Grace's timid friend is being forced to marry Dominic Wolfe, who stands to inherit a huge estate if he weds. The Wolfes have a terrible reputation, and if there's one thing Grace cannot stand, it's a bully. Her friend begs for help to escape this marriage, so Grace acts as the plain and mousy chaperone on their visit to the groom-to-be. But when they arrive, nothing is as they expect, and Grace is scandalized to find herself being pursued by a big, bad Wolfe with dishonorable intentions.
Comment: This is the fourth and final installment in the Merridew sisters series. Grace is the youngest and has been a child throughout the other books, thus some time has passed since the events of the previous book and this one.
If there is one word people can say about Grace Merridew is that she is determined, and this is why she decided to help her friend Melly avoid a marriage she didn't want. Posing as her companion, she travels with Melly and her friend's father to the estate of lord D'Acre, the man Melly is promised to, but when they arrive, after some complications, everything is clearly not cared for and she gets into words with a man she believes is a employee.However,that man is actually Dominic Wolfe, Melly's intended, but he seems to become fascinated by Grace instead... is there any way out of the deal that would see the marriage of Melly and Dominic? Can he marry someone else when he is more than infatuated by Grace?
I had a great time reading the previous stories even though some had a few details I wasn't as fond of. In this book, since it is the last, I had hopes for a string finale but it turned out that there were, once more, a few details that stopped me from seeing this as wonderful read.
Grace travels with her friend to an unknown estate. It's true Melly's father goes too, but only in a romance novel Grace's disguise of clothes and fake freckles would deceive someone who knew her for years... still, as everyone knows, we see what we want so... that aside, though, I was quite taken by Grace's independent behavior and attitude, which is certainly not very realistic, but these books are not meant to be historically accurate in all regards.
At first, things went well enough and I was quite happy with seeing Grace being a force to be reckoned with, but as soon as Dominic is introduced, I could see I would not like the overall romance as much as I wanted. The thing is, Dominic is one of those heroes bent on revenge and that reflects on his attitude towards other things, such as seducing Grace even though he knows he has a compromise with Melly. One could argue that he doesn't know Melly, cannot have feelings for her, but it's the attitude. Certainly, we learn he is actually a man who had privations as a child and father who didn't show love and a mother who was hurt emotionally by her husband and so on... I still did not fully warm up to Dominic, not even when he started to change.
The romance was not my favorite either because it was set on the premise that they were in different classes, even though Grace never behaved as of she was someone who worked as a paid companion. Of course that Grace, a young woman who saw her sisters finding everlasting love wanted the same thing but never found anyone at the balls she attended and now, finally, someone seems to suit her, but she is always thinking of her friend Melly. This means the romance development was always shown as being rather forbidden and only a case of attraction... I did not fully believe in their feelings although the author tried her best to make the reader see this.
Dominic is returning to the family estate wanting to restore it but only to sell it piece by piece as a revenge against his callous father. He thought that his mother, in her deathbed, warned him against the estate but as time goes by and he talks to people and visits the tenants and sees things through Grace's eyes, he realizes the estate is more than his inheritance, he does feel responsible. Obviously, we knew from the start that the point was for him to see the beauty of the land and how perfect for him it was. Thus, the whole idea of this story was a good one, but the attitude of the protagonists...
There's a secondary romance, as it happened with the previous stories. Melly finds happiness with Frey, a friend of Dominic from Eton, who stars working as the local reverend (or the correct equivalent if I'm not using the right word) but their side of things is very minimal. I also found Melly to be a little boring and annoying because if felt she was only concerned about babies... which I can accept might be likely for a young woman in this situation and period, but... it made her personality seem very thin.
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