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A Suitable Match, A novel of Regency England
A Suitable Match A novel of Regency England Author:Joy Freemen From A SUITABLE MATCH: — "Chloe sat and stewed in silence over what she could only think a perfectly incredible turn of events. Her niece --the last girl in the world she should have expected to form such an alliance! And Sherworth--well, she couldn't help but laugh, thinking of him having to deal with the girl. Not, however, because she was anyt... more »hing like what he was so obviously envionioning--an uncomely and brainless baggage.
"Chloe knew her niece only from the two brief visits she had made to London, but the girl had seemed to epitomize everything Sherworth most disliked in a female--full as could hold with proprieties and a cool, untouchable quality about her... .
"Just knowing 'that' would doubless set Sherworth on the run back to Brighton. What was more, by the time he 'came' to know it, odds were he'd sped on his way by the girl herself. For no less incredible than that such a fastidious miss should elect to marry her wild rascal of a cousin was the likelihood that she would have anything at all to say to such a lusty, ill-conducted fellow as Sherworth."
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A SUITABLE MATCH is a transcendent Regency romancy, one that goes far beyond the usual limits of it genre to combine a sparkling comedy of manners with a drama of complex, believable human emotions. With subtle humor, unerring taste, and exceptional elegance, Joy Freman portrays the characteristically troubled but always amusing courtship of Sherworth, a rakish earl sworn to bachelorhood (but hardly celibacy), and Vescinda Bancroft, a girl of beauty, good birth, and good sense who seems doomed by unlucky circumstances of spinsterhood. As we move with the best of British society from London townhouses to country estates to the seaside resort of Lyme Regis, we see Vescinda and Sherworth as each other's throats and in each other's arms in sudden and splendid juxtaposition.
This is a work in the tradition of Jane Austen: witty, dramatic, and sophisticated in a way all Regencies strive for but very few achieve. Fast-paced, with a prose style and plot so carefully crafted as to appear almost casual, this virtuoso performance marks the brilliant debut of an extraordinary sensitive romantic writer.