Review: (3.5 stars) How to Deal.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 9, 2013
This is a worthy read but you do need to have a lot of patience to get to the HEA.  We have a caring, nurturing and rather innocent young woman, Rosalie Whitwell, who's traveling by ship back to England when her father dies of a heart attack.  She's left in rather straitened conditions, forced to choose between trying to make her way in the world as a paid companion or living with her father's heir, her drunken and unpleasant uncle.Fellow traveler on the ship is hero Lord Deal.  He's an aloof, reticent, rather antisocial marquess who, for some reason, feels compassion for Rosalie's plight and asks her to marry him.  So they marry and this marriage of convenience is awkward and strained, since Deal is uncommunicative and apparently friendless and also because he refuses to consummate the marriage.Rosalie is a warm, nurturing person and manages, at least, to get Deal to be less aloof with his tenants and neighbors but is unsuccessful at reaching real emotional and sexual intimacy with him.  Now, I had pretty much figured out what Lord Deal's problem was halfway through the story so I really wanted Rosalie to be in on it with me, but no.  It just keeps going on and on with her being clueless and feeling helpless in the relationship and him not at all forthcoming about his past.Things don't get straightened out until the end of the book and that's why the reader needs to have a lot of patience.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story.  The author even throws in some interesting tidbits about language and etymology with regard to American and English vocabulary (since Deal is a linguist of sorts).  Her writing style is pleasant and the characters are well developed. You learn to like the H and h and really hope for them to work everything out.  There are some poignant moments that are well written.My problem was, as already stated, that it took too long for the secrets to be revealed and then Deal's emotional healing is perhaps too quick and easy and pat.  BTW, another good historical romance with a similarly-tortured hero is Liz Carlyle'sThe Devil You Know.  That's from several years ago but worth the read.