A Husband for Hire
The Heirs & Spares #1
Patricia A. Knight
Historical Romance
Published in 2018 [requested review]
H/h - Lord Miles Everleigh/Lady Eleanor Russell
Setting: Regency.
Read in February, 2018.
[spoiler alert]
A Husband for Hire is Patricia A. Knight’s debut historical
romance, though not her debut release. She was a new-to-me author, so I
didn’t know what to expect. But the blurb of the story intrigued me and
I had to give this novel a try. Have to say, I’m glad I did.
A Husband for Hire
tells us the story of a plain-looking and speaking spinster, who is
also sole heir to her father’s big stud farm and other entailed
properties. Lady Eleanor is the only daughter to the Earl of Rutledge is
in a rather big dilemma. Their stud farm is one of the best around and
the Crown has an eye on it. Eleanor being the only child has no way of
stopping it when anything entailed reverts back to the Crown once the
Earl passes away; which maybe sooner rather than later as both of her
parents are quite elderly. Eleanor was quite a surprise at a later
period in their life and both parents have devoted themselves to
Eleanor’s care. The Earl has pretty much trained her to be more like a
man (or you can say ‘tomboy-ish’?) with the education to go with it, so
Eleanor can run the stud farm without any hitch at all. But now, both
the Earl and the Countess’s health is failing. This leaves Eleanor to
come to a rather drastic decision, something she never thought she’d
have to resort to—husband hunting. No, make that husband purchasing, to
make sure everything that belongs to the Rutledge Earldom remains within
the family.
Eleanor is in her late 20s. She’s not an attractive
woman by the Tonnish standard, being too tall and thin, so she remained
unmarried. Plus her work around the farm and the horses quite kept her
busy, something she takes immense pride in. And even though she’s got
plenty of money to have been married earlier, she hasn’t. What I could
garner from the beginning that she’d never even considered this
possibility...until very recently. All she knows that she has to bribe
or buy (or whatever it takes) to find a husband. That way, when her
first son is born, she could petition to make him the heir to the
Rutledge legacy to stop the Crown from grabbing what she and her father
and their thousands of employees worked hard to achieve.
