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For someone who likes Regency novels, Dear Lady Disdain was a definite disappointment. A Cit (with titled connections) heroine who is a bankeress (What a word!) and a hate-my-title Lord bicker at one another until they suddenly jump into bed. The whole story is impossible, and then BORING. Please don't bother.

This was, I'll admit, not an easy book for me to rate. The "hero" of the piece, Matt Falconer, came across for almost half the book as an unmannerly and imperious lout. He is, of course, redeemed by the time the book is finished. The trouble is that while the book spans almost a year, the reader reads it over the space of two to three hours, so that it would take some pretty nifty writing to persuade a reader that a protagonist is redeemed or even deserves to be redeemed. In this case I was almost convinced, but I also wished that the heorine, Stacy Blanchard had given in to her feelings and clouted him on the head a couple of times just to underline the message that he deserves some kind of punishment.
Stacy Blanchard is an anomaly in regency England. She's intelligent, competent, and she owns and runs a bank. And while she is openly courted for her wealth, she is also regarded as an "unwomanly" young lady because she refuses to allow others (read men) to run the bank her father left her. Some irregularities with the bank branch in York causes Stacy to leave London and venture north in severe winter weather in order to investigate the matter. A carriage accident however causes Stacy and her party to seek shelter at Pontisford Hall. And that's where all the problems that Stacy will have to face in the year to come begins.
Matt Falconer has returned to England form Virginia, and he is in a foul mood. Actually he is in a foul mood for most of the book, which is one reason I didn't buy his ability to become suddenly sunny natured completely. He left England under a cloud and has hated his family, society, and England ever since. Stacy, with her managing ways in exactly the kind of woman he dislikes most, and so takes out his bad humour on her. However Stacy has not been running a bank for nothing -- she gives as good as she gets. Something Falconer is not used to! In spite of the anger that both Stacy and Falconer inspire in each other, there is also a thread of attraction and desire that each feels for the other; and one night, anger gives way to desire. The next moring Falconer regrets giving in to passion; Stacy sensing his withdrawal is hurt and tries to put the entire episode behind her by pretending that it never happened. As soon as the thaw sets in Stacy and her party leave Pontisford Hall but not before she lets Falconer know just how low she regards him. But what will she do when Falconer unable to forget her, follows her to York, especially when she discovers that she is carrying his child?
I liked Stacy Balnchard quite a bit. Paula Marshall did a very good job in depicting the frustration that Stacy feels with a society that does not allow an intelligent and capable young woman to do what she's good at. She also does a fairly good job at showing us why Stacy and Falconer are a good match. The trouble lies (for me anyway)in that Falconer is so aggravating in the first quarter of the book that you're left with mixed feelings when the happy resolution actually does takes place.
The prose style is actually very good and the cover art is very tastfully done. All in all the book is rather good too; I just have no time for bad tempered men no matter their provocation.

This is a wonderful and wonderfully complex story. The only problem with this book is that the publisher -- Harlequin -- chose to position it as a 'Regency Romance'. It most certainly is not that at all. Not even very close, in fact, which has probably hurt the book more than helped it. Another consideration is that this new paperback release is a reprint of a book first published in 1995. Standards have changed considerably in the years since then.
The story takes place over the course of a year, but the romance, in my opinion, is almost incidental to the plot. It is more the story of a young woman raised to be something that most women of the time were not allowed to be, and what happens to her and those all around her when she meets a man who has thrown over everything he was raised to be, in favor of becoming his own man, in another country. There is a love story in here, to be sure, but I honestly don't believe it's the major element of the plot which is what really determines if a book is a romance or fiction.
As improbable as it might seem to some readers, there are those couples who, within a short time of their initial meeting, cannot resist the force of their attraction to each other, and can easily consider the world well-lost for love, or lust, if you will. Many of these couples will, in time, convert that electricity into something lasting; many, however, burn out, reducing each other to cinders in the process.
At a time in history when women were considered an adornment to their husbands, Anastasia Blanchard was born to a bank owned outright by her father. As his only child, and one who early on showed all the necessary signs of being exactly the type of heir he wanted, except for her sex, of course, he simply ignored that part of her, and proceeded to teach her everything he knew about banking.
Matthew Falconer, on the other hand, was the third son to an Earl, and without a mother to watch out for him, quickly became the target of his older brother. Matt left England, taking a small inheritance left him by his mother, and established himself in America. It made him a better man than ever the English system could have done. Unfortunately, the second son died in an accident, leaving Matt as heir apparent, a position he despised with every ounce of his large frame. In spite of his feelings about the title and all that went with it, when the older brother also died, Matt took himself back to England, to investigate an inheritance from an elderly aunt, who had loved him only for himself.
During a blizzard, Stacy and her travelling companions are forced to seek shelter at the ramshackle, run-down Pontisford Hall--Matt's legacy. Sparks are struck on their first meeting, and never let up until the last page. I enjoyed every page of this book, for its picture of a woman's non-world in Regency England, as well as the way in which families encircle and protect their own--even those hardly worth protecting, even long after the death of a worthless heir. If you read it as fiction, you should enjoy it, too. It just isn't much of a romance, although there is certainly a terrific amount of sexual attraction between the two most admirable lovers.