I read A Lady’s Guide to Skirting Scandal at the dentist while waiting for two fillings. I’m horribly phobic about the dentist so when I say that this story was comforting, it’s high praise indeed. It’s too rushed to go down in literary history as the best story ever, but if you need a quick comfort read you can’t possibly do better than this tale of a social climber who falls madly and inconveniently in love with a ship’s doctor.
Lady Viola Hauxall is being sent to New York to avoid some sort of scandal. She’s accompanied by two strict chaperones and she has a mission – when she gets to New York, she is to find a single Duke and marry him, because her own family is new to society and she has to marry up to solidify family fortunes. During the ocean crossing, Viola meets the ship’s doctor, Nathaniel. She flirts with him because she’s horribly bored and because she’s frankly amazed that he seems indifferent to her charms. The next thing Viola knows, Nathaniel is teaching her how to clean wounds (this is the only romance I’ve read to date in which blowfly larvae play a significant role) and how to do stitches (she’s excellent at needlework) and suggesting that maybe she might do something with her life other than flirt and marry.
One of my major catnip tropes is a geeky hero or heroine, and while neither Nathaniel nor Viola are geeky in general, there’s something about the way Viola reads the books Nathaniel gives her that warms my geeky heart. She is so hungry to learn, and I love that quality in both real and fictional people. I also have a big catnip thing about the hero who believes in the heroine’s capability and potential.
Maybe it’s all that Novocain they gave me at the dentist but seriously Nathaniel was so steadfast in his faith in Viola that he made me sort of woozy. This is an awfully speedy romance but I bought into it unreservedly (except for the kissing, which happened way too soon and seemed out of character for Nathaniel). I believed in it because I could see what a huge impact these two people have on each other.
The story is almost novella length, which allows Viola time to transform from a flirty brat with no scruples to a thoughtful person who is ready to be responsible for her actions and think big about her future. I believed in the relationship between Viola and Nathaniel, and that’s an incredibly difficult thing for a short story to accomplish. My only frustration was that most of the growth is one-sided and these characters were so delightful, and clearly had so much to say and do, that I longed for their story to be expanded into a novel. It felt like a novel that was missing several chapters, which was only maddening because it was felt like pieces of a good novel.
As of the time I’m writing this review (it’s a short review for a short story), Lady’s Guide is .99 on Kindle. This story isn’t perfect but I can’t think of a better way to spend .99. Apparently Viola was a character in I’ve Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm. I haven’t read that book, but I had no problem figuring out what was happening with her.
The publisher’s blurb compares the story to the writing of Tessa Dare and Julia Quinn, and for once I found that blurb to be right on target – the story has a light touch, witty banter, and a lot of emotional weight behind the humor. I loved the dialogue and I can’t say enough that watching Viola grow up was delightful.
As a novel, I’d have to give this a B- or less because of pacing issues and because Nathaniel doesn’t change much, but as a short story I feel it gets at least a B+ because it manages to accomplish an awful lot in a little space. I wish this was a full-length novel but at least the author has several books for me to try!
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I read this story and found it enjoyable. Liked it that she flouted the rules and went with her heart.
I enjoyed this one too. I’m glad Viola got a chance to redeem herself. She’s been sent away as a penance because of something dastardly she did to the Duke of Worth in A Good Rogue is Hard to Find. Her time with Nathaniel helped her see she had more to offer the world. It was a heartwarming read.
I enjoyed this, though I did find the, er, depth of the action a little preposterous given the historical setting. They moved REALLY fast! I understand that the author was trying to develop a hot romance in a short story format, but there is no law that says you have to write every minute of every day. An ocean crossing was not fast during this time period (by boat, it isn’t all that fast *now*). They had plenty of time, which could have been communicated via a few brief sentences between the encounter scenes.