The theme for the May TBR challenge is marriage of convenience, arranged marriage or pretend engagement. Running late as usual, I “assumed” from the title that the village spinster would be somehow forced into marriage. But I sold Laura Matthews short. If you have read her before, you’ll know a characteristic of her books is that her heroes and heroines are always intelligent, strong-willed, stubborn and capable of great warmth and love, once they finally let their hearts fly free.
Our hero, Alexander, Earl of Kinsford, and Clarissa Driscoll, had exchanged a passionate kiss many, many years earlier: he called her the Goddess of Spring. Here’s how the back cover sums up the plot:
The Fallen Woman: Beautiful and well-born Clarissa Driscoll lost her family home and social position when her reckless father died, leaving only gambling debts. That was bad enough – but it was even more painfully humiliating when the handsome high-handed Earl of Kinsford became convinced she had lost her virtue as well.
Clarissa had to demonstrate to this domineering lord that being a woman alone in the world did not make her the natural victim of scandal – and so on and so forth. This particular book cover falls into the trap of so many cover blurbs: totally exaggerating the plot to make it seem more lurid than it is.
