Marleigh Sisters #1
Unladylike Lessons in Love is the first book in a new series of Regency mysteries by Amita Murray. The protagonist, Lila Marleigh, is the daughter of a British earl and his Indian mistress. She and her sisters lived in India until their parents’ death when Lila was seven. Then they came to London to live with their cruel stepmother, Sarah Marleigh, who has died before the events of the novel, and their half-brother Jonathan, the new earl, who is one of the most loathsome characters I have encountered in a long time. He has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, except a certain charm he shows to people when he wants something, and even that is false.
Lila has left the Marleigh home long before the novel takes place. Not only do she and Jonathan hate each other, but she has long been estranged from her sisters. The reason for this is not known until the very end of the novel. At the beginning of the book, she is a prominent salon hostess in London. The social elite come to her salon to gamble, and she lives comfortably, even if she is not hugely wealthy. Lila has resolved never to marry, the result, we are led to believe, of an unhappy early love affair. She is no virgin and, as she says early in the novel, a Regency lady only had to worry about her reputation if she meant to marry, and she does not. Lila is a free spirit and lives as she wishes, attracting the attention of both older and younger men, hosting gambling parties, and even participating in a carriage race. She also has a kind heart, and her servants are all people with disabilities, who no one else would employ.
One of her parties is disrupted by the arrival of Maisie, a heavily pregnant young woman whose mother had worked as a maid in Lila’s stepmother’s house. Lila had not seen Maisie for ten years, not since Maisie was a child and Lila was in her teens. Maisie’s mother, who had come from the West Indies, was falsely accused of stealing Lila’s stepmother’s jewel box and hanged. Maisie disappeared shortly after her mother’s execution. Lila feels a huge sense of guilt because she tried to help Maisie’s mother as much as she could, but it wasn’t enough to save her. As it turns out, Maisie has become a prostitute because it was the only way to support herself. She has fallen in love with Sunil, a lascar (an Indian sailor who worked on British ships), even though he is not the father of her child. Maisie has come to ask Lila for help, so she can give up prostitution and settle down with Sunil and her baby. But when she recognizes someone at Lila’s party, she becomes terrified and runs away.
At first Lila doesn’t know who frightened Maisie, but she learns it is Ivor Tristram, a diffident, stand-offish young gentleman. (Think Mr. Darcy, but with more rough edges than Darcy.) Lila has her own confrontation with him when he accuses her of being his father’s mistress. She doesn’t deny it, even though we find out early on that she never was his father’s mistress. At first we don’t know why she refuses to deny it, because it certainly would have simplified things between them, but it turns out she does have a reason, which we don’t learn until late in the book.
The sight of Ivor frightened Maisie because Sunil, Maisie’s lover, has been accused of attacking Ivor’s cousin Tiffany in the dark, in Ivor’s study. (Yes, the name Tiffany did exist in those times, even though it seems very modern.) Sunil is being pursued by the Bow Street Runners and by a mysterious skeletal-looking man who always wears black, a truly frightening figure. We eventually find out who this man is and what his motives are for pursuing Sunil, but to say more would be a spoiler. Lila is convinced that the attack did not happen in the way Tiffany said it did, and that Sunil is innocent. She reluctantly teams up with Ivor Tristram to help clear Sunil’s name, because after talking to the man, Ivor also is convinced of his innocence.
Lila thinks her half-brother Jonathan, who is informally engaged to Tiffany, is the one who attacked her, but she has no evidence apart from a button found in the room where the attack took place, and she knows that no court would believe the word of a lascar over that of an earl. Tiffany stubbornly refuses to believe that anyone other than Sunil attacked her, and especially not Jonathan, even when Ivor tries to tell her the attack might not have happened the way she remembers it. Unless Lila and Ivor can prove someone else attacked Tiffany, though, Sunil will hang for the crime.
The investigation takes Lila and Ivor to various locations in London, including the rat pit (where people bet on which terrier can kill the most rats–a gruesome sport) and the lovely pleasure gardens of Vauxhall. In spite of their initial dislike, they are drawn to each other and begin a passionate romance. Readers should be warned that their sex scenes are quite explicit, and feel like they belong in a romance novel instead of a mystery. Also, I think their romance develops too quickly. It goes from dislike to passionate romance very fast. This is, however, my only criticism of the book, which is otherwise excellent. The romance certainly has its ups and downs, including, on the downside, one scene where Ivor blames Lila for other men’s attentions to her, which made me furious with him. But he apologizes soon afterwards, and knows he was wrong. Lila also has times when she doubts Ivor’s intentions toward her. She loves him, but she wonders if he only thinks of her as a passing fancy.
Sometimes the mystery seems secondary to the romance, but it is a suspenseful one, and we keep hoping Lila and Ivor will find a way to save Sunil and catch the real criminal. Lila is a wonderful heroine, an unconventional woman in Regency times, and Ivor, in spite of my doubts about him, proves to be a worthy hero in the end. I noticed that the book is called “A Marleigh Sisters Novel,” not “A Lila Marleigh Novel,” so I assume that future books will focus on Lila’s sisters, and Lila won’t be the protagonist in all the books. From what we see of Lila’s sisters in this book–and it is very little until the final chapter–they sound like interesting characters I would definitely like to read more about. One sister is a musician at Queen Charlotte’s court, and the other is a satirical journalist. I will enjoy spending more time with these characters. I highly recommend this entertaining novel for fans of C.S. Harris, Darcie Wilde, and Andrea Penrose. — Vicki Kondelik
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Vicki Kondelik is a cataloger at the University of Michigan’s Graduate Library, and edits their book review blog, Lost in the Stacks. She writes book reviews for the Historical Novel Society, and is currently writing a historical novel. She has been an avid mystery reader for a long time.