{"id":5471,"date":"2023-12-14T06:49:15","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T14:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5471"},"modified":"2023-12-14T06:49:15","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T14:49:15","slug":"darcie-wilde-the-secret-of-the-ladys-maid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/darcie-wilde-the-secret-of-the-ladys-maid\/","title":{"rendered":"Darcie Wilde: The Secret of the Lady’s Maid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosalind Thorne #7<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Secret of the Lady\u2019s Maid<\/em> is Darcie Wilde\u2019s seventh book about Rosalind Thorne, a Regency gentlewoman who has fallen on hard times after her father abandoned his family, and who makes a living undertaking discreet investigations for ladies who find themselves in difficult situations.\u00a0 (But see below for my complaint about the series numbering).\u00a0 By this time, Rosalind has acquired quite a reputation, and whenever she is seen visiting a family, people know that the family must be having difficulties.<\/p>\n

Rosalind has set up house with her best friend, novelist Alice Littlefield.\u00a0 Alice and the pair\u2019s maid, Amelia, are in a same-sex relationship which they, of course, keep secret.\u00a0 One day Amelia finds Cate Levitton, the daughter of the family to whom she had previously been in service, deathly ill in the marketplace and takes her to Rosalind\u2019s house.\u00a0 Amelia and Cate had had a relationship before, which led to Amelia\u2019s dismissal from the household.\u00a0 The Levittons are convinced that Amelia seduced Cate and the relationship Is not their daughter\u2019s fault, but still they banished Cate to live with her elderly aunt Marianna.\u00a0 When Cate\u2019s father died soon afterwards, Cate, her mother, and Marianna all came to live under the same roof in the family\u2019s London house.<\/p>\n

After observing Cate\u2019s symptoms, Rosalind and her love interest, Bow Street Runner Adam Harkness, believe that she\u2019s been poisoned with arsenic, and the nurse attending Marianna confirms this.\u00a0 Marianna is suffering from a long-term illness, which Rosalind believes was also caused by arsenic poisoning.\u00a0 But Cate\u2019s illness happened suddenly, while Marianna\u2019s is long-lasting.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Rosalind thinks the same person poisoned both women.\u00a0 But who has a motive?\u00a0 Marianna hires Rosalind to investigate.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Cate was engaged, against her will, to Harold Davenport, a young mining engineer who\u2019s a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Marianna\u2019s.\u00a0 The story that she tells Rosalind is that she ran away from home to escape the engagement, but Rosalind realized Cate is lying about that, and about many other things.\u00a0 She discovers that the poison was probably given to Cate during a dinner party that Cate\u2019s brothers and sister-in-law gave for her, to celebrate her engagement.\u00a0 But how did the poisoner manage to do it without poisoning the whole party?\u00a0 Cate\u2019s family members, except her mother and aunt, are all suspects, and they are unpleasant characters.\u00a0 Her older brother is rude and disagreeable to everyone, and very jealous of his beautiful wife, but with reason, as it happens, because she\u2019s carrying on an affair with Harold.\u00a0 The younger brother seems more likable on the surface.\u00a0 He\u2019s the peacemaker in the family, but he always acts in a way that benefits himself, and he uses people\u2019s secrets against them.<\/p>\n

While searching the house for clues, Rosalind finds a pawnbroker\u2019s tickets in Cate\u2019s room.\u00a0 Did Cate pawn her jewelry to finance her escape?\u00a0 Or is the jewelry even hers?\u00a0 Rosalind finds out that the jewelry is much too valuable to have been Cate\u2019s or her aunt\u2019s.\u00a0 As it turns out, Cate had been involved in a series of thefts, along with a group of female thieves.\u00a0 She has been lying to Rosalind about practically everything.\u00a0 Rosalind also begins to suspect that her maid, Amelia, has also been lying to her. \u00a0Could Amelia also have been involved in the thefts?\u00a0 Also, it is clear that Amelia still has feelings for Cate.\u00a0 How will it affect her present relationship with Alice?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Adam is investigating a group of men accused of treason.\u00a0 He is not certain they are guilty or, at least, that they acted on their own.\u00a0 A radical member of Parliament approaches him and offers him a thousand pounds if he can find another man, who is said to be the one who led the group to commit treason, and who might have been a government spy.\u00a0 Adam is tempted by the offer: a thousand pounds would enable him to marry Rosalind.\u00a0 But his politically-minded boss is more interested in securing a conviction than discovering the truth, and he threatens Adam with being accused of treason himself if he interferes with the trial.\u00a0 Adam is torn between doing what\u2019s right and doing what\u2019s politically expedient.<\/p>\n

