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The Blakehurst-Braybrook Series #2-3
Regency Marriages
Something had a wrought a change in Thea Winslow
As a girl, Thea had been bubbling over with mischief. As a woman she seemed half lost in shadow. Richard Blakehurst couldn't mistake the desire between them. But Thea must tame her wayward thoughts because she could never secure Richard's good opinion of her if he ever learnt the truth...
Marrying the governess...
Lord Braybrook urgently needs to hire a governess and companion, and the beautiful, headstrong Miss Christina Daventry is conveniently available. There is something so endearing about her that Julian quickly forgets how scandalous it would be to give in to the mounting attraction for his penniless governess...
Two classic and delightful Regency tales!
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This collection includes A Compromised Lady and Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride, books 2 and 3 in the Blakehurst-Braybrook series,
As a girl, Thea had been bubbling over with mischief. As a woman she seemed half lost in shadow. Richard Blakehurst couldn't mistake the desire between them. But Thea must tame her wayward thoughts because she could never secure Richard's good opinion of her if he ever learnt the truth...
Marrying the governess...
Lord Braybrook urgently needs to hire a governess and companion, and the beautiful, headstrong Miss Christina Daventry is conveniently available. There is something so endearing about her that Julian quickly forgets how scandalous it would be to give in to the mounting attraction for his penniless governess...
Two classic and delightful Regency tales!
-----------------------
This collection includes A Compromised Lady and Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride, books 2 and 3 in the Blakehurst-Braybrook series,
592 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Rolls
100 books123 followersWe live in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, in a beautiful lush valley full of apple, pear and cherry orchards. We moved here a couple of years back, escaping from the city and it’s just gorgeous. The property is small, only five acres, but we have room for two small noisy boys, three dogs, two cats and several woolly things masquerading a environmentally friendly lawnmowers. Before that we lived in Melbourne, which was fun, but we always wanted to live in the country and now we do.
I’ve been married to an ex-nuclear physicist – don’t ask! for the last 17 years and we have two rowdy little boys, commonly described as “feral”. Most of our friends think we have far too many animals, and everyone knows we have far too many books.I grew up moving around a fair bit. Dad was in the army and every few years we had to up sticks and move on. I was born in England, expelled from kindergarten in Melbourne, started school in Papua New Guinea and finished school in Melbourne. After taking a degree in Music Education I taught music for several years while my husband finished his Ph.D.
How I started writing
I had the writing bug from a very early age. From the time I could read I loved writing stories. Throughout my school days I was nearly always writing something very quietly, and there were several teachers who encouraged me. One student teacher, whose name I have totally forgotten, when I was in sixth grade, as well as a couple of high school English teachers, Mrs Redman and Mrs Mackay.
I started writing my first book after I finished my Masters degree. For one thing I really, really missed my thesis. I’d enjoyed researching it, and I loved writing it. So it seems inevitable now that when I was looking for something to do in the evenings to unwind after work, I started writing again.
I’d been staying with an old school friend. Meg is a fellow Georgette Heyer fan, and she had a very large collection of Regencies on her bookshelves. Well, that was an eye-opener. I’d had no idea anyone else apart from Heyer had actually written them. By the time I went home I had an idea floating around in my brain and I sat down and roughed out some sort of chapter plan. Then I started typing. Six months later I had a story with a beginning a middle and an end which I sent to Meg. After a great deal of talking, she persuaded me to send it off to Harlequin Mills & Boon. After doing the rounds of all three editorial offices and undergoing a major rewrite and extension while I was about seven months pregnant with the second small noisy boy, it was accepted for publication and published as The Unexpected Bride.
Most of my writing friends have threatened to lynch me over that story at one time or another. Personally I envy them for having learnt an enormous amount about writing and the industry before acquiring an editor who understandably expects you to know what you are doing.
I’ve been married to an ex-nuclear physicist – don’t ask! for the last 17 years and we have two rowdy little boys, commonly described as “feral”. Most of our friends think we have far too many animals, and everyone knows we have far too many books.I grew up moving around a fair bit. Dad was in the army and every few years we had to up sticks and move on. I was born in England, expelled from kindergarten in Melbourne, started school in Papua New Guinea and finished school in Melbourne. After taking a degree in Music Education I taught music for several years while my husband finished his Ph.D.
