Alex Kenleigh is a rich English shipbuilder. As the heir to the Kenleigh business and fortune he commands the family finances and he's responsible for his younger brother, Philip. For years Alex allowed Philip to do whatever he pleased and as a result his drinking and womanizing have gotten out of control. Alex is finally forced to cut him off, leaving him with only a minimal allowance until he behaves more responsibly. The night after he makes this decision Alex's coach is attacked and he's badly beaten. Another man's body is then substituted for his and Alex is sold into a 14 year indentured servitude and shipped to Virginia identified as a criminal named Cole Braden.
Cassie Blakewell is running her family's plantation alone. Her mother is dead, her younger brother is just a child and her father is suffering from mental problems brought on by the death of his wife. In 1730's Virginia it's incredibly difficult for a woman to manage by herself, but Cassie is determined to hold onto the the land until her brother comes of age and can take over. There are both creditors and rivals who would try to take over the plantation if they knew that Cassie's father was incompetent. In order to prevent that from happening Cassie has hidden her father in a small cabin in the nearby swamp and told everyone that he's traveling on business and has left her in charge while he's gone. If Cassie is unable to keep the plantation, or her story, going her family's holdings will be seized and sold to pay off debts, leaving her family with no home.
Cassie has very limited money, but she has to have more hands to so when a ship carrying slaves and bondsmen docks nearby she attends the sale. There she sees that one of the bondsman is obviously too ill to stand, let alone work, but the traders are still beating him in an attempt to force him to obey their orders. As an act of charity Cassie buys his indenture. She also buys a slave who befriended the sick man on the voyage. She assumes that the ill man will die, but once he's off the ship and receiving medical care he soon recovers his strength. His memory of how he came to be on the ship remains hazy and he's furious that people believe that he is a criminal named Cole. He insists that he is Alex Kenleigh, but has no way to prove it. Cassie agrees to allow him to send a letter to England, but while they're waiting for a response, which will take months to arrive, he will have to work.
Alex has no problem working. In fact he finds that he enjoys the physical labor far more than he had enjoyed being trapped in an office since the death of his father left him in charge of the family business. He can't be content though because he's drawn to Cassie and she still believes that he's a convicted despoiler of women. Cassie feels the attraction too, but doesn't know what to believe about Alex's identity. He doesn't act like a criminal, but with so much at stake she can't risk making a mistake. Still, it's difficult for Cassie to resist Alex when he proves kind to her and the people for whom she is responsible, and helpful with the running of the plantation.
Cassie would be willing to simply carry on while waiting for news from England, but her life is complicated by the attentions of a neighbor who wants to marry her and won't take no for an answer. Geoffrey is being pushed by his father, who wants the Blakewell land, and by his own lust for Cassie. He becomes jealous of Alex and schemes to get rid of him. Because of their positions in society neither Cassie nor Alex have the power to stop him and word of Alex's true identity may arrive too late to save him from Geoffrey's plot.
I liked both Alex and Cassie. I especially felt for Cassie's struggle to carry a huge burden on her own in a society that didn't recognize her abilities. There were some things that kept me from being able to fully enjoy Alex and Cassie's story though. This was Pamela Clare's debut novel and it had the kind of pacing problems that seem common in first novels. The middle of the book is a bit slow and then the end piles all sorts of problems one on top of the other. In fact there is so much drama that the end seems to go on and on. Those flaws weren't disastrous, but they did make other problems more noticeable.
Clare obviously researched the time period carefully and includes plenty of period detail. I was especially interested in the way she was able to point out that in certain ways indentured servants were actually treated worse than slaves. However, in spite of the historical detail, under the surface the book has a very modern sensibility. Men stay with their wives during childbirth. The good characters are kind to their slaves, who are happy with their lot. The bad characters beat their slaves and are thought badly of because of that. This reminded me why I tend to have problems with romances set in the pre-Civil War South. On one hand it's jarring when characters are anachronistically progressive. On the other hand I have no desire to read a book where the hero and/or heroine are happy slave owners. I understand the reality of that, but I don't want to deal with it in my romance fiction.
Grade: C+
As a result of my mixed feelings I'm not sure that I'll read the other two books in this trilogy: Carnal Gift, which is the story of Cassie's brother Jamie, and Ride the Fire, which features Alex & Cassie's son Nicholas.
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