Seduction of a Proper Gentleman
She arrives at his house unconscious, with no memory and no luggage. She is faking. There is a curse, an aunt with a fake name, and four shillings he gave away years ago that he is about to see again.
Overview
The last man standing, taken by a woman who planned it
Oliver Leighton, Earl of Norcroft, won the tontine. Four friends bet on staying unmarried, the club held four shillings and a bottle of cognac, and the other three chairs emptied one at a time. He is the winner. His mother has been unbearable about it since the first man fell, and by his own account every servant in the house has joined her campaign.
Then a woman is carried into his parlor unconscious. Dark red hair, no luggage, no memory, and a concerned lady passer-by who saw the whole thing happen at the train platform. He hopes her eyes are green. They are not going to be the most surprising thing about her.
What lifts it above the setup is that Kate hates this. She is the practical one in a household of women who mix potions, the person who calls magic “utter nonsense” and considers herself the only responsible female her family has produced. She is running a deception she finds embarrassing, for a curse she does not believe in, against a man she keeps liking more than the plan allows.
The boring bit
Receipts
Story plotline
Three ways in, and all of them give away the trick on page one
The plot page runs the sequence with page numbers. The arcs page takes the skeptic and the believer separately, because they swap positions by the end. The tropes page is where I defend a fake amnesia plot, which I did not expect to be doing.
What actually happens
The staged fall, the fake name, the leaking charade, the uncle from Scotland, the slates off the roof, the flowers out of season, and four shillings coming home.
The skeptic and the man who has to choose
She does not believe in the curse and is risking everything on it anyway. He does not believe in it either, right up until he has to decide whether that matters.
In defense of a fake amnesia plot
Amnesia is on my permanent probation list. This one gets a pass, and the reason is that the book never asks you to believe it for a second.
Characters
Who you are dealing with
Three here. The aunt with the invented name, the grandmother who argues a curse into submission, the Scottish uncle and the butler who runs the house are all on the character page.
Kathleen, called Kate
The practical one in a family of mystics. She calls magic utter nonsense, refuses her aunt’s potion, and is nonetheless lying on a stranger’s sofa pretending to have lost her memory in service of a curse.
Oliver Leighton, Earl of Norcroft
The last man standing, which he is discovering is not a prize. Wealthy, handsome, an earl, and quietly worn down by a household that has spent years campaigning for his marriage.
Hollinger
Openly allied with the countess against his own employer’s bachelorhood, and the only person in the novel who says out loud what everybody is actually doing. Best lines in the book.
The series
The chair that was left, and the coins that came back
This is the one the other three books have been setting up. Oliver won the tontine at the end of book three, alone at a club table with three empty chairs, four shillings, and a bottle of cognac meant to be shared. What he did with those shillings afterward is the last thing you learn in this book, and it is worth the wait.
A Little Bit Wicked
Viscount Warton. The first chair to empty, and the reason Oliver’s mother started campaigning.
What a Lady Wants
Nigel Cavendish, toasted as the man who discovered the prize is sometimes worth the sacrifice.
Secrets of a Proper Lady
Daniel Sinclair. Its epilogue is where Oliver wins, and where the whole series design finally shows itself.
All five books and the series hub → · What a tontine actually is
The author
Who wrote it
Victoria Alexander
Four books in, the pattern is clear: she builds a series on one running joke and then makes the joke mean something on the last page.
She refuses to settle the curse
Every supernatural event in this book has a mundane explanation sitting right next to it, and the novel hands you both and declines to choose. That takes more nerve than picking a side.
RaeRae Reviews
The verdict
The best ending in the series
Book three resolves on an unread letter. This one resolves on a grandmother arguing a curse into submission, flowers blooming in the wrong season, and four coins coming home. Guess which one I am still thinking about.
All five, ranked
The whole run read and judged. This one comes first, and the argument underneath is that Alexander writes the same deception five times on purpose.
RaeRae Reacts
Four scenes that earned their keep
A butler committing insubordination in perfect grammar, a roof trying to commit murder, a grandmother out-arguing the supernatural, and a punchline four books in the making. All of them open into the full react.
You are very good, Hollinger
Oliver insists he is not fleeing. His butler agrees, and then describes exactly what he is fleeing from, in one immaculate sentence, and calls it a summary. Oliver has no reply except a compliment.
Three slates, sounding remarkably like gunshots
He steps outside and the roof tries to kill him. Twice more. He explains it as loose slates from recent repairs, agrees a superstitious person might see a sign, notes that he is not one, and cancels his trip.
Shall we simply say there was a curse and perhaps now there isn’t
A grandmother talks her granddaughter out of a two-hundred-year-old curse using nothing but logic, and then points her parasol at spring flowers blooming in nearly autumn.
I really must get a new cloak
He asks when she fell in love with him. She tells him it was the day a stranger gave her four shillings and wished her better luck than they had brought him. Four books of setup, one line.
RaeRae Rants
Amnesia, and why this one gets away with it
The convenient head injury
Amnesia is the laziest device in the genre and it is on permanent probation here. Then this book uses it correctly, which forced me to work out what the actual rule is.
Fake it or lose me
Real amnesia makes the character a passenger and the reader a hostage. Fake amnesia makes her an operator with something to lose every time she slips. Same trope, opposite effect.
Novel 101
Things the book assumes you already know
What a tontine actually is
A real financial instrument, banned in places for the obvious reason. This book is where the joke finally pays, so the 101 has the payoff in it.
Red flags, green flags, and why the hot one is never the test
Relevant here in an unusual direction: the tell that he is worth it happens years earlier, off the page, when nobody is watching and there is nothing to gain.
Read directly from the novel, Kindle edition, and described in our own words. · Last Man Standing · Victoria Alexander · The Library