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A Marquis in Want of a Wife is the third installment in Louise Allen’s Liberated Ladies series – They have no wish to conform and be drawn into society’s marriage mart, unless they can find gentleman who value and cherish them for who they truly are…and not the size of their dowries. In this book, our heroine Prudence Scott has gotten it all wrong. She thought she’d found the right man, she’d given him her virginity, and then found out that he bedded her for a bet not out of love. Now she must find a man to marry in case she finds herself in a delicate condition.
Ross Vincent, the Marquis of Cranford, is looking for a mother for his infant son. His wife passed a few months earlier and he desperately doesn’t want his son to suffer from a lack of maternal love. He uncharacteristically explains his dilemma to Verity, the Duchess of Aylesham, at a small party and she (a former Liberated Lady) concocts a plan for Ross and Prue to meet each other and see if a marriage of convenience could be made. They meet and find that they are willing to marry.
Ross became a Marquis after making a fortune as a Privateer. He grew up outside of the aristocracy and is known as the East End Aristocrat; he has given up privateering and now owns a lucrative shipping business. Prue is a scholar of Greek and Roman literature and spends her time translating ancient texts. Outside of their mutual care for Ross’ son, they plan to spend their days and nights apart. They develop a friendship based on respect but soon start having deeper feelings.
Ms. Allen does a lovely job letting the reader into the heads of Ross and Prue and showing us their deepest feelings. The emotional journey for both characters is well done, with realistic arguments and hurt feelings balanced with hopefulness and fear of what could be lost if their friendship becomes something more. Both Prue and Ross are very well developed and easy to sympathize with. Prue wishes for a true friendship in marriage, and her struggle is to find the willpower to not wish for more. Ross was so desperate to find a mother for his child that he gave no thought to what his relationship with that mother would be. He is relieved to find a friendship with Prue and disturbed to find himself physically attracted to her. His struggle is to tamp down those feelings and stick to the original – safe – plan.
Typically the marriage of convenience trope is more about the emotional journey made by the couple and less about outside perils. But in A Marquis in Want of a Wife, Ms. Allen also succeeds in giving the reader a believable and entertaining adventure. This was a nice surprise and adds an exciting backdrop for those emotional journeys.
A Marquis in Want of a Wife is my favorite of this series and could definitely be read as a standalone. Readers of Ms. Allen will be pleased with this offering and for those new to her work, this is a lovely place to start.
Buy it at: Amazon or your local independent retailer
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 10/12/20
Publication Date: 12/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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I’m so glad I picked this book to review. All these comments have been so fun. Now go and read this book! You’ll enjoy it!
I don’t think they’re exactly look-alikes, but the cover model reminds me of Steve Coogan. Something about their facial features seems similar to me. And to continue with the cover theme, I’m not fond of covers where the model is staring right at me such as this one, because I don’t only find eye contact difficult but also distressing. Covers with just a close up of a staring face are the worst – I can barely look at those. I know a lot of people must feel differently since there are lots of books with covers with the model(s) looking directly into the camera lens. It’s good that the most essential thing about books is what’s between the covers. I can just skip or skim over the cover if it makes me too uncomfortable.
Storywise this particular novel sounds like a lovely read. I’m definitely adding it to my TBR list, which seems to grow much faster than I can actually read. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a really nice problem to have, but I do admire people who can read fast.
Re the cover model: None of you think he looks like Neil Gaiman? He looks like Neil Gaiman.
I like the guy for the period, except for the stubble. They would have been clean shaven or bearded. But then, different strokes…
…I was thinking closer to a young Paul McGann.
Me too – that was my first thought when I saw the cover.
I’ll go along with that!
I think you’re right!
YES – Withnail and I era Paul McGann. We have a winner! (Still not all that period appropriate, but…)
Yanks all over are going Who?
Not this Yank! Ever see Our Mutual Friend?
Nope. #culturallybereft?
Lol, no just missing out on a great mini series with an amazing cast. You’ll like it.
YES! One of my absolute all-time top movies (I have a copy of the script and the stage directions are as quotable as the film, seriously) and he’s just so impossibly beautiful in it.
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!” One of my all time favourites. (And yes. he’s gorgeous in it!)
(the highlighted bit cracks me up every single time)
Ahh, I don’t know if it’s just my mobile browser, but that image looks unreadably compressed. It says ‘Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it; this room has several chairs.’
The gifs alone people do of that movie can make me cry laughing.
Richard E. Grant is perfection.
The Romeo and Juliet geek in me loves that it’s Benvolio from the 1968 Romeo and Juliet that wrote and directed it.
Sometimes, you just need a visual. Thanks to NBLib Girl, we’ve got one! (The Dylan is real–still don’t see the Gere.)
Thanks, NBLib Girl!
I see a similarity between the cover model and Richard Gere’s lip shape, but that’s about it.
