Revisiting an author I'd taken agin, a great scene and thoughts on a hybrid cover

I read my first Julia Quinn novel in the early days of my second phase of romance reading that began several years ago. It was When He Was Wicked, the fourth Bridgerton book, the one about Francesca and the chap who thought he was dying who was her first husband's cousin. I LOVED IT. I really enjoyed it. I thought, Yes, here is an author I am going to love. And she has a backlist. And I set about reading that backlist. Except, none of the books I read after that lived up to the promise of that first one (no, Quinn-fans, not even Romancing Mr Bridgerton or The Viscount Who Loved Me. Nor any of the early pre-Bridgerton ones. To me, they were *meh*). I gave up on her fairly early on and turned my attention to other authors.

I picked up The Lost Duke of Wyndham the other day in a charity shop. I'm not sure why. A whim.

It came out a couple of years ago and I was aware of it at the time. I remember reading about it on other blogs. It was memorable because of the fact that it has a 'matching pair' book in the form of Mr Cavendish, I Presume, which revisits many of the same events from the perspective of a different H/H. The impression I gained from the few reviews I read was that this was either not successful or at least no better than ok, and I was untroubled by curiosity.

Well, I've now read TLDOW, and I enjoyed it more than any other Quinn since WHWW! Not only did I enjoy it, I found myself constantly titillated and charmed and desperately curious about the other story that was NOT being told in this book, the book about Thomas and Amelia. I want their story. Now. Actually, I wanted their story then, as I was reading Jack and Grace's story. So was my pleasure in this book really predicated on the anticipation about Thomas and Amelia rather than the here-and-now pleasure of Jack and Grace? Yes, I rather think it was.

There is a superlative scene quite near the end of the book that is so beautifully plotted and cleverly written that I was squirming as I read it. And I had to blog about it, hence this post.

The conceit of the book is that Thomas, the son of the dowager duchess's youngest son, has grown up, believing himself to be the Duke of Wyndham. One night, the dowager is accosted by a highwayman who is the spitting image of her middle son. He proves indeed to be the middle son's son, and hence - if his birth is legitimate - the true Duke. The first two thirds of the book deal with the dowager and her companion Grace (the heroine) meeting Jack, bringing him to the house and introducing him to - amongst others - Thomas and his betrothed, Amelia. The last third of the book deals with everyone travelling to Ireland to discover if he is legitimate and hence the true duke.

We learn early on the book that Thomas and Amelia have been betrothed since they were in the cradle and she has been waiting for a few years for him to step up to the mark and do his duty in marrying her. She is now 21 and the waiting is getting embarrassing. There are a couple of early scenes where we see her hanging around the house with Grace, basically hoping to have some interaction with Thomas and not succeeding.

The scene that I loved is a scene in which Amelia's father, tired of waiting, has brought Amelia up to the ducal house to demand to know when the wedding will take place. However, he has chosen the worst possible time to do it - it is just when the household is setting off to Ireland. Thomas takes the bull by the horns and tells Amelia's father that he may not be the duke. Her father responds by indicating that she can't marry him as plain Mr Cavendish.

"...If you do not prove to be the right and lawful Duke of Wyndham, you may consider the betrothal null and void."

"As you wish," Thomas said curtly. He made no argument, gave no indication that he might wish to fight for his betrothed.

Oh no! Poor Amelia!

Amelia's father then gets into an excruciating argument with Jack whereby he tries to make him agree to marry her, saying that the contract did not name Thomas, only 'the seventh Duke of Wyndham'. By this stage, Jack wants Grace and refuses point blank to marry Amelia. Several times. At this point, Thomas steps in again.

"Sir," (Jack) said, "I will not marry your daughter."

"Oh, you will."

But this was not said by Crowland. It was Thomas, stalking across the room, his eyes burning with barely contained rage.

Thomas insists that Jack must marry Amelia; that she has spent her life preparing for the position of Duchess of Wyndham and that Jack has a moral duty to marry her. He doesn't fight for her for himself, but he does fight for her here. It's such a great scene and so ripe with misunderstanding and hurt. And I'm really looking forward to revisiting it in Mr Cavendish, I Presume.

Other than that, there was the usual Julia Quinn problem with the language. She has a number of anachronistic modern American usages that keep wrong-footing me. I think it's almost more noticeable because 90% of what she writes sounds so very spot on.

And what do you think of the cover? This is the British version. I think it's quite clever. Romance isn't sold in very many British high street bookshops (the tiny section in my nearest Waterstones seems to have recently been ditched) but a few authors make it into the mainstream fiction shelves, and Julia Quinn is one of them. This cover rather cleverly apes a 'chick-lit' or 'yummy-mummy' cover (two genres I am not at all fond of but that are both very popular in the UK, much more than historical single-title romance - at least if you judge that by what you can find in bookshops). Annoyingly, the cover shows the hero as fair-haired when apparently he is supposed to be dark and I couldn't get a blond man out of my head. The power of suggestion took root and wasn't contradicted til too late.

Has anyone else read this matching pair? What did you think?