The Scoundrel in Her Bed by Lorraine Heath

If you’ve read or listened to the previous book (When a Duke Loves a Woman), you may recall that its hero, the Duke of Thornley, was jilted at the altar by his intended, Lady Lavinia Kent. Thornley’s search for Lavinia – because he wanted to make sure she was alright, not because he wanted to force her to marry him – was the starting point for his romance with Gilly Trewlove, owner of the Mermaid and Unicorn Tavern in Whitechapel. In that novel, we learned that Finn, one of Gilly’s four brothers, had a history with Lavinia – and in this one, we learn more about that history and follow them on a difficult and sometimes painful journey as they discover the truth of what happened to separate them, come to know who they are now, and rekindle their romance.

Following her unexpected departure from the church on her wedding day, Lavinia has taken up residence with the Sisters of Mercy in Whitechapel, from whence she operates her one-woman crusade to rescue babies from the clutches of London’s baby-farmers. She responds to newspaper advertisements placed by women offering their services as carers for the unwanted children of the nobility, meeting with them and paying them to give up the children to her care, and afterwards lodging them in the home run by the Sisters. It’s not immediately clear why a gently bred young woman would take up such a cause – although it’s not difficult to work out – and it’s on one such errand that she encounters Finn Trewlove again; he’s been looking out for her ever since he learned she was in Whitechapel, and on this particular night, helps to run off a group of ruffians who have ambushed her. In this first section of the novel, we witness their first meeting some eight years before and, in a series of flashbacks interspersed with the present day sections of the story, follow their romance up until the fateful night when they were forcibly parted.

By the half-way point of the book, Finn and Lavinia have discovered the truth behind the misapprehensions and hurt they’ve carried with them for the past eight years, so the second part of the novel focuses on the here-and-now and on their working through the pain of the past and rediscovering their love for one another. The problem is though, that there is nothing really keeping Finn and Lavinia apart; taking it as read that she’s left her old life as the daughter of an earl behind so the cross-class thing isn’t really an issue any more, it’s clear they never really fell out of love – but Lavinia believes that she dare not get close to Finn again for fear that he will despise her when he finds out her Big Secret (which isn’t that much of a Big Secret, really). But he’s not about to lose her again, and sets out to prove to her that they can have a future together. He offers Lavinia a business partnership, a way to have the financial means and independence she needs in order to continue her mission to save children from the baby farmers, and she accepts – although her determination to keep a professional distance between them quickly flounders in the face of his obvious admiration for what she’s trying to do and his equally obvious admiration and love for her.

Both Lavinia and Finn are engaging, attractive characters, although Finn is somewhat generic. He’s handsome, honourable, charming and a little bit dangerous, a man who has made something of himself (as have the other Trewloves) in spite of the great injustice he suffered as a result of his relationship with Lavinia, but even so, there’s not much to distinguish him from most of the other heroes of historical romance out there. Lavinia is a strong young woman who has survived some horrific treatment at the hands of her family – and I thoroughly appreciated the way in which she used those experiences to gain the strength and confidence to finally cast off the trappings of her aristocratic life and to forge her own path and future. I did, however have some misgivings about her self-imposed mission to rescue children from the baby farmers. It was a disgraceful practice, no doubt – most of the time the baby farmers were paid to neglect the children placed with them – but it seemed to me that Lavinia embarked on her mission without giving it much serious thought. She certainly didn’t seem to have thought much about how to fund her operation and what to do when she’d filled up the Sisters’ home with children and didn’t have anywhere to house any more of them.

Lorraine Heath is one of my favourite authors and has written some of my favourite historical romances, but this current series isn’t working as well for me as some of her others. The Scoundrel in Her Bed is well-written, and the author’s exploration into some of the less well-known social ills of the time is interesting and informative, but the romance central to this story has weaknesses I couldn’t ignore. Lavinia and Finn have good chemistry, but the conflict in the present day section of the story was flimsy, and the storylines in the first part were predictable. I admit that I was bored by the time I reached the half-way point of the book and that I might have set it aside had I not been listening for review. So my content grade is a compromise of sorts – a C for the first half and a B for the second (in spite of my reservations, it’s much stronger), and I’ve settled on a B-.

Fortunately, however, Kate Reading can always be relied upon to deliver an excellent performance of whatever material she is given, and The Scoundrel in Her Bed is no exception. As is always the case, she paces narrative and dialogue well, enunciates clearly and provides appropriate characterisation for the all the characters, making use of a variety of accents and timbres. She adds an attractive, husky note to Finn’s voice and pitches it slightly higher than the other heroes in the series, which perfectly denotes his relative youth and serves to differentiate him effectively from them – and from his brother, Aiden – in the handful of scenes in which they appear together. Her portrayals of the younger Finn and Lavinia capture their youthful optimism and that first flush of young love, while later in the story, her performance in the scenes in which Lavinia finally tells Finn the truth and then confronts her mother are pitch-perfect; raw with anguish and devastating emotion.

While The Scoundrel in Her Bed isn’t my favourite Lorraine Heath book, if you’re following the series, the excellent narration pushes it into the ‘definitely worth a listen’ bracket.

Caz

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