This turned out to be one of the best novellas I have read. I am a new convert to this series and can't wait now to read the next one. Apparently, though, I have missed the first one called The Courtship. And I can't seem to find it anywhere, even here. Oh well, I'll keep looking.At first I didn't think I would like this book. It was sad and depressing reading about a marriage that had somehow gone sour. After four children, Esther and Percival had lost interest in each other. They had problems at home involving his father, the Duke, and his older brother, the heir, who was ailing. Plus they had financial problems that put alot of stress on Esther. This novella finds them on a holiday, of sorts, as a family in London. They are presented with two illegitimate children of Percival's conceived right before his marriage. Esther is just wonderful about it. It was almost as if this brought them back together. By the end of the book, you see how deep their love is for each other and how it is so much more than romance. This was just a very optimistic, feel-good story. I loved it. There is so much good in this novella it should have been a 4-star rating at least. It is a very honest portrayal of the place a marriage often gets to no matter how much in love the husband and wife are after kids and jobs take them different directions, even dukes and duchesses in training. The pressures are more than taking their toll on Percy and Esther, but one of the central conceits of the story, the discovery that Percy has two out-of-wedlock children, pushed the bounds of credibility, especially the threat of scandal both mothers use to manipulate Percy (If you've read Devlin and Maggie's stories, Burrowes has changed a few things). This is not Victorian England, people! This is Regency England! And Percy wasn't married when he fathered the children, and both mothers left him in ignorance for five years. (What are the chances both simultaneously and separately decide to come clean?) And he is a Duke's Son, probably soon to be the Duke of Moreland himself. No way would a threat of scandal and social ostracism like Maggie's mother made fly ever. I don't know the legalities, but I doubt anyone would take on a duke who acknowledged his illegitimate child and chose to take, even by force, that child from his or her mother because the child was being threatened. Too many small anachronisms and implausible details kept me from being able to relax into the story and enjoy it for the poignant, beautiful love story it was of how to keep loving after the bloom wears off and how to work your way to a deeper, richer 2nd blooming.
Do You like book Duke And His Duchess: A Novella (2013)?
I was nice putting the beginning of the "story" together with some perspective.
—kcupkake
