A Tenuous Betrothal
Romance readers will get their Cinderella fix with this novel. Rhianna Davies is the orphaned daughter of a mine owner in Wales in 1815. Her uncle, the new owner, rejects her efforts to get him to treat the mine workers more humanely. Living in a hunting cabin to avoid her uncle, she finds out her father’s will arranged for her to marry the son of a university friend. Marc arrives from the Continent to take Rhi home with him and turns out to be a Prince of Oldenburg. He has come out of a sense of duty, but he doesn’t want to marry; as his father’s security officer he’s often in danger, which would be unfair to a wife. And Rhi doesn’t want a marriage based on duty—she wants to marry for love.
This is part of A Royal Regency Romance series; other volumes are about Marc’s brothers also seeking wives in Britain. Rhi and Marc are likeable characters, though a few of the plot points lean towards the contrived side, and the will-they-won’t-they gets stretched pretty far. Rhi finds out something surprising about her lineage to round out the Cinderella aspect. Regency and royalty fans will enjoy this.
