Rosalind knows all too well what happens when patriarchs let their vanity spoil their stewardship of their families\u2019 fortunes. Her own father\u2019s disappearance left her nothing but a pile of bad debts. Although marrying Devon Winterbourne, son of the Duke of Casselmaine, would have secured her future, Rosalind chose the road less traveled, earning her keep by helping the genteel women of Regency London solve domestic problems large and small. Since she\u2019s remained on good terms with Winterbourne, she\u2019s not surprised when he wants her to meet his intended, Clara Kinsdale. But Winterbourne has a greater surprise: He wants Rosalind to visit Clara\u2019s home in Bath. Having frittered away most of the Kinsdale fortune, Clara\u2019s father, Sir Anthony, hopes to put his family back on sound financial footing by running his thoroughbred, Kinsdale\u2019s Pride, in the Somersetshire Sweepstakes with the help of Mrs. Lynn, a dodgy Bath widow. The city\u2019s racing pundits rate the mare as closer to the glue factory than the finish line, so Winterbourne is counting on Rosalind\u2019s insight, and her experience with feckless fathers, to figure out what\u2019s really going on. Wilde\u2019s feisty heroine does not disappoint. Rosalind is a delight, as are her colorful companions; it\u2019s a shame that Alice Littlefield and Amelia McGowan are consigned such small roles in this adventure. A minor note: Wilde could occasionally use some editing. \u201cPrinciple officer\u201d is an easy mistake to decode, but repeatedly calling a parterre a \u201cpied-\u00e0-terre\u201d is confusing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosalind knows all too well what happens when patriarchs let their vanity spoil their stewardship of their families\u2019 fortunes. Her own father\u2019s disappearance left her nothing but a pile of bad debts. Although marrying Devon Winterbourne, son of the Duke of Casselmaine, would have secured her future, Rosalind chose the road less traveled, earning her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}