Thank you, NBLib Girl! Too similar for me! Richard Gere, I would have been happy to envision, Bob, not so much. I keep hearing in my head, ‘It ain’t me babe, it ain’t me you’re looking for, babe.’
He did inspire one of the greatest songs of the mid 70s: Joan Baez’ melancholy, beautiful Diamonds and Rust.
Here’s the original video.
I preferred her Winds of the Old Days on that relationship.
and hers is the best Diana song ever imo
“lady Di and I” from 1983 – it was all there, then.
and it empowered me as a young girl so much
last words of the song: “… and of all that it seems, it is I who am queen!”
oh, well, I love Joan!
I’m old–born in 1961–and I first heard Diamonds and Rust in college. I thought it was gorgeous and was thrilled to have a woman’s story. Where I went to high school, in Southern Florida, the radio almost never played women on the rock stations, only on the pop, where Joan and Joni weren’t welcome. In college, I was exposed to Joan, Joni, Janis, and others. I still love them all!
Not old. I am just a few years younger…
It’s all relative, isn’t it? Some days I feel ancient and other days as young as I did 20 years ago.
:-)
yes, sometimes quite confusing, all ages inside us.
I saw this. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTO27SkMOV_InbVAOF7A8mq8Vo_XHNnRJSEarAkVsv6Lg&s
He definitely looks like a young Richard Gere.
Wow–I love how things look so differently to us. He doesn’t look ANYTHING like Gere to me.
On my TBR pile!
I must be in the minority because I thought the cover model looked brooding and sexy, lol
Me too! I bought this book because I thought he looked smokin’. Haha.
I love a reader who admits to making cover buys. Good for you. ;)
I agree and don’t think the cover model looks like Dylan at all. The shape of his head and face are different. Don’t think he looks like Richard Gere either, although Nan de Plume is right that the mouth is similar.
Mine too!
Ugh, you guys don’t care if my TBR list never gets any smaller, do you? ;)
This one sounds like a winner that doesn’t fall into plot contrivances- just a marriage of convenience where the characters try to make the best of their situation, become friends, and eventually fall in love. Nice.
Nope, don’t care one bit ;) Because I suspect we’ve all got the same problem!
Nan De Plume, I have found Caz to be completely unrepentant about adding to my TBR pile. I generally groan these days when I see her review a book (which is a lot!) because chances are I’ll need to add it. I don’t think I read (or listen) quite as fast as she does! I especially resent (not really, obviously) when I find the book she’s reviewing is the 2nd or 4th in a series and she likes all of them and now I need to go back and read them all!! Yes, I know that’s a run-on sentence. That’s how it spewed out of my brain. :-D
I suppose it’s better to have too big of a TBR list than one that is too small. Although, at this rate, I don’t think I’ll ever make a dent in mine…
I have enjoyed all three in the series and this really was my favorite. Looking forward to the stories of the last two liberated ladies. I also agree on the Bob Dylan look alike cover.
This book was more in the A+ range for me. I really loved both characters. When you read a lot of one genre, sometimes books are just wallpaper but Prue and Ross stood out for me, his loyalty and honor, and her courage to leave her comfort zones. My only issue is the cover model looks too much like Bob Dylan and it screwed with my mental image of Ross, especially in the very sensuous sex scenes.
Ha! I wondered about that cover model as well. Definitely did not fit my mental image of Ross. I’m glad you enjoyed this one too!
“looks around furtively”
Bob Dylan is not now and never has been my idea of sexy.
Never, ever thought of him as sexy. I avoided looking at the cover and almost didn’t buy it because I kept looking at it thinking, ‘who in the hell puts Dylan on a historical romance cover?’
Snort! I was glad to be reading it on my kindle!
I wondered the same! It’s odd, because Harlequin Historicals usually have pretty good covers! Maybe they were scraping the bottom of the stock photo barrel…
Well, I read one of Harlequin’s blog posts a while back that said the lockdowns/quarantine forced them to dig through previously rejected covers as they couldn’t do photoshoots for a while. So you might see some models who look awfully familiar in upcoming releases- particularly in Romantic Suspense. They showed how they are taking photographs of poses that didn’t didn’t make the cover and putting them onto new releases. Here is the post for anyone interested (I had trouble tracking it down): How We’re Working: Behind the Scenes with the Art Department During Social Distancing – Harlequin Ever After.
Hah – I saw that too! (My comment must have been a sumbliminal reference to it!)
Me neither, but I really don’t see much more than a passing resemblance between the cover model and Dylan. Dylan is all angles in a not sexy way, with sleepier eyes. This guy has killer checkbones! :-)
True. I find the cover model infinitely sexier than Dylan, but that is still a low bar!
Thank you for the laugh! Yes, definitely a low bar!
And I thought he was supposed to be one of the Hobbits! An older, wiser Pippin?… :)
Glad this is a good one – I generally like LA’s work, so I’ll check it out.