I was disappointed in this novel. On the one hand, I did finish it, so it wasn't terrible. On the other hand, very little of it was plausible. A good regency makes the setting and the era part of (if not the basis of) the story and I found it thin in this regard. The heroine, a sheltered 22 year old girl, behaves too much like a girl with 21st century options in life. Little of regency life or the setting (the Lakes District) is part of the story. The hero is kind of a cypher; we are told that he grieves for his two wives who died during pregnancy or childbirth (one with a child that died too), so he never wants to marry again but he's not averse to having illicit sex which could lead to the same outcome for the girl, as long as he doesn't have to care too much. This is a Harlequin romance, so one knows he's going to get over that, but it doesn't place him in a heroic or lovable light. The book is smoothly written and a fast read, but I cannot recommend it.

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