Anne Gracie, The Perfect Rake

The Perfect Rake

Anne Gracie

Berkley, Jul 2005, $7.99

ISBN: 0425203956

In 1816, Lord Dereham uses a riding whip in a rage on his seventeen year old granddaughter Faith in the locked attic. Nineteen year old sister Charity sends Faith's twin Hope to get the oldest sibling Prudence to intercede with their abusive grandfather. Charity has welts on her face and Hope on her wrists as both tried to intervene. Pru frees Faith and tells him in eight weeks she will be twenty-one and the guardian of her siblings; they will leave even without a cent. When he hurts himself in a fall while angrily running after Pru, she takes her sisters to the home of their Uncle Oswald where she hopes to find them husbands.

Oswald takes in his battered nieces, but insists Pru marry first. She informs him that she is engaged to recluse Edward, a duke. Pru goes to see Edward to enlist his help, but his rakish cousin Gideon Carradice intercepts her. She thinks he is Edward while he knows she is his beloved and wants her as his wife though his withdrawn cousin seeks a spouse too.

As expected, Anne Gracie provides a wonderful Regency romance that through her ensemble of secondary cast brings to life the era especially the rights of male guardians to abuse and use their female wards. Pru is a courageous person standing up to her violent vile grandfather who blames his late daughter-in-law for her Jezebel ways that killed his son in sin. He takes his feelings outon their children. Fans will appreciate Gideon's efforts to prove to his beloved that he is the man for her, but first must overcome his own duplicity. THE PERFECT RAKE is a near perfect sub-genre entry.

Harriet Klausner