Instalment six in the Pennyroyal Green series, and involving zero Everseas or Redmonds!
Plot: Phoebe is a graduate of and teacher at Miss Endicott’s Academy for Recalcitrant Girls in Pennyroyal Green, though she longs for more. Her imagination stalls out at what more might be though, given her limited experience and her bone deep fear of ending up where she started as an orphan in Six Dials. So instead, she reads the broadsheets, and fills her life with vicarious adventures. This is how she recognizes without difficulty the carriage of one Marquess Julian Dryden, the most feared, implacable, coveted, and unintentionally fashionable man of the ton, right outside their town store. He’s here to visit the school for his recalcitrant niece, and then proceed to the Redmond family home for the quick purchase of property, which happens to come with a wife. Shenanigans ensue.
This book is charming as all hell. There is something unbelievably appealing about buttoned up characters becoming uncontrollably silly. And boy did Jules get uncontrollably silly, hating every moment, and watching helplessly as his blunders get scrutinized by the ton. Boy loses his footing on the dance floor (because he’s looking at our girl Phoebe instead of the woman he’s supposed to be wooing) and the next week everyone is copying his new dance move. It’s crazymaking and a super fun read.
I will say I found Phoebe difficult to pin down. She’s obsessed with the broadsheets and was already sporting a crush on Lord Ice as he’s known there, and she’s presented as rather shy, but she’s quite quickly confident and prickly with him in a way that doesn’t seem earned? I can’t say this really affected by enjoyment of the book, because I much prefer my heroines confident and prickly, but it was a confusing start to the book.
This one is definitely going into the re-read pile.
