Title: Cousin Kate
Author: Georgette Heyer
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
First sentence: At no time during the twenty-four hours was the Bull and Mouth Inn a place of quiet or repose, and by ten o'clock in the morning, when the stage-coach from Wisbech, turning top-heavyily out of Aldersgate, lumbered into its yard, it seemed, to one weary and downcast passenger at least, to be crowded with vehicles of every description, from a yellow-bodied post-chaise to a wagon, with its shafts cocked up and the various packages and bundles it carried strewn over the yard. (Whew - long sentence!)
About the book: Kate is a young girl in her mid-twenties. Young by our standards, but in the Regency period she was bordering on being an old maid. What is worse is that both of her parents have died, and she has just lost her job as a nanny. So she has no home, no job, and nothing for a dowry.
She has traveled to her childhood nurse, Sarah's home until she can find another placement. She doesn't feel like she can stay with Sarah as she has her own husband and family to care for - so when her Aunt Minerva shows up (her deceased father's estranged half-sister) - Kate views her as her salvation.
Aunt Minerva, however, is not taking Kate home to Staplewood out of the goodness of her heart. She definitely has ulterior motives. She is looking for a wife for her son Torquil - and Torquil isn't exactly a "catch". Can Kate discover what her Aunt Minerva is up to before it is too late? And will her cousin Phillip be her ally?
My thoughts: Where this wasn't necessarily a romance like the previous two Heyer books (A Convenient Marriage, Frederica) that I enjoyed - it wasn't really a mystery either like Why Shoot a Butler? which I didn't really care for at all. But no matter, I still liked this one. It contained all the humor and wit that I have come to expect when reading one of her novels.
Cousin Kate
Publisher/Publication Date: Sourcebooks Casablanca, 1968/2009
ISBN: 978-1-4022-1768-5
373 pages
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