Once Again a Bride
Charlotte spent the entire wretched year she was married to Henry wishing he was dead. Now her dark wish comes true when her husband is murdered by thieves while returning home from his club late one night. Yet even from beyond the grave, Henry manages to make Charlotte’s life miserable. When his will is read, Charlotte discovers he has left her nothing. Everything, including what remains of her dowry, goes to establishing a private museum for his collection of antiquities. Even with the assistance of Henry’s nephew, Alexander, there is nothing Charlotte can do to break the will, but what is even worse is that Charlotte soon becomes the leading suspect in her husband’s untimely death. Ashford spices up the plot of her latest Regency historical with an intriguing thread of mystery while at the same time realistically tempering the story with details about the social and political unrest of the time. In addition, readers who remember the Upstairs Downstairs flavor of Marion Chesney’s classic Regencies will especially enjoy the secondary love story between Charlotte’s maid and Alexander’s footman. --John Charles