Review: Entangled by Mary Lancaster (2023)

I’m a big fan of Mary Lancaster, and enjoyed quite a few of her long Blackhaven series, although I never made it to the end. This one is a curious one. I enjoyed it totally, but I have to say it’s wildly implausible, and there was rather too much deus ex machina involved for my taste.

Here’s the premise: Major Giles Butler is en route to join Wellington’s army when he and his fellow officers encounter the obnoxious Duke of Cuttyngham at an inn. The duke insults a former commander of Giles’, who promptly calls him out. It’s purely for honour, with no thought of killing on either side, and Giles duly aims wide. Despite that, the duke ends up dead. Giles is determined to do his bit for his country with Wellington before dealing with the consequences of his actions, so he heads off for the coast, but not before going to the duke’s home to tell them what happened. He thinks better of that (wisely) but as he waits outside the gates, by chance he encounters a young woman running away. She tells him she’s a relation of the duke’s, so Giles agrees to help her.

And thus becomes entangled with the young (and newly widowed by his hand) Duchess of Cuttyngham. But since he doesn’t know who she is, and she doesn’t know that her husband is dead, they get along quite merrily and pass the time by falling inconveniently in love with each other. And so the plot unwinds, with Giles being chased by the law, Rosamund being chased by the duke’s people, then haring back home when she realises she’s a widow, and eventually chasing after Giles again. So there’s a whole heap of backwards and forwards, and (here’s the deus ex machina) important people jumping into the fray to help them. And along the way (shades of Georgette Heyer here) there’s a very young couple eloping to be helped and advised and generally sorted out. And somehow, in the midst of all this frenetic action, there’s time for a masked ball (because what self-respecting Regency romance doesn’t have a ball in it?).

It’s all tremendous fun, there’s a little steaminess, but nothing to frighten the horses, and it’s every bit as well written as Mary Lancaster’s works usually are. I might even have given it a resounding five stars except for the sheer number of times our heroes are improbably rescued by Very Important People who might have been expected to have more urgent things on their mind on the eve of battle than sorting out the romantic entanglements of insignificant nobodies. But it makes for a cracking good plot, so I’m not going to complain too much. Four stars. I’ll probably continue the series, partly in the hope that the intriguing new duke, Victor, gets his story told, and partly to find out just what did happen at the duel, how the duke came to die instantly and who the mysterious female is who was seen nearby.