Henry, Duke of Torquil, wouldn’t be caught reading the wildly popular “Dear Lady Truelove” column, but when its advice causes his mother to embark on a scandalous elopement, an outraged Henry decides the author of this tripe must be stopped before she can ruin any more lives. Though Lady Truelove’s identity is a closely guarded secret, Henry has reason to suspect the publisher of the notorious column, beautiful and provoking Irene Deverill, is also its author.
For Irene, it’s easy to advise others to surrender to passion, but when she meets the Duke of Torquil, she soon learns that passion comes at a price. When one impulsive, spur-of-the-moment kiss pulls her into a scorching affair with Henry, it could destroy her beloved newspaper, her career, and her independence. But in the duke’s arms, surrender is so, so sweet . . .
Finally, I reached out my hand to the first installment in the Lady Truelove series of books. And it was a delightful and touching journey, well, as every time when it comes to Laura's writing.
Lady Truelove is a pseudonym of Irene Deverill who runs a paper titled Society Snippets, she does so for not to allow her family to fall down into demise due to her father inability in skill and health to run the business himself. It started as means for survival, but became a meaningful existence for her. Lady Truelove gives advice to her correspondents and one of those became the Duchess of Torquil, who fell in in love with a man who was so much different in a social standing, this affair became known to entire London thanks to gossip and now it received a widespread when the letter from the abovementioned Duchess was published in Society Snippets.
Henry, the Duke of Torquil was devastated by the news, he deemed the man as a simple money-hunter and could not understand his mother's move when he surely knew that her action would surely become a scandal and a stain on reputation of her daughters. He wished to stop this wedding as much as he could, but his every attempt to talk his own sense into his mother only met with defense. He could only take a step back and ask her to move back to their family home, not feed the gossipers and not make the situation even worse. While he thought he might find a chance to make things different.
He goes to Society Snippets office where he meets devilishly beautiful Irene, her image sways his mind, but the exchange they have cooled him down, since he met with an opinion totally opposite of his own.
And here is the great motivation that I find. From one point we have a Duke, who has his own social status, he also cares a great deal about his family and doesn't want them to be downed in scandal, from the other hand we have Irene, who was disowned since the day she was born, just because her mother chose to marry someone below her status and was refused by her family. She thought that one's life should not depend on opinion of others and if someone refuses to support you when you're needed, then probably such relations are not worth it. Due to her own experience she saw nothing bad to follow one's heart, Duchess was a mature woman, a widow, she surely was sane enough to consider whom to marry and her own future. But Henry saw it as Lady Truelove who gave advice without considering consequences and did not bring herself to care what would happen to people if they follow her advice. Their communication fails and soon Irene finds that Duke can really catch her off guard and their start is that of enmity more than anything. He gave his own ultimatum - either follow him to his own residence and live two weeks of the season that is about to end and manage to dispell his mother from marrying an Italian painter or he buys and shuts her paper. Unfortunately, since her own father who was dreaming about giving his daughter dowries and sending them to society was the one who legally owned the paper he gladly signed the contract without considering her own will. And this is basically what set her off the most as we later find out. The thing is Irene is a suffragist and she thinks and feels that her own life should be in her own hands and not at the mercy of the man, especially if the above-mentioned man never considers what she needs and what she aspires, instead does things he considers the best option. Irene was devastated, especially when she realized that she doesn't really want to talk the Duchess out of her adventure. Irene herself was doing things not only for her paper, but for her sister, since she knew that out of two of them her sister was the one most excited about the possibility. Yet she was thinking of running a paper and running the season. Here some of Henry's advices actually worked, even if it was like clash of opinions, but they ended up stepping back here and there and trying to express what their view on the events and life in general were.
But their direct opposite opinions did not change the following attraction to each other. Henry, who tried to follow the proper way was burning day by day, but his conduct and his past would not allow him to follow the same route and bring a ruin to the woman he was so attracted to and any advances from his side would not bear good results. Irene on the other hand after two weeks of battling back and forth was seeing things in an easier way, she felt if she this man was attracting her so much she couldn't help herself she would bed him, she would allow herself this affair, she considered many possibilities, even if it meant ruin, but she didn't see it as such. At that time she couldn't realize the dark prospects he tried to share. They spent a wonderful week together, but even in such a short time the feelings grew, yet the realization also came. Especially when his duty called and he had to leave to tend to his estates. Realization that the place where they could be together openly is only a hotel room, they can't be together in public, because none of them would be able to conceal the feelings they share, they could meet during season or rare visits to city, no village romance where everyone knew him. The possibility of their affair being uncovered burned him with guilt since he never wanted to be the cause of her possible ruin, he saw only two ways out of it, marrying out of need or living with reputation ruined. She saw how bleak the picture was, but what completely cooled her down is his refusal to be there when his mother will be wed. His excuse was that otherwise people will think he supports it, but she saw that it was heartless to leave his own mother without support when she so needed it. No opinion of the society should stop him from doing the right thing.
They broke off, and he finally realized that he can't go on without her. In these short weeks she managed to change him, although he was rigid and followed rules from childhood, but he won't decide the fate of his own mother and his sisters for them, just because it's his duty to protect and he loves them. Same with Irene, he came to love her and doesn't want to deprive her of who she is. This is the time for changes. Doesn't mean that Irene hasn't changed anything for him. She decided to elliminate gossip column, leave the paper to others, so her publishing business would be indirect and she will try to be the duchess to the best of her abilities, but what made her happy is that he wasn't against her aspiration for women to vote and with her new position she could start making small changes here and there. They might not know what may come, but they'll be together.
Very happy ending :) Anyway, the image of Irene is someone who doesn't see the need in the old rules, though some she comes to understand when she is in direct contact with them. Here and there we see the overall women's fate, for example as his sister Angela asked him what is there except marrying a husband and having children? It's the only option for women and also they become dependent on men, their freedom and finances too. Work for women is condemned, voting is deemed as unnecessary. His sister who passed away was fond of chemistry, but because of opposition from her father she was refused the opportunity to study. On the other hand Torquil was brought with responsibility, he knew that fates of his relations and also hundreds of lives depended on him and he couldn't endager them, so most of his decisions were made safe and his opinions followed the same rigid route. It wasn't that all rules were bad, it wasn't that he completely changed and became a new person, he still shared a great deal of old-fashionedness, he just managed to change here and there under the influence of Irene.
I personally found it a great book, which not only managed to lay down the motivation of the characters, but also portray those characters in a 3-dimensional way. They had their own deal of pickering, but also passion. And although the storyline may not be anything exciting, since there is not much going on in general and it was more a clash of views, but still I found it touching.
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