The Countess

The Countess  by Lynsay Sands

 

Deviating from her hilarious Ageneau vampire series, Lynsay Sands takes us on a fun, laugh-out-loud romp thru Regency England in the first of the Monroe Sisters Trilogy, The Countess.

Christina's husband is a jerk. Dickey (yes, that is his name) wooed her and said pretty things as he was courting her, but starting the night of the wedding, he turned into a mean, condescending stranger. He tells her she has bad taste in clothes, that she's unattractive (he doesn't even consummate the marriage), and he keeps all of her family and friends from visiting her. She begins to suspect that he only married her for her very large dowry.

Dickey is trying to send her sisters away when she comes downstairs and thwarts him, which only makes him angrier. After making her sisters wait a long time and forcing her to eat a revolting breakfast, Christina finally gets to talk with them and discovers their problem. Their father has gambled away the family fortune (again) and their middle sister needs to find a land rich, money poor husband in a hurry so she can gain access to her dowry to pay off their father's debts. Gathering her courage, Christina goes into her husband's study to demand that they be allowed to give her sisters a proper debut into society when she discovers that he's dead. Not wanting to have to go into a year's long mourning and deprive her sister from finding a husband, Christina allows her sisters to convince her to wrap Dickey up in a carpet, put him in bed packed with ice, and to tell the sevants that Dickey is unwell and to leave him alone at least until her middle sister finds a husband. Good plan, right? Unless Dickey's dead twin brother shows up at the ball and screws everything up. Which brother is the true heir? What does a strawberry have to do with anything? And who killed Dickey?

 

Elizabeth