Lady at the Lodge (The Wentworth Family Regency Saga Series)
The third in Ley’s Wentworth family saga, set in 1796, begins as rumours of a French naval attack on England are whispered through Parliament and the Secretary of War puts his spies on alert. Sempronie Wentworth has reluctantly relinquished her beloved Brittany estate to her cousin Laurent Guèvremont, and negotiated for the orphan boy, Gilles (who she suspects is Guèvremont’s son), to remain at Kergohan, where he was raised. Sempronie’s daughter Amelia and her best friend Arabella, Justin Wentworth’s expectant wife, both get caught up again with the scoundrel Tregothen, who everyone thought would never return to England. Justin’s best friend, Eugène Picaud returns from a mission in France just in time to aid the two women. And the saga’s requisite villain, Guèvremont’s crafty steward Le Guinec, knows well how to play both sides against the middle.
Ley’s writing is both charming and archaic in its phrasing and use of dialogue. His characters are multi-faceted, the settings reliably authentic and his research recognisably thorough. The snag for a first reader is that this is not a standalone, and there are so many characters it requires a lot of exposition to get them into place, although once I got there I was quite swept into the times. I cannot fault the writing, but the saga needs to be read from the beginning, book one being The Baron Returns and book two, Heir to the Manor.
