Kathryn Caskie, Love Is In the Heir

Love Is In the Heir

Kathryn Caskie

Warner, June 2006, $6.50, 304 pp.

ISBN: 0446616109

The accident wiped out much of the Devonsfield extended family tree. Lord Devonsfield assigned his servant Pinkerton to find the new heir. Pinkerton locates the heir, but there is a problem. There are twins with no one knowing who the older brother is; their birth was difficult, the mother died and the father grieved. The Earl decides that the first one of the twins to marry a "lady" will inherit his earldom.

The intellectual twin astronomer Griffin St. Albans meets Miss Hannah Chillton over an errant hat, a falcon and a cliff. Each is attracted to the other. Not long afterward in a coaching accident, the athletic twin Garnet also meets Hannah and realizes she is the one his sibling is half in love with. Being better with women, Garnet pretends to be Griffin to help foster his brother's cause with Hannah. As identities become muddled, Hannah feels fickle, as one moment she thinks she loves the shy Mr. St. Albans and the next she wonders why she cannot abide the overly confident Mr. St. Albans.

Any novel that contains the Featherton sisters (see RULES OF ENGAGEMENT and A LADIES GUIDE TO A RAKE) is going to be amusing, wacky and fun, as the elderly matchmakers turn the aristocracy upside down. The current tale is zany, yet built off of a real event in 1822 with a genuine astronomer Miss Caroline Herschel, that adds an anchor to the comet induced story. Still, this entertaining historical belongs to a way out heroine and twins who change places to further the cause of one of them with the eccentric female protagonist. Readers will risk a bad heir day waiting in line for Kathryn Caskie's fine Regency.