Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal by Grace Burrowes: Maggie Windham is lonely and yearns to be invisible. The illegitimate daughter of a duke and his mistress, she was adopted and raised by her father and his wife and with their nine children. She also has secrets, deep dark secrets, that she keeps from her family with the intention to keep them safe from harm. One day, her reticule is stolen, and she turns to her father’s investigator Benjamin Hazlit to help her find it.
Benjamin also has secrets; he’s an earl who doesn’t use his title, and who has a near obsession with Lady Maggie’s luxurious long red hair. He does private investigations under an assumed name because he is protecting his family’s reputation from his job, and because he feels he failed his sisters by not protecting them when they were younger. Maggie is a woman with many layers, old enough to be firmly “on the shelf” and setup with her own household, a financial genius with a porcine empire, and troubles to spare, and Benjamin finds her completely irresistible. In order to investigate her missing reticule he must pretend that he is courting her, but quickly pretense becomes reality and practice kisses become a discovered tryst that results in an unwanted engagement. Now if only he could win her trust, and help her overcome her problems…
Wow, what a story. The chemistry between the two main characters is nearly electric, and in one’s mind’s eye you can nearly see the magnetic attraction between them. Grace Burrowes’ prose is beautiful and smooth, approaching poetic, even when discussing the most earthy of subjects:
“It’s no good,” He dropped his arms but leaned in and kissed her nose. “as long as I’m holding you, I can think of cold eel pie, my old headmaster at Eton and his mildewed coats, the declension of hoc, haec, hoc, and I’m still as hard as a pikestaff.…”
Besides the growing love, and physical attraction, between the primary characters, we are also shown the love and acceptance between different members of the Windham family to each other, and especially from her father and adopted mother, a love that Maggie was never sure of:
“Of course not, my dear,” the duchess said, her tone fierce and proud, “I am your mother, His Grace is your papa, and you are our daughter.”
The main characters are fully fleshed out and could be real people; after reading the book twice I feel that Maggie could be friend, someone I could actually write a letter to. The antagonist is more two-dimensional, but since the “bad guy” of the book serves primarily as a way to get the “good guys” together, completely realized motivation for the “bad guy” is probably not vital to overarching storyline development.
Besides the characters, the setting is well done, and the descriptions of the clothing, the furnishing and even the tea cakes are exquisite in their detail. All this, however, is incidental to the overall plot of the story, which is great. Not only does it involved a past scandal, but a scandal in the making, and some very unpleasant people. There is perhaps some predictability in the overall storyline, but it doesn’t take too much away from the enjoyment factor.
I loved this book, despite its flaws, and I have loved all of the books in Grace Burrowes’ Windham series. Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal was published in 2012, and at this time there are eight books and four novellas in the series, and all are worth a read, or two, since you will find yourself going back to these books time and time again. If you have not read a Grace Burrowes’ novel, you must go out and find one immediately, and I do recommend this one highly. What’s nice is that this book does stand alone, since the elements of the family storyline are sketched out as needed, but once you read this book I dare you not to want to read the rest of the series, and discover more about the Windham family.
Book Info:
Published May 1st 2012 by Sourcebooks Casablanca
LADY MAGGIE WINDHAM HAS SECRETS
And she’s been perfectly capable of keeping them…until now. When she’s threatened with exposure, she turns to investigator Benjamin Hazlit to keep catastrophe at bay. But Maggie herself intrigues Benjamin more than the riddle she’s set him to solve. As he uncovers more and more of her past, Maggie struggles to keep him at a distance, until they both begin to discover the truth in their hearts…
