A Matter of Scandal
Suzanne Enoch
Avon, Aug 28 2001, $7.99
ISBN: 9780380818501
The Earl of Haverly, Dennis Hawthorne asks his nephew Greydon Brakenridge, the Duke of Wycliffe to come to his remote estate in Hampshire during the London season. Needing an excuse to flee the females of the Ton including his mother, Grey leaves for Haverly Manor. However, he fails to rid himself of all his troubles as an entourage accompanies him.
Grey’s uncle has accumulated bad debts, but refuses to allow his nephew to pay it off. Instead he asks Grey to come up with a plan to help him with his financial crisis. Grey starts by raising the rents on the tenants including the Miss Grenville’s Academy. The schoolmistress Emma Grenville argues with Grey that tripling her rent will shut down the school, but he believes that is no loss as these finishing schools are really marriage brokers. Still Grey cannot ignore how pretty Emma is when she makes a bet with him on whether she could persuade him that females deserve a formal education. When they placed the bet, neither one expected her at the center of a school for scandal debacle nor for love to grow between them.
Reprint of A MATTER OF SCANDAL is a refreshing Regency romance that completes Suzanne Enoch’s gregarious “With This Ring” series. The story line centers on the war of the sexes as Grey and Emma clash over female education as much as their love for one another. Through her shrewd characters, Ms. Enoch provides a perceptive perusal of the options facing aristocratic women in the early nineteenth century England inside a strong romance that will delight sub-genre fans.
Harriet Klausner
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