2020 Regency romance, second in a loose series. Agatha Griffin
has made a success of the printing-house that she ran with her late
husband, but she's not ready to deal with bees in the archive.
Penelope Flood lives uncomfortably on the edge between gentry and
trades, but mostly wants to get on with beekeeping…
That disposes of the meet-cute, but I'm glad to say that bees are
much more important than that to this book. And so are other things:
the way a marriage under the law as constituted can never be an equal
partnership, the effectiveness of direct political action but one's
vulnerability when one becomes a target in turn, the ease with which a
group can be whipped up into a mob when fed a moral panic, and the
attempted divorce, and death, of Caroline of Brunswick (and the
effects of rumours on the political climate).
Which is quite a lot, and in turn the romance is another slow burn;
this works very well for me, because these aren't young people whose
only thought is to jump into bed, they've both had relationships
before and value a genuine friendship much more than a fling.
As though one would offer arson instead of a bouquet, to win a
lover's heart. High crimes were probably better suited to a
betrothal than a mere courting gift: you couldn't just start burning
things down in hopes the other person found it romantic. You'd want
to be sure.
Perhaps it doesn't have quite the spark of the first book, but I found
it great fun even so.