Rake's Progress
Series: A House for the Season, Book 4
By: Marion Chesney / Narrated By: Lindy Nettleton
Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
A debauched Hero and a prim heroine make for a lively couple
I listen to a lot of Regency romance, as you very well know, so I’m well-versed in the ol’ rake is reformed. But really? Here, Beaton writing as Marion Chesney, SHOWS us exACTly what it means to be a rake. The servants of 67 Clarges Street immediately see what their new master is like when he and his buddy, both invalided from the Napoleonic Wars for a spell, rent the house for the Season, and show up drunk and bawdy as hell! Lord Guy Carlton is our Hero this time out in this Book 4 of the A House for the Season series, and my GOD is he a debauched young man, or what?
Turns out, he’s suffering from PTSD and is all for treating it through copious amounts of alcohol, wild partying, and three women in his bed at the same time. But in one drunken stupor, he’s out and about and he spies the stunningly beautiful “Amazon” Miss Esther Jones, a decided spinster at 26-years old. She wants to have nothing to do with him, she has after all, seen what destruction her father’s womanizing ways left behind. But she does indeed wish to be involved in the lives of the servants after coming across Lizzie, the scullery maid, and by being impressed with Lizzie’s determination to better herself through education.
The butler, Rainbird, sees Miss Esther, sees Lord Guy, and he along with the rest of the servants decides that she’s just the woman to reform the rake lest he meet an early demise through wanton dissipation. Rainbird’s a clever, clever man throughout this story, and he comes up with many plots and situations for Lord Guy to prove himself to be something more than a total jerk. Because Guy is in deadly earnest: He’ll reform for the lovely woman! And through the writing and the evolving escapades, we see him grow, and we feel for him as he suffers flashbacks and traumatic memories.
And Esther is SUCH a good heroine! She’s a rescuer a hundred times over and will take the societal hit, if need be, to do the right thing. Guy can’t see this and not be moved. And he turns into quite the hero… a hundred times over as Esther sometimes gets in over her depth as she splashes in to save someone.
The servants become more of a family, though I find footman Joseph to be a real jerk a lot of the time. But everyone else sticks together, and we see the servants as they continue to save their wages and tips so that they might buy a pub and escape their near-slavery. Plus, this go-round, Lord Guy’s valet has them quite alarmed. Could it be that he’s a spy?!?
All in all a charming listen with Lindy Nettleton narrating bacchanalian delights such as the Fashionably Impure disrobing at the drop of a hat at parties, mooning people on the street, doing SUCH things! I mean, I totally get what a “rake” is now.
I get it! I get it! And it’s deliciously sinful!!!
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