I picked up Forever Your Rogue because @melon_reads loved it. I don’t read much Regency(ish) romance these days, and as much as I enjoyed this one, I also struggled to stay with it. Servants, the legal status of women, and stratification of the classes are some of the reasons I’m less interested in historical romance. I was able to stay with this one partly because I knew that the author was inspired to write by a legal case in which a mother attempted to gain legal guardianship of her children. More on that later.
Cora, Lady Dane, would be content in her widowhood if her sister and brother in law weren’t threatening to take her children away from her because her household lacks a man in charge. As a widow, she doesn’t have legal custody of her children unless that is provided in her husband’s will. Her late husband was not the kind of man who would make that provision. Lady Dane concocts a scheme to appear ready to settle in to matrimony in hopes of removing the threat. Her partner in the sham engagement, Nate Travers, needs the money he is being promised, but he quickly falls for the children and for Cora.
Erin Langston delivers a well crafted, emotion forward book. The emotional highs and lows are grounded in the characters. Nate finding purpose in life as a product of falling head over heals in love with Cora and her children is the best part of this book. The potential for schmaltz is increased whenever plot moppets (tm Malin [previously misattributed to Mrs Julien]) are on page, but Nate’s emotional journey stays grounded in his character.
The historical woman lost the case and custody of her children. Forever Your Rogue has a happy ending. In order to give Lady Dane a happy ending to her legal battle, Erin Langston had to do two things – make the antagonists a slightly lower class, and have a higher ranked aristocrat intervene on her behalf. This is a historical romance, but we are not that many years away from a time when men had enormous legal and financial control over their wives and children.