Rating: 
Summary: Lord of Dishonour - a Regency treat!
Review: What can you do if you're a well-brought up young lady, but your mother is a byword for scandal? This is Lady Amanda Amberley's problem: her mother, the Countess of Clovelly, has not lived with her husband for many years, and indeed now lives 'in sin' with an elderly duke. While Amanda is truly the daughter of the Earl, the majority of her siblings are fathered by other men: hence the commonly-used description of her family as the Amberly Assortment.Amanda herself has suffered by association with all of this scandal: at twenty-three she is unmarried, and although she has a (rather pompous and dull) suitor, he is in no hurry to propose - she suspects that her background deters him. Amanda's mother, on the other hand, is keen to ensure that her daughter marries, and marries well. Christian Jarrow, Lord North - a handsome gentleman, but with the unusual feature of having one blue and one grey eye - seeks shelter and rest at Kettering, the home of the Duke of Laxley (the Countess's lover). Showing him to a bedroom, the Countess becomes 'confused' between the Blue Room and the Grey Room, and shows him to the Blue Room... in which Amanda is already ensconced. The obvious happens: they are disturbed minutes later, as North and Amanda are busy working out what must have happened and how they can resolve it. Neither Amanda nor North wish to be forced into a marriage neither of them wants. However, since this happened at a house party, there is no way of escaping the scandal. North therefore comes up with a suggestion... Layton takes time to allow us to get to know both North and Amanda, and they are both very likeable characters. North, who has a reputation - which is largely deserved - as a cynical rake, at first doesn't believe that Amanda is not cut from the same cloth as her mother, and it takes some persuading on Amanda's part to convince him that not only will she not fall into bed with him, but that she is an innocent. There are some lovely, poignant scenes in which Amanda hesitantly tells North about her upbringing and her realisation that she was part of a scandalous family. North himself is not without a painful past; without giving away spoilers, it's enough to say that his reputation is deliberately earned because of his own parentage. So ultimately Amanda comes to understand that North has good reason to be able to empathise with her. This is a lovely love story, of the type which will keep the reader sighing for some time after finishing the book. And I'm delighted that the publisher decided to reissue these two books in a single volume; otherwise I might not have been introduced to Edith Layton's work. One minor grumble: even though this is a later book than The Duke's Wager, she still doesn't understand titles. The title of 'Sir' - for a baronet or a knight - attaches to the first name, not the surname. So it's *Sir Giles*, NOT 'Sir Boothe'. I winced every time I read that.
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