Soaring Hearts Press, $0.99, ISBN 978-1311143839
Historical Romance, 2013

England’s war with Napoleon Bonaparte is coming to an end, so on that year of 1815, the annual Kellynch Hall Christmas Ball is going to be bigger and more awesome than ever.

Our heroine Lady Cynthia Waltham has made sure of it, because she has spent a grand old time planning the whole thing, from the theme to the dress she is going to wear. 

What she has never planned for is her father dropping news of joyous tiding that very morning of the day of the ball.

“You are doubtless aware that despite my very economical measures, the estate is not turning a profit. Short of working the land with my own hands, I am at a loss. Apparently my tenants are all lazy and stupid. I am done wrestling with it, but I take my responsibility to the title seriously, and I do not wish to sell the estate to the highest bidder (always assuming that bidder would pay more than a farthing for this heap in the first place). No, Glossingley lands must remain in Glossingley hands, so I am giving the whole of Kellynch to the next eligible heir. The land and the hall will soon be owned outright by our distant relation the Viscount Kendrick, since your fool of a mother gave me only a pea-brained daughter before she recklessly got herself killed.”

I’m not going to lie: I laugh out loud at that magnificent monologue.

Thus begins our heroine’s story in Celia Swift’s The Lady’s Choice.

Anyway, the effervescent Earl of Glossingley tells his daughter that she has a choice: join him in his upcoming emigration to Barbados, or do whatever she wants in England—he really doesn’t give a damn.

“As for you, either you may win the heart and hand of this Kendrick, attain the title of viscountess, and remain at Kellynch for the rest of your days, or you may come with me to Barbados, where it is my understanding that English ladies are in short supply. You may end up with a privateer, but I do not honestly care, so long as the man takes you off my hands.”

He is so adorable, especially when he is browbeating nitwits.

“Nothing to say for yourself, eh girlie? Well if you are ashamed, you should be. I had hoped to see you married several years back, or else I don’t know why I sent you to that accursed School for Young Ladies and wasted a goodly sum on your tuition and clothing. I rather expected you to make a conquest of one of your classmates’ brothers or the like, being possessed as you are of some of your mother’s looks, but did you snare a single beau? No. You have always been disappointingly unwilling to perform your required duties.”

Honestly, I can’t blame him. You’d think these ballroom damosels would try a little harder to give their parents some return of their investment by marrying well and then having affairs like all sensible modern women of that time would do, but no, Cynthia and her ilk would waste time yammering about waiting for true love to fall onto their laps while wasting their parents’ money year after year.

Naturally, our aspiring Cinderella starts moping and whining to the kindly help because she admits that she’s useless at everything and ignorant through and through about anything related to running a household or anything that would make her a marriageable wretch. I’m starting to like Glossingley more and more, not least for his patience as I’d have packed this wretch off to a nunnery long ago.

Then, as she is flailing around like a headless chicken that just had its legs chopped off too, the place has a guest: the sexy-menacing looking Duke of Hawksmoor, who comes complete with a scar that only intensifies the levels of horny horns in Cynthia.

“I have a ward. Miss Adelaide Forsythe. She will be coming to live with me, her parents having both unfortunately perished at sea. I have no notion of young ladies and the things they  need, so I am come to you, Lady Cynthia, in the hope that you might aid me.”

Oh my goodness, does he hate his ward that much? What is Cynthia going to teach the poor dear? How to be so useless that even her own guardian flees to Barbados to get away from her?

Anyway, Cynthia is lucky because here is a duke that will fall in love with her and provide her with a home as well as a little girl to mother, and our heroine doesn’t even have to lift a finger to earn her good luck. Isn’t this adorable?

Now, as much as I have goofed about the plot and the heroine, this is a fantastic read in terms of the author’s bubbly sense of humor, her crisp and engaging narrative style, her awareness of her heroine’s rather sad state of uselessness, and a heartfelt, genuinely sweet undercurrent that hums through every page that has Cynthia and Hawksmoor getting along better and better.

Also, as much as I dump on Cynthia, she’s sweet and kind despite the failures of her intellectual faculties, so I do like her a lot. Hawksmoor appears to be a clichéd scarred sexy hero with a girl in need of a mother figure, and in many ways he still is to the bitter end, but he’s a nice bloke and he has a gentle, tender chemistry with the heroine.

So yes, the romance is nice, the characters are fun, and the phraseology and narrative style are top tier.

This story would be a clear winner had it ended at the end of chapter six.