RAKE'S RANSOM and A LOYAL COMPANION

Author: Barbara Metzger ISBN: 0451217934 1/2006 HISTORICAL Publisher: SIGNET REGENCY
Time Period: Regency

RAKE'S: RANSOM Spunky Jacelyn Trevaine always knows when someone is trying to pull the wool over her eyes. So when the local magistrate tries to blackmail her into seeing his nephew, Jacelyn decides to kidnap the younger man. But she inadvertently abducts the wrong rake, the dashing Earl of Claibourne, whose honor she will soon put to the test.... A LOYAL COMPANION A country girl, Miss Sonia Randolph has been uprooted and moved to London for her Season. No one there quite understands this free-spirited beauty—except Major Darius Conover, a man whose wartime heroism failed to erase an old scandal from his peers' memories. But his fellow outcast is decidedly determined to undo the shackles binding his heart...

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

I had mixed feelings about Rake's Ransom, the first story in this two-Regency volume. As I get older, I find it increasingly difficult to read those books where the heroine is young (in this case, seventeen) and the hero is around my age (mid-thirties). The good news is that Barbara Metzger is great with characterization, so the heroine, Jacey, is believably seventeen, but because she is, a lot of the book seems so silly to me, and the way the hero treats Jacey makes me wonder how he could stand to marry her, even for the money he needs. Additionally, Regency writing styles have changed since this book was published in 1986. However, the book is well done in its old-fashioned way, and if you have missed this book in the past, it is worth a look.

A Loyal Companion (originally published in 1992) is quite charming, and employs the literary device of having one of the main point-of-view characters be the heroine's dog, Fitz. Fitz is a charming fellow with a keen interest in his mistress's future, and lots to say about the goings on of the ton. The heroine is again a country lass in London. This hero is a bit younger and more helpless than the rake in Rake's Ransom, though also an earl, and a veteran of the wars against Napoleon. Perhaps these similarities are why the novels were packaged together. I enjoyed the second novel more than the first, mostly because of Fitz the dog.

Heather Hiestand