He’s undoubtedly the sort of man who would simply reply “yes” when asked “does my bum look big in this?”. He doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly, and has no patience with meandering small-talk or the little white lies that keep the wheels of society turning. Michael, the Duke of Hadlow, is precise, controlled, blunt and honest to a fault. In the last year of his life, he had transferred the management of his affairs to his younger brother, with the disastrous results that now mean Edwina has nothing. Mr Cheltam married his much younger wife simply because she was beautiful and he liked schmoozing with her on his arm. Unfortunately, she is also female – and there is no place for intelligent, business-minded women in the strict society of the mid-nineteenth century. Fortunately, she is clever up until the year before his death, she had managed all her husband’s business interests and her excellent stewardship had grown his investments considerably.
Now the boot is on the other foot, and it’s Edwina who needs to find a job.
She turns to a close friend for advice a friend who runs an employment agency which, in her more prosperous past, Edwina had used in order to find suitable domestics. Mrs Edwina Cheltam’s late husband has left her practically destitute and with a young daughter to provide for, she needs to find a way of supporting them, and quickly. Is there anyone out there who isn’t fed up with the current vogue for horribly contrived romance novel titles based on song/movie appellations?įortunately, the first answer to the first question (there are a number given throughout the story) – Because it’s better than falling into a muddy ditch – sets the tone for this particular book, which is deftly written and strongly characterised with a nice line in deadpan humour and a well-matched central couple who are a little out of the ordinary. Before I answer that, I’m going to ask a question of my own. Why Do Dukes Fall in Love? asks the overly cutsey title of this, the fourth book in Megan Frampton’s Dukes Behaving Badly series.
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