Review: The Lost Duke of Wyndham by Julia Quinn

When highwayman Jack Audley stops a coach to rob the occupants, he has little idea of how his life and that of everyone connected to the people in the carriage is going to change because he is robbing the Dowager Duchess of Wyndham and her companion, the impoverished gentlewoman, Grace Eversleigh. He is fascinated by Grace after the robbery and unreasonably bothered by the fact that the Dowager thinks he is the child of her much beloved middle son. He vows to leave the area without pursuing any of the things that are troubling him but he hasn't reckoned on the strength of will to be found in his presumptive grandmother, who has him kidnapped and brought to her. There he finds the intriguing and long-suffering Grace as well as the current Duke of Wyndham, who will lose his title if Jack's birth is proved to be legitimate. As the mystery of whether or not he is the actual Duke unfolds, Jack and Grace fall in love. A smaller subplot between Thomas, the current Duke of Wyndham, who stands to lose everything if Jack is proven legitimate, and Amelia, the woman he's been bethrothed to since childhood is left unresolved and is the focus of the second Wyndham book.

I generally like Julia Quinn's regency set romances and this was no exception. They are light and fun and good escapism. The obstacles her heros and heroines have to overcome to be together don't cross the line into the realm of the impossible and like Jack and Grace, in this book, they have good chemistry together. I do wish that the ubiquitous "immediate attraction" thing would fall by the wayside because I am skeptical of a touch from a stranger being burned into your consciousness but that's a fairly minor quibble here and one that, in any case, seems to be standard for the genre regardless of my personal preferences. Overall, exactly the read I wanted and was expecting here.