Frederica

 

By Georgette Heyer (read by Clifford Norgate)

The jaded and bored Marquess finds his she-marquess.

While the title of the book is Frederica, this story is more about the hero, the Marquess of Alverstoke, who at the age of 37 had given up on love and marriage. He was a prize in the marriage sweepstakes -- money and a title -- but had no interesting in marrying anyone who was only after either of them. He could spot them a mile away. Then, he met Frederica, who was looking for neither. In fact, she had only sought out her distant cousin so that his wife could help her and her sister, Charys, navigate the London social season; imagine her surprise when Alverstoke said he wasn't married. And that was the meet-cute.

The story takes off when Alverstoke sees what a beauty Charys is and decides to use it to get a bit of revenge on his widowed sister who has asked him to give (and pay for) a ball in his niece's honor to launch her into society. Add a few more secondary characters into the story -- some school boy siblings, the heir to the Alverstoke title, some unwanted suitors --and you have a classic Georgette Heyer Regency romance. And they all live happily ever after.

Written barely 10 years before her death and in the fifth decade of her career, Heyer has long since hit her stride as an author. She has long since set the parameters of the genre that she is credited with inventing, the regency romance, and now she is knocking it out of that park time after time.

This is one of her best. Four and a half stars.