How I started writing
I had the writing bug from a very early age. From the time I could read I loved writing stories. Throughout my school days I was nearly always writing something very quietly, and there were several teachers who encouraged me. One student teacher, whose name I have totally forgotten, when I was in sixth grade, as well as a couple of high school English teachers, Mrs Redman and Mrs Mackay.
I started writing my first book after I finished my Masters degree. For one thing I really, really missed my thesis. I’d enjoyed researching it, and I loved writing it. So it seems inevitable now that when I was looking for something to do in the evenings to unwind after work, I started writing again.
I’d been staying with an old school friend. Meg is a fellow Georgette Heyer fan, and she had a very large collection of Regencies on her bookshelves. Well, that was an eye-opener. I’d had no idea anyone else apart from Heyer had actually written them. By the time I went home I had an idea floating around in my brain and I sat down and roughed out some sort of chapter plan. Then I started typing. Six months later I had a story with a beginning a middle and an end which I sent to Meg. After a great deal of talking, she persuaded me to send it off to Harlequin Mills & Boon. After doing the rounds of all three editorial offices and undergoing a major rewrite and extension while I was about seven months pregnant with the second small noisy boy, it was accepted for publication and published as The Unexpected Bride.
Most of my writing friends have threatened to lynch me over that story at one time or another. Personally I envy them for having learnt an enormous amount about writing and the industry before acquiring an editor who understandably expects you to know what you are doing.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 7, 2016
~This review is for the ARC from Netgalley~
Harlequin UK has republished two Elizabeth Rolls titles in a single volume. They are A Compromised Lady and one of its companion books, Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride.
In A Compromised Lady, heroine Thea Winslow is burdened by secrets and past trauma. When childhood friend Richard Blakehurst reencounters her, he is taken aback that the spirited girl he fondly remembers has been replaced by a drab woman who is just a pawn in her father's schemes. Richard determines to help Thea and comes to realize that in her goodness and reason she is his perfect mate. However, Thea repeatedly refuses his proposals of marriage because of the mystery and hints of scandal that dog her. When a threat to Thea arises, accepting his assistance will require revealing her past to him, but will it mean losing his high regard forever?
This story intertwines to good effect some serious themes with its genre tropes. Details unfold slowly, only gradually forming a complete picture of Thea's past. Rolls also challenges the genre by casting her characters against type. Richard is a quiet, bookish man of modest means, an untitled second son who even walks with a limp. He is not a bravely injured war hero or dashing duke. He's not a rake. He's just a nice guy. Thea also engages the reader's sympathy but is wrapped so tightly in her own secrets that she is difficult to know. This appears to be a deliberate choice by the author that makes Thea a believably damaged and intriguing heroine, but also a somewhat detached one.
In Lord Braybrooke's Penniless Bride, Rolls presents Richard's good friend Julian (who made appearances in A Compromised Lady) as a more typical Regency hero. He is a wealthy, somewhat rakish peer responsible for an invalid stepmother and several half-siblings. In the course of discouraging his sister's infatuation with a young man lacking in connections or means, Julian ends up engaging the boy's sister, Christiana, as a companion and governess in his household. Christiana is an endearingly outspoken woman who soon turns all Julian's preconceived notions and inbred prejudices on end. Her innate good sense is compromised only by the hidden shame and the grudge she bears as the illegitimate offspring of a duke. Her life has been a difficult one while Julian's has been secure and respectable, and yet they do have a meeting of minds on many issues.
Christiana and Julian are both very likable, their romance enjoyable, while the story nevertheless exposes the plight of women and the unjust and false moral codes of the day. The secondary characters are quite distinct and provide depth and color to the narrative.
Harlequin UK has republished two Elizabeth Rolls titles in a single volume. They are A Compromised Lady and one of its companion books, Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride.
In A Compromised Lady, heroine Thea Winslow is burdened by secrets and past trauma. When childhood friend Richard Blakehurst reencounters her, he is taken aback that the spirited girl he fondly remembers has been replaced by a drab woman who is just a pawn in her father's schemes. Richard determines to help Thea and comes to realize that in her goodness and reason she is his perfect mate. However, Thea repeatedly refuses his proposals of marriage because of the mystery and hints of scandal that dog her. When a threat to Thea arises, accepting his assistance will require revealing her past to him, but will it mean losing his high regard forever?
