An oddly disjointed book, which I found difficult to get into, although I’m not sure why. The hero and heroine were perfectly fine, the romance burbled along nicely and there was a great deal of Regency restraint and propriety on display, which is all estimable. Yet somehow I was unmoved.

Here’s the premise: orphaned Nell Armstrong has lived with her cantankerous spinster Aunt Longstreet for ten years, during which time she’s gone nowhere, met no one, done nothing except watch her aunt alienate the neighbours. Now the aunt has decided out of the blue to travel to Bath (from Westmorland!) to take the waters, even though other spas like Harrogate are much closer. Nell is suspicious, but a trip is a trip and she’s determined to make the most of it. At Bath, they meet the aunt’s godson and heir, Sir Hugh Nowlin, and his lively sister Emily, who take Nell under their wing. They both feel sorry for her, living with her difficult aunt, and try to improve her life in their different ways. Hugh would like to improve his own by marrying her, but there’s a problem: he’s broke and he doesn’t know which of them will end up inheriting the aunt’s estate, and if it’s Nell, he can’t possibly court her.

There’s a mystery in the aunt’s history involving recently widowed Lord Westwick, and there’s some minor business with Emily’s husband and a librarian who is set up as a rival for Nell’s affections, but essentially this is the story. I didn’t dislike Hugh or Nell, although they both seem rather too good to be true, what with Hugh agonising over whether he can marry Nell or not, and Nell regarding herself as bound by a deathbed promise years before. As for Lord Westwick, he is a positive fairy godfather, although there might be plot reasons for that. In fact, Aunt Longstreet is the only character who has any kind of bad traits in her makeup at all.

All of this makes the story just a shade dull. I really wanted something melodramatic to happen to shake things up (and it’s not often I say that). In the end, people behave rationally, find logical ways round the constraints that held them back and only the librarian’s story doesn’t get much of a look in at the end. Still, it’s nicely written, if you don’t mind the usual array of Americanisms (gotten and the like), and if it doesn’t have much emotional depth, it’s still a pleasantly enjoyable read. Four stars.