Devil’s Lady by Patricia Rice

Narrated by Mary Jane Wells

Mary Jane Wells is a narrator relatively new to the world of historical romance, but she has already earned herself a place on my “narrators to trust” shelf. Her performance in Simone St. James’ recent Silence for the Dead was terrific, and I enjoyed listening to her in Sarah MacLean’s Ten Ways to be Adored When Landing a Lord, so she’s now someone whose name I regularly put into the search box at Audible when I’m looking for new books to listen to. I requested Devil’s Lady for review solely because Ms Wells is the narrator, and I’m pleased to report that she more than met my expectations.

Seventeen year-old Faith Montague is the granddaughter of a marquess who cast off his son when he became a Methodist. Her mother died when Faith was a child, and following the recent death of her father, she has decided to make her way to London in order to find a position. It’s deepest winter and Faith finds little shelter along the road; there’s no work to be had, even in exchange for a meal or a bed for the night. Resorting to curling up in a roadside ditch in an attempt to sleep, she hears a cry of “Stand and Deliver!” and is terrified by the sight of a massive black stallion and its rider leaping overhead. Freezing, panicked and half-starved, Faith passes out.

The next thing she knows, she wakes up swaddled in blankets, lying by the embers of a dying fire. Rising, she discovers that she has spent the night in a small cottage somewhere in the woods, and decides to repay its owner for his or her kindness as best she can by cooking breakfast – which she hopes to share.

James Morgan O’Neill DeLacy the third, an impoverished Irish earl, lost his home and his family when he was little more than a boy. He is driven by his desire to avenge his family and regain his stolen lands, and makes his living as a gentleman of the road, robbing from the English aristocracy as they’ve robbed him.

DeLacy – who is known mostly as Morgan throughout the story, and sometimes as Jack – might be an outlaw, but he couldn’t leave a child to starve by the side of the road. Faith very quickly proves to Morgan that taking her in was a good idea as she quietly and competently takes over all the domestic duties, and for the first time in a recent memory, Morgan finds himself looking forward to going home rather than carousing in the local tavern.

It’s a few months before he realises that Faith is not, in fact, a child, but a petite young woman; and that she is, moreover, beginning to look like one now she’s having regular meals and not being forced to sleep in hedgerows! And for her part, Faith has been on the verge of falling in love ever since that first morning she looked up to find a handsome, dishevelled Irishman looming over her as she cooked breakfast.

Devil’s Lady is part romance, part mystery, as it seems that the circumstances surrounding the death of Faith’s father are suspicious, and that there is someone trying to trace her who may not have the best of intentions. Realising that Faith is gently born, Morgan asks her about her parents, and although she can tell him little, he nonetheless finds her relatives in London, with the intention of sending Faith back to them. But his encounter with her slimy toad of a cousin shows Morgan that the marquess’ home may not be the safest place for her, and instead of divulging her whereabouts, he accepts a bribe to keep his silence about her very existence – and later sets the money aside for her.

There’s quite a lot going on in the story, which is well-paced and tightly written. Morgan obviously does have feelings for Faith, but for the first part of the book, his motivations are quite selfish. He likes having regular meals and coming home to clean sheets and shirts… and the longer she’s with him, the stronger his desire to take her to bed. Even though Faith has tumbled head-over-heels into love with her handsome highwayman, Morgan’s desire for revenge and his pride won’t let him give up his way of life – and she can’t see a way for them to be together otherwise. And to complicate matters further, it seems that Faith’s long-lost family is looking for her – but to what end?

There are some moments of utter heartbreak in the book, but ultimately, it’s about Faith growing from a young woman to whom things happen into a woman who is capable of determining what she wants from her life. Morgan is perhaps a little less well-defined, although he’s certainly an attractive hero. He’s determined to protect Faith even though, in the first part of the book, she takes second place to his desire for revenge upon the people who destroyed his family and lands. It takes him a few months to realise that his need for revenge won’t bring back his family, and that it’s keeping him from the one thing he truly wants; but once he does, he’s man enough to admit it and then go all out to find it.

That said, however, my one quibble with the story is that Morgan does the “you must leave me for your own good” thing once too often; it was just about understandable the first time, even though he (being rather a typical alpha male) doesn’t give Faith any say in the matter – he just disappears and leaves her to her own devices. But the second time, after everything they’ve been through, felt rather contrived, and while the events that follow also serve to tie up the loose ends of the mystery plot, I could have done without another instance of heart-rending self-sacrifice.

I said at the beginning of this review that narrator Mary Jane Wells was the reason I wanted to listen to this audiobook, and she delivers an excellent performance. I will admit that she still hasn’t got to grips with a number of words that occur regularly in historical romances, and there are a number of other minor mispronunciations, but her performance overall is so good, that I really can’t find it in me to carp at them. She’s given Morgan this big, larger-than-life Belfast brogue (not one of the easiest accents to do!) which is masculine and rather sexy, and she maintains it very well throughout the story, using it not just for the hero, but also for one of the secondary characters as well. Ms Wells portrays of all the other secondary characters with a deal of skill, painting swift aural pictures through use of a wide variety of timbres and accents. Faith’s grandmother has a wonderfully “dowagerish” quaver to her voice; the stuffy marquess is puffed-up and pompous and the smarmy cousin is given a suitably unpleasant nasal whine.

The latter chapters of the story are set in Williamsburg, so there is a smattering of American accents in there – and here I will admit that while I moan frequently about the mangling of various British and European accents, I’m not as well-versed in the accents used on the other side of the pond. All I can say is that to my British ears, the accents Ms Wells adopts for some of the American characters sounded completely right.

I’ve one point to make about the actual production, which is that there are no pauses between paragraphs or sections of text, which I imagine is down to editing rather than to the fact that the narrator was keen to get on! Several times, I found myself thinking that I was still listening to one scene when a different character or situation would appear, and I’d realise belatedly that the action had moved on. It didn’t spoil my enjoyment overall, it’s just a minor niggle that should have been fixed before the audiobook was released.

Taken as a whole, however, Devil’s Lady is a thoroughly enjoyable story – full of danger, romance and intrigue – and Mary Jane Wells’ wonderful interpretation of Morgan is still ringing in my ears!

Caz

Narration: A-

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Minimal

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Audible, Inc.

Devil’s Lady was provided to AudioGals by Audible, Inc. for review.