Elizabeth Boyle
And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake
Avon / March 26, 2013 / $7.99 print, $6.99 digital
Sensible gentleman of means seeks a sensible lady of good breeding for correspondence, and in due consideration, matrimony.
Which is exactly the sort of advertisement that makes practical-to-a-fault Daphne Dale's heart flutter. A sensible gentleman, in her estimation, is the perfect match, and she's even more convinced once she's exchanging sensibly romantic letters with her very appropriate suitor. That is, until Lord Henry Seldon strays into her path. He's everything she's vowed to avoid—a rakish charmer whose very touch seduces her practical sensibilities and her resolve.
Lord Henry Seldon was not amused when his nephew placed an advertisement to find him a wife. Yet he couldn't resist replying to the note from “Miss Spooner.” And once he discovers he's corresponding with none other than the disarming Daphne Dale, he finds it's too late to disavow his heart. Now it is up to Henry to prove to Daphne just how insensible—and powerfully passionate—true love can be…
Very much like Lord Henry and Daphne do in Elizabeth Boyle’s second book in the Rhymes with Love series, And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake, I started this book with certain assumptions. And very much like Daphne and Lord Henry, those assumptions were quickly blown out of the water.
At the beginning of the book, Lord Henry’s rapscallion of a…nephew (yes, nephew, if you read the first book in the series you will know the rather convoluted family history of the Preston family) places an ad in the newspaper on behalf of Lord Henry. “Sensible gentleman of means seeks a sensible lady of good breeding for correspondence, and in due consideration, matrimony.” Lord Henry and his sister are horrified, but agree he must write to the ladies who replied to the ad. And this, ladies and gents, is where it gets interesting (and we’re not even out of the first chapter!).
Daphne and Henry, neither one knowing the other’s true identity and using the pen names Miss Spooner and Mr. Dishforth, begin to send letters back and forth to one another and slowly, sweetly fall in love. The letters are what bring Daphne to London for the Season—well, that and her best friend’s wedding, but mostly true love, of course! While at her friend’s engagement ball, she sees a stranger across the crowded room and knows instantly it’s Mr. Dishforth, and Henry recognizes her as his Miss Spooner.
His thought went unfinished, for in that moment, the crowd parted and his gaze fell on a young lady across the way—a lithesome vision he’d never seen or met, wearing red silk, a mane of pale blonde hair tumbling down to her bare shoulders in a tempting waterfall of curls.
Then this unknown vision turned, as if tugged by his very examination, and looked at him.
Her eyes widened, just a bit, and then she smiled. Ever so slightly, and he felt as if he’d been harpooned, struck down as it were…
…She, Miss Daphne Dale, the most practical spinster to have ever come out of Kempton, found herself stricken with the most formidable ailment a lady could suffer.
Love at first sight.
It isn’t love, she tried telling herself, for she couldn’t even be certain this man was the one sought.
But no matter, this was the gentleman her heart wanted, her body seemed to recognize without even the most sensible of reasons.
The dance the two share after these longing looks across the ballroom remind me why I love romance. It was sweet and proves to genre-naysayers that romance isn’t just smut. It’s fundamentally romantic (did I mentioned I squee-ed so hard during this scene I think I simultaneously burst neighboring eardrums and my heart may just have melted).
But, of course, it would be a rather boring book if the plot began with love at first sight (or even first letter) and that was it. Lord Henry Seldon and Daphne Dale’s families have been embroiled in a decades-long feud, and both sides are shocked when the pair dances at the ball. Neither one knows the other is their secret pen pal and they are both still drawn to one another despite the hatred they harbor. All of this melodrama could have ended, but Daphne goes to the Seldon house party that marks Preston’s marriage to Daphne’s best friend, Tabitha. Henry and Daphne continue to bicker, feuding families get involved, but Daphne and Lord Henry can’t keep away from each other—especially when Lord Henry decides he’s done being the sullen Seldon and is ready to be a rake.
His warm lips stole over her fingertips. As he drew them closer, she followed, leaning up against him, his coat falling open.
And then it was as if all the barriers between them fell away.
For one moment she was there, enclosed and safe in his coat, and the next she was in his arms.
And hardly safe.
Daphne had moved without any thought, save one.
This is where I belong.
In this man’s arms. Oh, it shouldn’t be so. But it was.
Henry and Daphne fight their attraction all throughout the book and it makes their passion even more illicitly delicious—not only do the families not want them to be together, but they don’t want to be together either. The various family dramas and cases of mistaken identity, on top of the hero and heroine’s own dislike of the other, could very well overwhelm the reader, but Boyle exquisitely balances it all and makes for one of my favorite reads this year.
Learn more about or pre-order a copy of Elizabeth Boyle's And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake (Rhymes with Love #2) before its March 26 release:
Jennifer Proffitt is a Midwest transplant to New York City. She spends most of her time reading and writing about romance, but you can follow her other adventures on Twitter @JennProffitt. She works for Heroes and Heartbreakers and Criminal Element.
