REVIEW: The Winter Bride by Anne Gracie

The Winter Bride by Anne Gracie: is a perfect little jewel box of a novel. Meticulously crafted, all the parts come together like clockwork and the end result is satisfying and beautiful. “The Winter Bride” is the second book of Anne Gracie’s Chance Sister Series, and is about four young women (two of which are actual sisters) who rescue themselves from captivity in a brothel, and fall into the good favors of lonely Lady Beatrice Davenham. At her house they become “nieces” and Lady Beatrice is sponsoring their entrée in society, introducing them as the children of a relative who married a Venetian marchese. In the first book, the oldest sister Abigail Chantry marries Lady Davenham’s actual nephew Max, Lord Davenham. “The Winter Bride” begins with Max and Abby leaving for their honeymoon trip, and Max convincing his oldest friend the Honorable Frederick Monkton-Coombes (Freddy) to look after Lady Beatrice and the three remaining girls while they are gone. He is highly reluctant, since he avoids unmarried respectable girls (referred to as ‘muffins’) and is drawn to one of the sisters, Damaris, but refuses to think about why. Freddy swears to be uninterested in marriage, largely due to his difficult family background, and doesn’t want to be tied down in any way.

“From the beginning he’d made it clear he had no interest in marriage, and once he realized respectable mamas and daughters avoided rakes like the plague, he’d done his best to encourage his reputation as a rake to grow.”

Damaris Tait (now Damaris Chance) is the daughter of Chinese missionaries who had a very unhappy marriage. That, and an extremely unpleasant voyage back to England from China has given Damaris reasons not to get married, to the point that she even refuses to have a season. Damaris longs for a quiet life, a cottage in the country, chickens and a vegetable garden. To that end, Damaris has secretly gone back to work, painting pottery. Freddy, doing his best to fulfill Max’s wishes to watch over the girls, spots Damaris going to work one early morning, and follows her. He finds out what she is doing, and then, feeling responsible for her safety, gets up early every morning to walk her to work. During these walks they start to become friends. When Freddy’s parents concoct a plan to force him into marriage, Freddy pays Damaris to become engaged to him with the secret understanding that they never will actually be married.

Of course, time together leads to feelings for each other. Their first real kiss leaves them both moved. For Freddy:

“He’d never kissed an innocent before, and this—God, this was the last thing he’d expected. Her kiss was untutored, yet somehow…knowing. Licks of fire sizzled and snapped along his nerves, heat sweeping through his body, pooling in his groin, swelling…”

And for Damaris:

“The kiss had moved her. Moved—such a plain, blunt word for the complex threads of feelings tangled inside her.… It had shaken her to the core with its unexpected tenderness and promise.”

Damaris and Freddy both have a long emotional path to travel in this book. They hide their real selves from the world, and the people around them, even those who love them, find them difficult to get to know. They both have their own heart-breaking reasons not to marry, or even to trust the opposite gender, and their journey from wariness to trust, deep unhappiness to happiness, is lovely to read about. Anne Gracie writes a gentle book, draws the reader into the tale and doesn’t let go. It’s humorous too, with little recurrent amusing bits that keep the entire story lively. I have to admit I read “The Winter Bride” all in one long session, and could not put it down. A must-read for all lovers of Regency Romance, and fans of reformed rakes.

Book Info:

Published April 1st 2014 by Berkley

Damaris Chance’s unhappy past has turned her off the idea of marriage forever. But her guardian, Lady Beatrice Davenham, convinces her to make her coming out anyway—and have a season of carefree, uncomplicated fun.

When Damaris finds herself trapped in a compromising situation with the handsome rake Freddy Monkton-Coombes, she has no choice but to agree to wed him—as long as it’s in name only. Her new husband seems to accept her terms, but Freddy has a plan of his own: to seduce his reluctant winter bride.

Will Damaris’s secrets destroy her chance at true happiness? Or can Freddy help her cast off the shackles of the past, and yield to delicious temptation?