Kitto surged towards him, held back by the guards, King George’s granddaughter scowled, and Napoleon looked on. ‘My word,’ Crow said to his brother in Cornish, ‘you do seem to find yourself in some compromising situations, don’t you?’ [loc. 4029]
Sequel to False Lights, by K J Whittaker, though you wouldn't know it since that is now only available as Hester and Crow by Katy Moran. This novel is tagged as 'sexy, thrilling, swashbuckling Regency romance with a twist', which is misleading on so many levels: the 'sex scenes' are almost all abusive and non-sexy; there is no Regency, and the English throne is empty; the 'romance' really took place in the previous book, and the 'twist' is on the very first page of the novel, where the author describes 'a period of history that never happened'. ("Several years after Napoleon defeated the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, the French Occupation has at last been expelled from Britain. The country is on the brink of revolution – and the English throne is still empty.")
I will grant them 'thrilling' and 'swashbuckling', though. Jack Crowlas, Lord Lamorna, is the archetypal dark, passionate hero, resisting the treasonous enthusiasms of his fellow Cornishmen; his Black wife, Hester, hides fury behind her smiles, and is every bit as capable as her husband of manipulation, intrigue and violence. Crow and Hester are united in their desire to protect their daughter Morwenna: meanwhile, Crow's younger brother Kitto, still only sixteen, has been mentioned in despatches and is on a delicate mission to St Petersburg, to locate a missing heiress and bring her home to England to assume the throne. Unfortunately, the young lady in question is less than enthusiastic about the prospect.
Moran's prose is lively and readable without seeming anachronistic, and her characters -- even the minor ones glimpsed only in passing -- are credible individuals. There are plenty of emotional peaks and troughs for all three protagonists, some pleasant (and some less pleasing) surprises, and some nice historical detail. (In the Afterword, the author mentions Captain Nadezhda Durova, author of The Cavalry Maiden; she also acknowledges a debt to Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase).
In the earlier novel (False Lights) I was struck by the relative lack of racist prejudice encountered by Hester: sadly, there's a lot more of it in this novel, as she mingles with the aristocracy ('you’re hot for it, with all that African blood'; Sally, Lady Jersey, touching Hester's hair without permission; Wellington's outrage that Crow married her). Hester counters these abuses with grace and good humour (and, occasionally, laudanum and scorn): she is one of the most thoroughly competent 'Regency' heroines I've read in the last few years, and I would happily read more about her and her family. (Kitto in particular: he will go far, if he doesn't hang first.)
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