This story intertwines to good effect some serious themes with its genre tropes. Details unfold slowly, only gradually forming a complete picture of Thea's past. Rolls also challenges the genre by casting her characters against type. Richard is a quiet, bookish man of modest means, an untitled second son who even walks with a limp. He is not a bravely injured war hero or dashing duke. He's not a rake. He's just a nice guy. Thea also engages the reader's sympathy but is wrapped so tightly in her own secrets that she is difficult to know. This appears to be a deliberate choice by the author that makes Thea a believably damaged and intriguing heroine, but also a somewhat detached one.
In Lord Braybrooke's Penniless Bride, Rolls presents Richard's good friend Julian (who made appearances in A Compromised Lady) as a more typical Regency hero. He is a wealthy, somewhat rakish peer responsible for an invalid stepmother and several half-siblings. In the course of discouraging his sister's infatuation with a young man lacking in connections or means, Julian ends up engaging the boy's sister, Christiana, as a companion and governess in his household. Christiana is an endearingly outspoken woman who soon turns all Julian's preconceived notions and inbred prejudices on end. Her innate good sense is compromised only by the hidden shame and the grudge she bears as the illegitimate offspring of a duke. Her life has been a difficult one while Julian's has been secure and respectable, and yet they do have a meeting of minds on many issues.
Christiana and Julian are both very likable, their romance enjoyable, while the story nevertheless exposes the plight of women and the unjust and false moral codes of the day. The secondary characters are quite distinct and provide depth and color to the narrative.
December 11, 2016
Very bleh 1st story, but I really got myself immersed in the 2nd and most of this grade is for that one...
October 3, 2021
A great period read filled with passion, suspense and drama, and Ladies, Lords and servants, of course!
November 18, 2011
Regency Marriages is a reissue of two of Elizabeth Rolls’s Harlequin Historicals under a single title: A Compromised Lady (Harlequin Historical #864, September 2007) and Lord Braybrook’s Penniless Bride (Harlequin Historical #948, June 2009). I first read Rolls in a Christmas anthology in 2006. As often happens with anthologies, I bought Mistletoe Kisses (2006)because it included a novella “A Twelfth Night Tale” by Diane Gaston, but I also loved Rolls’s story “A Soldier’s Tale” and began looking for her novels. While I like some of her books better than others, I have found her consistently to give her readers enjoyable stories that tweak some of the cherished conventions of the genre. I enjoyed rereading these connected novels.
See full review at Just Janga:
http://justjanga.blogspot.com/2011/11...
See full review at Just Janga:
http://justjanga.blogspot.com/2011/11...
June 7, 2018
A Compromised Lady:
It's a very sweet story, with a lot of very good moments, but it gets drawn out into the slightly tedious, and the ending doesn't really fit with the rest of the story. It's too bad really, it could have been great!
Lord Braybrooke's Penniless Bride:
Very much in line with 'a compromised lady'. The story is stretched for all it is worth, though this time with a better result. A good story though.
It's a very sweet story, with a lot of very good moments, but it gets drawn out into the slightly tedious, and the ending doesn't really fit with the rest of the story. It's too bad really, it could have been great!
Lord Braybrooke's Penniless Bride:
Very much in line with 'a compromised lady'. The story is stretched for all it is worth, though this time with a better result. A good story though.
October 28, 2011
This is actually two complete novels reissued into a single edition: A Compromised Lady and Lord Baybrook's Penniless Bride.
I had read A Compromised Lady before, but hadn't had the chance to read Lord Baybrook's Penniless Bride.
Full review to follow, but in the meantime, Here's my previous review for A Compromised Lady.
I had read A Compromised Lady before, but hadn't had the chance to read Lord Baybrook's Penniless Bride.
Full review to follow, but in the meantime, Here's my previous review for A Compromised Lady.
November 6, 2011
Two of the best E. Rolls Novels in the Regency period, I love this writer and my favourite of her novel is "His Lady mistress" and even if this two can't compare is always nice reading something written by her.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND MILLS & BOON S/O FOR THE PREVIEW
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND MILLS & BOON S/O FOR THE PREVIEW
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews