A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh (Regency Brides: Daughters of Aynsley)
Carolyn Miller’s Regency Brides series continues with the new Daughters of Aynsley trilogy, the first being A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh. Caroline, the oldest of the Aynsley daughters, is sent to reside with her grandmother in Sidmouth. Here she encounters Gideon Kirby, a scientist and undergroundologist searching for a prehistoric find to rival Mary Anning’s Lyme Regis discovery. Caroline befriends Gideon and his sister and finds herself involved in the mystery surrounding them.
This romance has enough action to move the plot along. The story has a number of 19th-century romance essentials: a need to escape the bounds of propriety, an unwillingness to settle into the established grooves of society, verbal misunderstandings, actions by the ‘hero’ which require an intermediary, sufficient fanning and breathlessness, a villainous husband on the prowl, and a suitably happy ending. Caroline is an unusual heroine who recognises her own unlikeable traits, which she seeks to rectify, finding a lost faith in God and resolving to love her family all the more because of it. Meanwhile Gideon discovers his faith has brought him a far greater treasure than that which he was seeking.
