"rousing Regency romantic romp"

Her parents and her twin brother Andrew demand she marry Napoleonic War hero Captain Lesley Earnshaw, but Lady Amanda Gilbertson refuses. Her memory of Lesley is that of a bully. She prefers to spend her time doing intellectual things though much of their communication is correspondence that Andrew serves as intermediary with Lesley's older brother Charles, a duke.

About to leave the military Captain Lesley Earnshaw refuses his family's efforts to wed him to childhood pest Lady Amanda Gilbertson, who he assumes, is a loser having failed to find a match in three seasons with rumors that she has been waiting for his return. Besides not having any desire to be pursued by the nuisance, Lesley figures that the loser must be pathetically idiotic or ugly, and probably both.

Lesley and Amanda set in motion separate brilliant schemes to avoid the other. However, instead, their perfect plots force them together in escapades and misadventures that allow each one to realize that life would prove tedious without the other as love begins to blossom between them, but identities remain hidden.

CAPTAIN RAKEHELL is a reprint (under the name Jane Lynson) of a rousing Regency romantic romp. Sub-genre fans will appreciate the antics of the lead couple as their plots intermingle causing the opposite of what they first intended. The support cast adds to the amusement of two souls avoiding marriage to one another except their endeavors propel them together and in love. Lynn Michaels provides a fabulous historical that hopefully will also lead to the reprint of the sequel, THE DUKE'S DOWNFALL.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 24, 2006