Lie With Me by Patricia Spencer is a charming romance set in Georgian England that reads like a contemporary romance. What’s even cooler is that it has one of my favourite tropes – a woman pretending to be a man!
Marquis Julien D’Avenant (who is actually a woman) is taken with the Countess Maryam Wyndham from the moment they meet. D’Avenant is interested in buying a piece of property that borders his. The current owner is the widow Maryam who is under the thumb of her solicitor and can make no financial decisions of her own.
D’Avenant is familiar with Maryam’s solicitor and is sure that he is trying to steal Maryam’s money so D’Avenant extends an invitation for Maryam to come and visit his house so she can view her property and they can properly negotiate the deal.
It’s a little scandalous, a bachelor inviting a widowed woman to live at his estate but Maryam takes him up on the offer.
While she is there she realises that the man she finds so strange is odd in the best ways and kind to her children. But, can she give her heart to a man who has so many secrets?
Pros And My Favourite Parts
I really enjoyed the slightly different take on the trope of a woman living as a man. I enjoyed how D’Avenant’s friend kept reminding her to be true to herself and not to get lost in the lie she build. I also found it interesting that her character was referred to as he for most of the book. And I found it interesting that she was bisexual before her need to pretend to be a man. These made the character different from the traditional women who dress as men characters we find in lesfic.
Cons And Heads Up
This is, so far, the only LesFic that Patricia Spencer has written. I was sad to discover that there wasn’t a backlist that I could devour.
The Conclusion
This romp through a fancy countryside manor is exactly the kind of read that I love. It was so sweet and loving and exciting.
I enjoyed that there were so many elements of the trope that I enjoy like trying to keep the secret and having that moment of “I’m in love with a woman but I am not the man she thinks I am, so can she love me back”.
It’s a shortish book and it’s an easy read so if you want something quick and light and ever so charming then this is for you.
Excerpt from Lie With Me by Patricia Spencer
1. Deception
Lord Julien D’Avenant was livid.
“What do you mean Roland Grenville is here?” he said, striding down the corridor of Abercrombie and Abercrombie ahead of the law clerk who was seeing him in. D’Avenant was late, delayed by a heavy downpour on his way to what was supposed to have been a handoff of paperwork—not a meeting. “I thought his office was only sending a proposal.”
“Mr. Grenville appeared unexpectedly, My Lord, with—”
D’Avenant, reaching the library, didn’t wait to hear the rest. He flung open the double doors and strode in, his ill-humour barely under control.
The conversation in the room died.
He’d been in the room many times before. It was rectangular, with some little-used seating and a table towards the left and on the right, a table and seats near three windows that looked out on the street below. This dark day, the windows scarcely illuminated the men gathered near them.
D’Avenant’s solicitor, the elder James Abercrombie, and his son and apprentice, James Abercrombie IV, stood immediately as D’Avenant entered.
Roland Grenville, dressed in the ridiculous ‘macaroni’ style that had swept across the channel to England from Italy, sat beside the fireplace. Heaped with laces and curls, he looked more like a clipped poodle than a solicitor. Grenville remained seated fractionally longer than was polite, giving the momentary impression that he had no intention of rising at all.
The elder Abercrombie bowed deferentially. “Lord D’Avenant.” His wig was askew, as always, and his coat, though well-tailored never sat well upon his stooped shoulders. D’Avenant paid no mind. The old man’s legal skills and attention to detail were top-notch. He paid the man for his work, not his appearance.
“Good afternoon, My Lord,” James IV said.
D’Avenant nodded to the Abercrombies, and turned on Grenville. “I hardly see why you’ve come. I was told you—” A flutter at the far end of the room caught his attention. He turned toward the dark end of the library and peered into the gloom.
A woman. Sitting there. Lost in the shadows.
“Who in blazes is that?” He tipped his head for a better look. High cheekbones. Smooth skin. Good teeth. Intelligence behind the green eyes. A noblewoman. Sitting erectly in an armchair, an untouched glass of sherry set on a small table beside her. Not young, perhaps thirty—near the end of childbearing at any rate. Her features were balanced, but at the moment, her eyes were wide, her mouth a little open with surprise.
Ah, right. D’Avenant glanced down at his gleaming black boots, giving her a moment to take in his appearance. He was tall, had short, natural, dark hair and a nose so prominent it could only be called a beak. But it was the scar slashed across his face, and his manner of dressing that caught the English off-guard when they first met him. He had learned to look away, to give them a moment to get over their shock and recompose their faces. He was dressed in black, in an immaculately-tailored version of the long sans-coulotte trousers worn in France by the working class revolutionaries who had stormed the Bastille. On top, he wore a tailless black coat and a brilliant multi-coloured embroidered waistcoat.
The elder Abercrombie rushed to D’Avenant’s side. “Oh, My Lord, My Lady. I do beg your pardon. I haven’t had the opportunity to—” He took a settling breath. “The Marquis of D’Avenant, may I present to you The Countess of Wyndham.”
Lady Wyndham held out a gloved hand.
D’Avenant stepped forward and took it. It was small, warm, firm. He bowed over it with deliberation. So this is Maryam, widow of the Earl of Wyndham. He never entered any major financial negotiation without first learning as much as he could about his counterpart, and he had made no exception for this venture. He simply hadn’t expected to meet her because normally a noblewoman wouldn’t be mucking about in details best left to solicitors. But he had an idea why she was here. Grenville. He wasn’t a man to be trusted and she wanted oversight.
“Comtesse,” he said.
“Je suis enchanté de faire votre connaissance,” she said. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.
Spoken beautifully. Not mangled, as usual for most Anglais. Sometimes his costume elicited this reaction, this acknowledgement of a French connection. In his case, his father was English, his mother French, aristocrats in both nations. In these post-revolutionary days, with continuing conflict between the two countries, his birth made him politically suspect on both sides of the channel. And, he knew, his manner of dressing did nothing to allay that mistrust.
“You have ties to France?”
“Second cousins in Arles.”
D’Avenant caught himself. He was staring. Her hair was sienna, her eyes green with specks of brown. Her bosom full, and figure lovely.
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Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9780995965041
Publisher: Indie Author
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