On her way to her newest post as a governess, Elinor Rochdale accidentally gets into the wrong carriage. This carriage doesn’t take her to the home she has been appointed to work in, but to the manor of one Eustace Cheviot. His cousin, Lord Ned Carlyon, meets Elinor there and convinces her to marry Eustace while Eustace is on his deathbed – Eustace’s estate has been willed to Carlyon, but it is the last thing he wants. This is to be a marriage of convenience only – Carlyon would not have to keep Eustace’s estate, and Elinor would not have to work as a governess again.

Too bad things never go as well as one would hope. No sooner has Eustace passed on than it is discovered that he was feeding intel to one of Bonaparte’s spies. There are break-ins galore, peppered with a murder and many unwanted guests. Question is, can Elinore and Lord Carlyon find the information that Eustace was planning on giving to the spies before the spies find it themselves?

The only other book by Heyer I’ve read so far is Black Sheep, which was written about 20 years after this one. You can tell that it was written a lot later. This one was by no means written at the beginning of Heyer’s career, but it seems to me that her writing style improved greatly. It wasn’t as witty as I had been hoping, and I found that the dialogue didn’t convey any more than just what the characters were saying.

That said, it was predictable in the most comforting way. (Yay for regency romances where you can see the hero from the first second he graces the pages!) Lord Carlyon wasn’t nearly as exciting as Darcy, Thornton or Rochester, but he was charming and put up with Elinor’s nonsense in a wonderful sort of way. Elinor left a little bit to be desired, but all of the other characters in the book more than made up for it. All of the secondary characters were so much fun – I especially loved Nicky and Francis (who is much more than the fop he first appeared to be).

I would definitely recommend Black Sheep over this one, but it did have some redeeming qualities that make up for some of the aspects that I didn’t like.