Lady Midnight

Author: Amanda McCabe
Published: May 2005 (Signet)
Category: Historical Romance
Rating: 8/10

Katerina Bruni is heiress apparent to her mother, Lucrezia Bruni, the most famous courtesan in Venice. Katerina has been raised and trained to follow in her mother's footsteps. However, before her first protector makes his first purchase, their yacht party gets swallowed in a sudden Mediterranean storm, leaving Katerina as its sole survivor. In a fever dream, her mother's spirit tells her to start a new life, because the life of a courtesan isn't so glamorous underneath the surface. She believes Katerina will find happiness in another life.

By using the jewelry she'd been wearing, Katerina starts a new life in England as Mrs. Kate Brown, widow of an English soldier. She finds a position as a governess in Yorkshire for Michael Lindley's younger sister Christina and his daughter Amelia. Michael is another tragic story. Due to his reckless ways, his wife died in a curricle (or something of that sort) race, turning him into a more mature and responsible man. Instead of indulging in the entertainments availabe in London, he chooses to stay in Yorkshire, working on his estate, and even helping out with the physical labor outside.

Kate finds that she loves Yorkshire and its moors. She's also very attracted to Michael, a man who is attracted to her as well, but not false like the men she knew in Venice, particularly the vile Julian Kirkwood. He was to be Kate's first protector, but he talked about her as though she was an object to possess and stalked her when she left her home. In contrast, Lindley was charming and enjoyed conversing with her, liking more than just her looks.

Both Kate and Michael have secrets: he about his wife's death, and she about her almost-career. This is the part where the book could go bad, where the characters are too chicken to tell each other the truth and wind up being angry at each other in the vein of, "How could you not tell me? Don't you trust me?" They both reveal the truth, and neither of them holds their past against the other. In fact, as each truth is revealed, the listener is understanding and supportive, showing how much they actually love each other.

There's a bit of darkness as well. Julian Kirkwood didn't die during that fateful yachting party. He was slow to recover, and when he finally awoke, he was still obsessed with his Katerina. He also believed her dead until they attend the same salon and he begins raving about his Katerina. Kate's secret past is then exposed, and Michael's sister-in-law freaks out because this will ruin the family name! And then Michael's mother freaks out as well, making Kate decide to run away. Thankfully, we don't have to deal with that plot device, as Lindley prevents this and convinces Kate to marry him (she turned him down the first time because of her past). However, they've got to figure out the Julian Kirkwood problem before they can have their happily ever after.

Kirkwood is very creepy, following Kate and the rest of the Lindleys back to Yorkshire. He even tries using Christina to get to Kate. I thought the dumbest thing Kate did was deciding not to tell Michael about seeing Kirkwood in the village.

I would've rated this a 9 or 10 if Kate and Christina weren't so reckless regarding Julian's presence in Yorkshire. And if the sister-in-law and dowager didn't freak out about Kate's almost-bad-past. It's not like she actually was a light skirt; she never got to that point in her previous life.