How to Avoid the Marriage Mart (Breaking the Marriage Rules)
1893. Despite her mother’s unrelenting pressure, Lady Charlotte Fitzroy has ‘no interest in becoming a married woman, effectively giving up her independence and becoming little more than a man’s possession.’ Annoyingly, however, the memory of Nicholas’s kiss still lingers five years later. Nicholas Richmond, the Duke of Kingsford, for his part, still considers Charlotte the ‘most stunning woman he had ever seen’ and the only one ‘who had never bored him.’ Clearly this pair are destined for each other, but obstacles lie in their path, not only difficult mothers and a blackmailing villain, but their own determination to avoid marriage.
Their efforts to elude unwelcome marriage prospects provide some amusing scenes, and the observations concerning the social conventions of the Victorian aristocracy are insightful, particularly the double standard in the rules for men and women. The plot, however, grows melodramatic, the behavior of the characters exaggerated to the point of caricature, and the lovers’ preoccupation with their own conflicted feelings tedious. For readers who relish sentimental Victorian romances only.
