"Been a secretary long?"
"Eight years."
"And you don't want a chance to make the noble family miserable, for once?" [loc 358]
Thirteen years after the events of The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, Romney Marsh is less smuggler-infested (due to lower taxes rather than moral reformation) but still teeming with Doomsdays and fraught family relations. Rufus D'Aumesty, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, has spent the last seven months fighting to prove that he's the rightful Earl of Oxney. He believes the case is closed, but his unpleasant uncle Conrad claims to have found another claimant, and produces the personable and charming Luke Doomsday. Luke ('Goldie' in Secret Lives) is the son of a woman who may have been married to the previous earl: she was seduced by Elijah Doomsday, Luke's nasty father, but legally speaking the father is the man she was married to... Luke is vehement about not wanting to become the next earl: he does, however, accept a position as Rufus' secretary, since the family archives are in a parlous state and the truth of the inheritance may be hidden in some dusty corner of Stone Manor.
Luke, who reads too many Gothic novels, is a competent and innovative secretary (one of his previous employers was Lord Corvin, a secondary character in Band Sinister). He's kept busy balancing his actual job, his growing attraction to Rufus, and his own mysterious agenda, whilst observing the d'Aumesty family -- Conrad and his wife Matilda, ineffectual medievalist Odo, grumpy heir Fulk, and delightly eccentric artist Berengaria -- with wide-eyed and horrified fascination. The attraction between Luke and Rufus is vivid and tangible, with plenty of enthusiastic consent: Rufus is very aware of the power imbalance between them. But Luke has not been entirely honest with Rufus... or, indeed, with anybody at all, including his own relatives.
A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel is a satisfying and well-paced romance, a suitably Gothic tale of inheritance and bad blood, and a charming dash of Mithraism (which seems to be cropping up in several of the novels I've read recently). The atmosphere of the Marsh is still bleak and forbidding, but rather less fraught with danger than in Country Gentlemen. Which is not to say that the stakes are not high, or that there aren't scenes of extreme peril. Great dialogue, a credible and compelling romance, and a remarkably low body count for this author.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review: UK publication due 19 SEP 2023.
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