Christine Merrill

Chaperon Diana Price knew she was teetering on the edge of ruin. Her father had staked his fortune, and her virginity, at the card table—and lost! To the most notorious gamester in town… Nathan Wardale had money, plenty of it, but it was a long time since he'd been considered a gentleman. Still, he never intended to pursue this debt. Until he met Diana Price in the flesh—and began to wonder just how long his honor would hold out…

Paying the Virgin's Price

Natalie

** spoiler alert **
           I really didn't care for this book. I liked the initial premise, which is that the hero is the son of a disgraced nobleman and earns his living by gambling and had won a marker from the heroine's father supposedly entitling him to her. As if a woman is property (which, at the time of the novel she would have been, but modern Regencies tend to gloss over this unpleasant fact; I try to read these sorts of novels as fantasies, not straight up historical novels).

When I started digging into the details of the premise, I found that it really bothered me. The hero's father had been hung for murder. However, his father was a peer and, as such, was entitled to trial in the House of Lords. The book is not clear if the trial took place in the House of Lords or not, just that there was pressure to resolve the situation quickly and an implication that hastiness due to this pressure may have sent the wrong man to the hangman. Also, the person murdered was Rom and...I am not completely sure that a member of the English peerage would have been hung for the murder of such a person. If such a person even would have been considered a *person* by the law at that time. I'm not an expert in the law, but considering the persecution that the Romani people have endured right up until the present day, well, I can make some pretty good assumptions.

And then there's a Gypsy curse and I tried to read more and just couldn't. I can manage a fair bit of suspension of disbelief but not when it doesn't make any sense. I think I managed 100 pages or so.

Paying the Virgin's Price

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