At first it seems that Rosalind\u2019s and Adam\u2019s cases have nothing to do with each other, but of course they do.\u00a0 Without giving too much away, I will say that Marianna Levitton, a fascinating character, holds radical political beliefs and even thinks women should have the right to vote, at a time when very few people thought so.\u00a0 I would definitely like to see her in future novels.<\/p>\n

Figuring out what\u2019s happening in this novel is like putting together a puzzle.\u00a0 We begin with separate pieces: the poisonings, the thefts, and Adam\u2019s investigations of the treasonous plot, and the fun of the book is putting it all together.\u00a0 Once you figure out how it all fits together, the novel is very satisfying.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t guess who was guilty until the very end, even though, now that I think back on it, I probably should have.<\/p>\n

The relationship between Rosalind and Adam, which was largely absent from the previous novel, takes a more prominent role in this one.\u00a0 They love each other, and Rosalind has even turned down a marriage proposal from a duke because she loves Adam, but she also knows that, if she gets married, she will lose her independence, and everything she has built up by helping ladies with their difficulties.\u00a0 Adam is concerned that he won\u2019t have enough money to support Rosalind in a lifestyle appropriate to her upbringing.\u00a0 He is from a lower social class, after all.\u00a0 The scenes with Adam\u2019s family point out that difference: his mother works hard in the kitchen, but Rosalind is used to having the cooking done by servants.\u00a0 The reader hopes that Rosalind and Adam will find a way to be together, despite these differences.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend this series, especially to fans of Andrea Penrose and (even though these series take place much later) Tasha Alexander and Dianne Freeman.\u00a0 Wilde is excellent at giving details of life in Regency London, among various social classes.\u00a0 Her novels are inspired by Jane Austen, even though Wilde writes more about the lower classes.\u00a0 Most of the chapters of The Secret of the Lady\u2019s Maid<\/em> begin with quotations, not from Austen, but from another Regency novel, Maria Edgeworth\u2019s Belinda<\/em>.\u00a0 I have never read Belinda<\/em>, but I was curious enough to look it up, and, as far as I can tell from the very basic plot summary I found, there are parallels in the plot (a young woman coming to live with an elderly woman, who is slowly dying\u2014or is she?).\u00a0 Certainly, the quotations are all appropriate to the chapters.\u00a0 Wilde has done this with other novels; the previous book in the series, The Secret of the Lost Pearls<\/em>, had quotations from Pride and Prejudice<\/em> at the beginning of its chapters, and there were parallels to Pride and Prejudice<\/em> in the plot.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my only complaint about this book, and it has nothing to do with the story itself.\u00a0 This and the previous book have been marketed as Books 1 and 2 of the \u201cUseful Woman\u201d series, while the five earlier ones are called the \u201cRosalind Thorne Mysteries.\u201d\u00a0 The publicity material calls the \u201cUseful Woman\u201d titles a spin-off series.\u00a0 But the way I understand it, a spin-off series is when the author takes a secondary character and creates a new series around that character.\u00a0 This is not what happens here.\u00a0 Rosalind is the main character in all seven books.\u00a0 A series about Alice or Amelia would be a spin-off series.\u00a0 These two books about Rosalind would not.\u00a0 To me, it’s all one series, and this is Book 7, not Book 2.\u00a0 Since the cover art for the latest two books is very different from that of the first five, I have a feeling that the publisher decided to re-market the series for a different audience, and they wanted that audience to start with The Secret of the Lost Pearls<\/em>, which is first in the new numbering.\u00a0 That\u2019s a decision I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Why not reissue the earlier books to attract a new audience?\u00a0 Each book in the series certainly stands on its own, but it helps to have read the earlier ones to know how the characters\u2019 relationships have evolved.\u00a0 Having said that, though, I hope the series does find the new audience the publisher is looking for.\u00a0 I highly recommend it.\u00a0 —\u00a0Vicki Kondelik\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosalind Thorne #7 The Secret of the Lady\u2019s Maid is Darcie Wilde\u2019s seventh book about Rosalind Thorne, a Regency gentlewoman who has fallen on hard times after her father abandoned his family, and who makes a living undertaking discreet investigations for ladies who find themselves in difficult situations.\u00a0 (But see below for my complaint about … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[268,272,162,271,459,1503,273],"class_list":["post-5471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-darcie-wilde","tag-jane-austen","tag-kensington-books","tag-regency-london","tag-rosalind-thorne","tag-the-secret-of-the-ladys-maid","tag-vicki-kondelik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5473,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions\/5473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}