A Debutante’s Desire (Gentlemen of London)
The cover of this novel, set in 1816, teasingly says ‘Not all ladies are in the market for marriage’, but this debutante, Georgiana Bailey, is in fact motivated by an urgent need to seek funds for Monica House, a charity home for women whom men have used and discarded. To provide a school for the women’s children, and a garden where they can play, is Georgiana’s chief preoccupation as the book begins. She tours refined soirees seeking subscriptions from the well-heeled. Of these none is wealthier than financier John Tyrold, besieged by mothers eager to bring their unmarried daughters into close proximity to him, the most eligible of bachelors. He initially spurns Georgiana’s approach for donations, but then his young ward, Flora, goes missing without trace. Georgiana has a chequered past by which she has contacts in the demi-monde into which Tyrold fears Flora has disappeared.
The book is essentially a search for a missing person amongst the high and low society of Regency London (Tyrold has an investigator on his payroll who rejoices in the name of Starmer), but Tyrold and Georgiana find a growing sexual attraction develops after their initial frostiness and distance. This relationship evolves with some enjoyable humour and empathy with both leading characters. Georgiana, clever, talented and sexually uninhibited, is developed to reveal more about her backstory and how and why she became so focused on helping ‘unfortunate’ women. Plotting does rather rely on coincidences. I did have the sense that the suspense element, the search, was rather underplayed compared to the developing relationship. For me, the author achieved a better balance of jeopardy and sex in her previous book. Still, this longer work is ambitious in its alternating points of view. Both emotionally and sensually, this is a good escapist read.
