Last Chance, My Love by Lynne Connolly
What if you’re in love – but you can’t make love?
Book One of the Triple Countess series.
Miranda and Daniel, Earl and Countess of Rosington, are in love, but for the past five years their love has been purely platonic. Because if Miranda has another child, she will die.
Daniel resolves to take a mistress, one who will understand the purely physical business arrangement, but when Miranda discovers his plan, she can’t bear it. So Daniel’s brothers scheme, and Daniel finds himself on the losing end of a wager.
Daniel and Miranda must pose as a simple innkeeper and his wife, forced to work together to save a failing business. Their masquerade brings them into temptation, their searing desire for each other threatening to ruin their good intentions, but it also brings danger, in the presence of the brutal father of a young girl who turns for them for help.
Can Daniel and Miranda save themselves, their protégée and their marriage?
Read an excerpt here
This is the first book I have read by Lynne Connolly. And to be honest I almost passed over it when scrolling through Samhain’s Coming Soon section because it didn’t look historical at all.
The first sentence of the summary totally caught my interest. How was the author going to make it seem creditable they wouldn’t have sex – at all. I knew this was historical (by that point 😉 ) but the hero HAD to know there were ways around the whole preggers thing. Didn’t he?
I am happy to report Lynne Connolly did an excellent job selling me and making that first sentence work for me. As well getting across the feelings of the wife who only knows her husband no longer wants her and a husband who truly wants his wife but doesn’t know how to make that happen – physically or emotionally.
For the most part I loved Miranda and Daniel, although I couldn’t see why he hadn’t explained what the doctor said or why he was no longer intimate with her. As for the ‘issues’ with the doctor, I can totally see that happening during the time frame we have here. And brings home why it is never a good idea to keep women in the dark about their bodies. But I didn’t buy the resolution to the issue. Or maybe I just wanted to see him shot.
The brothers are great and I really look forward to reading the next two tales in this series. The playing inn keeper thing… men did take their wagers seriously in those days. And that is what I told myself whenever I got a ‘huh, what’ feeling. But I could see that being an issue for some readers. I just sat back and enjoyed a really lovely historical romance by a very talented author.
Grade: A-
Thanks for the great review!
I knew this was a lot commoner then than it is now, and it was something I really wanted to deal with!
So I made Daniel and Miranda have an early, arranged marriage, and they were perfectly happy with things as they were, until Miranda had a baby and – oops, she couldn’t have another one.
I’d read letters from the Georgian era where this dilemma is explained, and usually the husband went off and made a business arrangement with a courtesan or prostitute, but Miranda doesn’t want that. In pre-rubber days there was no such thing as reliable contraception, which made lovemaking a bit more adventurous, but Miranda and Daniel don’t know this, having subscribed to the if-it’s-not-broke-don’t-fix-it school of thought. Except that when it does break, they don’t know how to fix it. So the wager is to give them a chance to find out for themselves, before Daniel’s savvier brothers actually sit him down and tell him (isn’t it more fun to find something out for yourself?)
And it’s a romance, so yes, the happy ending is there.
The next book is coming in November, and it’s Orlando’s story.
I may have to try this. I was intrigued by the premise too. Thanks for the review.
At this time there were condoms right? Just made from something… sheepskin? oh hell now I will have to go look up the history of condom’s or something.
I wanna read Orlando’s story!
You should try it alyssa, you will prolly like it ;).
Yes, but they were used primarily with prostitutes, and for the prevention of disease. Most ‘respectable’ women refused to have anything to do with them.
Made of sheep or pig gut, not sheepskin (furry condoms? Hmmmm!) and not very effective when they were used.
The sponge and the lemon (half a lemon, roughly scooped out, used as a diaphragm) were also used, but none of them were as effective as today’s contraceptives.
Miranda needed 100% if she were to survive.
And Daniel and Miranda were innocent. The book is the story of their journey to a more fulfilled relationship.
I guess I just got tired of books where young girls bounce into bed with dukes with no ill effects, so I wanted to take the opposite view – what if you couldn’t, and you wanted to?