Gentleman Jim

 

Gentleman Jim

By Mimi Matthews

She couldn't forget...

Wealthy squire's daughter Margaret Honeywell was always meant to marry her neighbor, Frederick Burton-Smythe, but it's bastard-born Nicholas Seaton who has her heart. Raised alongside her on her father's estate, Nicholas is the rumored son of notorious highwayman Gentleman Jim. When Fred frames him for theft, Nicholas escapes into the night, vowing to find his legendary sire. But Nicholas never returns. A decade later, he's long been presumed dead.

He wouldn't forgive...

After years spent on the continent, John Beresford, Viscount St. Clare has finally come home to England. Tall, blond, and dangerous, he's on a mission to restore his family's honor. If he can mete out a bit of revenge along the way, so much the better. But he hasn't reckoned for Maggie Honeywell. She's bold and beautiful—and entirely convinced he's someone else.

As danger closes in, St. Clare is torn between love and vengeance. Will he sacrifice one to gain the other? Or with a little luck—and a lot of daring—will he find a way to have them both?

Eh, this one was emphatically fine, but not my favorite of Matthews' stuff. Which is weird, since it doesn't have the Victorian overtones of her other (Victorian) novels, which are the parts I tend to like the least, but here the relationship between the main characters had basically already happened and developed off-screen, and this was just a look at them overcoming exterior obstacles, which isn't as much of my jam.  I also really didn't like Margaret's interactions with Fred, since her plan was basically appeasement, which was both doomed to failure, and unpleasant to read. 

I don't think it's a HUGE spoiler to say that St. Clare the aristocrat and Nicholas, Margaret's first love, are in fact the same person, just, you know, doing a bad job of moving on past his early childhood traumas.  Matthews notes that this was inspired quite a bit by Count of Monte Cristo, which I can see.  Certainly the innocent who is wrongfully accused and forced to leave his beloved, returns years later, wealthy, powerful, and with some vengeance in mind, is pretty familiar.  Maybe too familiar? Part of my beef with the book is that a lot of the resolutions to the plot points (were his parents actually married???) were telegraphed so clearly that I found myself almost skimming the conflict sections since they held no mystery or tension for me.  What I was super invested in was Margaret's friend Jane's crush on Mattingly, which involved like, six paragraphs of the book, but took on outsize importance for me.  I hope they get their own story next!

It also felt weirdly out of period at points.  Maybe I've just been conditioned to the Jane Austen regency era, but all the discussion of Margaret as a pistol-wielding, horse-riding daredevil, not to mention the highwaymen and mustache-twirling villains felt like this was supposed to be set in a completely different era.  For me, it kind of evoked Tom Hawke/The Link Boys, by Constance Fecher, which is set in the early 1600s, but even a more Dickensian 1800s would fit, or Sid Fleischman, although I have no idea when those were supposed to be set.  By the way, Tom Hawke is awesome and it should come back into print!  My copy is literally bound together with scotch tape.