Widowed only six months into her marriage, Lady Emily Ashton finds herself in a unique position. She only married her husband (Phillip) to escape the control of her mother. After Phillip’s death, though, she starts to find out more about him and she discovers she loves him, including wanting to study the subjects Phillip was interested in such as antiquity art and literature. Emily regrets not knowing him better when he was alive and wishing she had not been so distant from him.
The event of his death, though, creates an art mystery that Lady Emily intends to solve. In doing so, she meets a delightful aristocratic French woman (Cecile) who acts as a sort of partner in solving the art mystery, which involves forgeries and learning about the black market of art imitation. I hope Cecile shows up in future novels.
Also, Phillip’s best friend, Colin Hargreaves, is an important character in this novel. Much to my frustration, Emily thinks he is behind the forgeries. I was rather confident, though, that he was not. I thought he was probably some kind of private detective who was investigating the forgeries secretly. I will not say if I was correct (the reader can find out), but needless to say, I felt Emily was sometimes naïve. There was one point in the novel where she thought Phillip (an avid hunter who traveled to Africa frequently) was alive in Africa and just lost. I found this to be incredibly frustrating because it was obvious to me someone was trying to make Emily believe, through forged documents, that he was alive.
Do not get me wrong. I loved the novel and I like Emily. However, there were times I thought she was too naïve. She is a lot smarter than that. And in the end, she proves to be just that when she corners the real forger.
Next novel in the series: A Poisoned Season
My goal is to review this in February.