Lady Joan Flynn flees her family to avoid answering questions about a tricky situation she’s gotten herself into. Usually level-headed, she doesn’t think her flight through and almost ends up stranded at a train station. Enter Dante Hartwell. He offers her a lift, with his sister and his two children, in their train carriage and since she’s desperate and she has been introduced to him before, she accepts. That’s when the fun begins.
Joan is a great character. I love how her “thing” is clothes. She’s all about patterns, cloth, how dresses are put together, accents and colors, and she’s very good at what she does. But because she’s a Lady people don’t give her any credit for her work. But worse is the non-acknowledgement of her creativity. She’s hungry for any praise and that’s where she gets into trouble.
Dante is in trade and thus far below the station of Lady Joan who is the daughter of a Marquess. Dante rose up from nothing to own three mills through his marriage. With his wife dead he runs the mills and is profitable. However, in order to make improvements he needs investors. Wealthy investors. He went to Edinburgh to take a shot at landing a titled wealthy wife, but had no luck so was on his way to a Christmas house party that might prove more lucrative a venture when he runs into Lady Joan who is headed to the same party.
Dante is also a great character. He’s progressive, smart, decent, and treats people well. He loves his children and his sister, cares about his employees, and is not afraid of hard work. He has his flaws, as does Joan, but that only makes them more likeable. Even though a HEA is pretty much a given in these types of stories I still worried they would continue to keep things to themselves and thus sabotage their marriage before it really got started.
This is book 4 in a series and I didn’t realize that, but it can be read as a standalone even though other characters from earlier books are present. I didn’t feel as if I had missed their stories, but it does make me want to seek them out and get to know them better. It’s a bit rough in spots, but all-in-all this is a heartwarming Christmas love story with a villain to hate and enjoyable characters to cheer for.
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