third realization: no man had ever recited an entire sonnet to her before, and likely no man ever would again.”

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Throughout this book, Ms. Burrowes had some of her characters at one point or another quote poetry that would enhance the particular scene and here’s just one example of it.

At the end of the novel, in her Author’s Notes, Ms. Burrowes writes:

“Joseph recites the following poem by William Wordsworth to Louisa while they’re riding by the Serpentine in Hyde Park early one winter morning:

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep in his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill: Ne’er saw I, never felt, such a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!”

WOW! After you read the book, you’ll come upon that scene and you’ll see how appropriate this poem was for that moment.

How do you feel about poetry in your romance novels, and poetry in general? Have some for us? Please feel free to share!

FEATURED AUTHOR: Grace Burrowes

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‘Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal’ by Grace Burrowes

STORY: Maggie Windham is the Duke of Moreland’s eldest, but illegitimate, daughter. She leads a retiring, dignified life… until stolen letters bring Maggie to investigator Benjamin Hazlit’s door. When it becomes clear Maggie is being blackmailed, Benjamin becomes determined to find not just the letters, but the way to Maggie’s heart.

REVIEW: What an interesting character Maggie was! You couldn’t help but admire the strong character of this woman who was basically sold to the Duke, who wasn’t even sure that she is his child, yet accepted her as such and loved her as much as all his other children. Only a loving father would be so perceptive about his eldest daughter to say this.

She’s in want of… dreams, I think. My other girls have dreams. Sophie dreamed of her own family, Jenny loves to paint, Louisa has her literary scribbling, and Evie must racket about the property as her brothers used to, but Maggie has never been a dreamer.

It was heart-wrenching to watch the strained relationship between Maggie and the Duchess, who was always aware of Maggie’s feelings towards her and the family, but never knew how to break that last ‘brick’ on the wall that Maggie has meticulously built around her to protect them all from being hurt with the secret she had kept for much too long.

Esther did not hold out her arms to this woman she’d raised. From the posture of Maggie’s spine, a maternal embrace would be politely tolerated, as it had been on the rare occasions Esther had attempted it since the girl had joined the household all those years ago.

I so admired the Duchess while she does her best to hide her frustration with Maggie and tries hard to understand this woman, her adopted daughter.

Esther spoke as gently as she could, considering she was using logic to bludgeon someone she dearly loved.

‘Do you want your child to bear the same burden you have?’ Maggie shook her head, but the tears were coursing down her cheeks unchecked. Esther passed her a serviette, when what she wanted to do was hurl her teacup against the wall.

‘You have another option, Maggie.’ Maggie turned her head an inch to meet the Duchess’ eyes. ‘If I have conceived, I will not do anything to harm our child.’ Our child?

‘Put such notions from your head. For God’s sake, Maggie… to think we’d let you risk yourself, much less… For God’s sake.’

Boys were difficult to raise into young gentleman, but girls… girls were the biggest challenge. Especially girls who, despite every effort to the contrary, seemed to have a thorough knowledge of things too sordid and awful to be contemplated.

Even though Maggie has been brought up with St. Just (the other bastard in the family), she deep down inside had always been uncomfortable and felt that she never quiet belonged to them, although she would never admit it nor would she show it to the other members of the family.

As for the hero of this tale, Benjamin Hazlitt, we’ve met him before and what a complex man he was! A man who is too competent in unearthing all the ton’s secrets, gets himself hired by the woman he finds too attractive and an enigma that he needed to solve.

As Ben and Maggie try to adjust to their new-found acquaintance through the scheme of pretending to be courting, the search is on for her lost reticule, and we are in for a treat. To watch these two slowly coming to realization that their ‘casual acquaintance’ is turning into something neither is looking for or really want, yet at the same time hoping for, is amazing.

There’s no way I could tell you how much I loved the character of Ben, who it turns out has a couple of skeletons in his closet as well. As is Ms. Burrowes’ want, she populates her books with an abundance of secondary characters so interesting and compelling, that I feel she had a very hard time holding some of them back. As is the case with Ben’s sidekick, Archer Holloway; otherwise he just might have stolen the story.

Grace Burrowes can do no wrong. PERIOD! She writes stories that touch my heart and soul, and this tale is no exception. This is her fifth book and if you haven’t yet discovered her, I think it time you did. I highly recommend this entire series, THE HEIR, THE SOLDIER, THE VIRTUOSO, LADY SOPHIE’S CHRISTMAS WISH and this one too. The author does an outstanding job in writing this connected series so well that you don’t need to read them to understand the dynamic of this wonderful and engaging family, yet I highly, HIGHLY recommend you read them all in order because if you’re like me, you will appreciate the Epic feel to the series, and for all of us who love saga’s, this is just up our alley. Come October, Ms. Burrowes has Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight and in December The Bridegroom Wore Plaid will be out. Oh happy dance!

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* I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*