The Footman and I (The Footmen's Club)

This book was cleverly done; four lords in their cups devise a plan to become servants at a house party. Whoever lasts the longest as an unidentified servant wins a substantial bet from the others. Lucas has an additional reason for the ruse; he was jilted just before his wedding (when he was a second son and the bride was looking for more wealth and titles).

Now that he's an earl, debutants and mamas are chasing Lucas. He wants a wife who wants him for himself, not his money or title. Thus, he's ready to try the servant route to find out more about the young ladies at the house party, hoping to find someone he could approach in the future. However, he never expects to find someone like Frances, who is intelligent, honest, and cares about her fellow man.

Lucas and Frances meet and continue to bump into each other during the house party. This is where the story fell apart for me. Class differences were significant to the British during that time, and there was no way a well-brought-up lady would be caught kissing the footman. Period.

However, the story is so clever and well-constructed that the reader will likely overlook that problem. The crux of this story is the hotly contested bill that was being argued in Parliament at that time. Frances is highly opposed to this law, which protected the employment rights of the landed class at the cost of the working class. Lucas is for the law, mainly because his deceased brother wrote the bill and died before he could get it passed. Lucas looked at the law with the eyes of a landowner, not a worker. Between talking with Frances and his experiences as a working stiff, Lucas sees the bill through different eyes.

When Lucas realizes he may not have the chance to ask Frances to marry him because her family convinces her that she must immediately marry an odious knight (elderly, pompous, overbearing) because the family is almost destitute. Frances's father is a severe gambler who has stripped his property bare and is getting near to taking up residence at Newgate.

Because Lucas has not been honest with Frances, he knows she will not be happy to marry the earl leading the charge to pass this awful bill. The camaraderie between the four friends is a delight. They are boisterous and funny but caring about each other. When Lucas starts to sink under the weight of his lies to Frances, they take turns trying to help.

Because of the time the four spend together in this first book, the stage is set for the others. This was a 5-Star story that floundered with the problem mentioned earlier -- plus the atrocious ending. Frances' behavior in the last pages was graphic and unrealistic. Young women of that age knew nothing of sex before marriage and would not have been so blase' about premarital sex. The suggestions Frances made about the sex act were not realistic at that day and time.

It pains me to award this book a G+, but this author took too much poetic license. This book was more like a contemporary story rather than a Regency novel.

Love the story. Love the premise. I know that this author writes females that don't hold true to the times, and this one was no different. I snickered, I gasped. I fanned myself and one point. Looking forward to the rest of the books in this series.