Review: Gets off to a good start...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 15, 2012
...and then ends up with a mediocre, contrived finish.Emma Loudan and the Earl of Kerr have been in an arranged engagement since childhood, but he's not ready to settle down and pretty much ignores her. She's living out in the country, anyway, so that's easy to do.At a London party, Kerr, who is known for romancing Frenchwomen of a certain class, is asked when he's going to marry his betrothed.  He says, quoting Shakespeare, not until she has his ring and his baby.  This sets off a round of very entertaining letters, some of them sent to Emma, the neglected fiancee.  I found that part of the story to be a lot of fun.But then it all goes downhill when Emma decides to go to London disguised and pretending to be French, determined to seduce Kerr.  Since she has his ring, of course all she needs is his baby, right?  So this could have been cute, but her trickery and seduction was written in a heavy-handed manner.  I wanted her to do something that would teach Kerr a lesson, but it just turned into an unsophisticated sex farce.Another thing that annoys is that this isn't a new novella.  It appeared in the 2009 anthologyTalk of the Ton.  It should have been a 99-cent novella, considering it's just recycled.