To Swoon and to Spar (The Regency Vows)
Jane Spencer is tired of having her life controlled by men, so when she falls in love with an estate on the coast of Cornwall, she takes matters into her own hands. She contrives to haunt the estate until her guardian decides he has had enough and plans to rid himself of both the estate and Jane.
Viscount Penvale has spent his entire adult life working toward one thing: buying back the estate that was lost when his father died. When his uncle finally agrees to sell it, he jumps at the chance, even though it comes with the condition that he marry a woman he has never met before.
Neither Jane nor Penvale intend for their marriage to have much of an impact on their lives, as they settle into the estate they both love. Jane, shy and still reluctant to let a man have control of her life, employs the same strategy that worked so well on her uncle. But as her attempts prove less successful with her husband, she wonders if her end goal is still the same. Penvale is not the sort of man who believes in ghosts, but as unsettling events continue to plague him, he realizes his wife is not at all who he expected.
Waters puts a fun spin on the marriage-of-convenience trope with a hilarious nod at the popular gothic novels of the Regency era. This is a witty, breezy read with well-developed characters and a satisfying ending. This is the fourth book in the Regency Vows series, and my favourite, but can easily be read as a standalone novel.
