Review of the wonderful conclusion to the Regency romance series Rogues to Riches, Never a Duke by Grace Burrowes

 

I loved  Never a Duke. the closing book in Grace Burrowes' Regency romance Rogues to Riches series.  The series follows the four Wentworth siblings and some of their extended family from a childhood of abuse and abject poverty through the oldest brother's climb to riches and then an accidental Dukehood, to well-earned happy marriages all around.  Each of the family members and their spouses have their particular unhappy back story -- including SPOILERS 

 

 

 

 

teen pregnancy, patricide, a stint in a horrible mental hospital -- and the love they find takes hard work and courage.

Mostly, though, I found these books a pleasure to read because they are well-written, not just the overall arcs of the books and the series, but the chapters, the paragraphs, the sentences.  

Never a Duke follows the adventures of Ned Wentworth, an adopted brother.  When I began the book, quite a while after I read the last one, I actually had him confused with a different character who I had forgotten already had his own novella (Duncan, a cousin, who I think married a "lady banker," although that could have been a different character).  Once I realized Ned wasn't Duncan I had very little recollection of him.  The book talks a lot about the beginning of his story that occurred in the first book of the series, My One and Only Duke.  When I read Never a Duke my recollection of My One and Only Duke was fuzzy enough that  I wasn't sure how much of the back story had actually occurred and how much was retconning.  To tell you how much I loved this series, I actually went back and reread My One and Only Duke -- and I'll review it in a future post.  (Spoiler:  it's excellent, and even better when viewed as the first in the series.)  

In the earlier books in the series Ned had met the then-future Duke when they were both in prison, the Duke as a man wrongly accused of murder and Ned as a child collared for shoplifting.  Ned taught the Duke how to survive in prison and was an all-around good and spunky kid, so when the Duke was sprung he took Ned with him, adopted him into the family, gave him the Wentworth name, and educated him.  A couple of decades or so have gone by since the first book, and now Ned is the very Gen Xish-type manager of the Duke's bank, a stressed-out workaholic overlooked and taken for granted by the more flamboyant members of the generation above him.

In all these years the other Wentworths have never really gotten to know Ned.  Does he like being an adopted Wentworth? Does he ever feel like he is really part of the family?  What was his original last name and why was he willing to give it up?  Why did he end up in prison when the Duke was there?  Does he like being a banker?  Does he like working the long hours?  Does he actually enjoy spending time with the rest of the Wentworths?  What are his secret hobbies?

This is where the book begins.  I'm not going to go into too much detail of the plot of the book itself, which is all about (ugh) kidnappings, and makes little sense, involves some very unlikely coincidences, and includes an encounter similar to Biblical Joseph meeting a mysterious and unexplained man in a field who sent him in a certain direction, without which the rest of the story could not have happened.  

Ned's love interest is Rosalind, and she's fine.  She's the unhappy, secretly illegitimate daughter of an earl, and her true desire is -- actually, I forget, she's not that interesting and I just want more Ned and more Wentworths.  The point is, Ned is a great character, his relationship with the Wentworths is perfectly drawn, and he gets his happily ever after which includes not only marrying Rosalind but SPOILERS

 

 

being reunited with his family of origin, and time to work on his secret hobby.

It is an altogether satisfying end to the book and to the Rogues to Riches series. 

Non-smutty short story: The Counter

 

THE COUNTER

I try always to work from first light to last, and I expect I would work through the night if I did not fear that the darkness and my need for rest would make me lose my place and I would never know.  A lunch break – such decadence!  The thought gives me a perverse excitement.  Because when I begin again each morning, of course I must actually begin again; the tide has come and gone, the breeze has mixed the grains around, and really nothing is at it was the night before.

If I stole away for lunch on a still day, though; if I stole away and turned my back to the beach; if I stole away and managed not to tell It; and if that should be the day when at the end my counting is done – my blood is pounding!  For what if, on that day, a tiny breeze, an unnoticeable breeze, were to steal up from the sea and lift just a few grains from the counted side to the uncounted, setting my tally off?  Would Creation then be off balance for all eternity?  And those little men that It talks about – would my miscounting put them off, cause them to have ten toes instead of twelve, or affect the number of hairs on their heads?  Perhaps their hair would not last all the days of their lives . . .

I never asked for this job.  When the first volunteers were called, I chose to remain a formless entity, and they got the best tasks – painting the sky, creating mathematical principles, deciding how long after the Beginning television should be invented.  When the next volunteers were called, I still hung back, and they were given interesting things also, though not so nice to my fancy.  But at last It sought me out, and explained about the promises It would give and the metaphors It would use, and asked me to count the grains of sand on the beach.

“But this is intolerable!” I replied.  “I shall never get them counted in the space of a day.  It will delay the Beginning indefinitely.”

“Practice,” It said.

So each day at first light I set out at the far end of the beach, and each day I come a little closer to the near end, counting, counting, counting.  And I know that within this millennium I will complete my task.  But as I come closer I feel the resentment building, that all this is for those men, Its favored, while I, who have done all this, have been promised nothing.  I told It once that I felt this way, and It laughed, and said Its friend had placed those thoughts within me, and I would get used to them.  It should have taken me seriously.