My last couple of contemporary reads have been misfires, which left me in a state of uncertainty in figuring out what I wanted to read next. A historical seemed the most logical answer, but what historical? I opted for Christine Merrill. Merrill's books sometimes work for me and sometimes don't, but I am never, ever bored. Merrill takes risks with the Regency and sometimes those risks don't always play out - but you know what? I'm never, ever bored. Plus having a TBR pile that can be seen from space means I had both books in the de Bryun sisters duet in my digital TBR. Nearly sitting side-by-side. Loosely connected to the Belston & Friends series, these two books stood alone well.

In The Truth About Lady Felkirk, our heroine, Justine de Bryun is masquerading as the wife of an unconscious man, our hero, William Felkirk, brother of a Duke. Justine is under the control of a Mr. Montague, the man who was once her dead father's business partner (jeweler) and now her guardian. In the name of protecting her younger sister, off at school, Justine is essentially an unwilling mistress, a captive and manages to save Felkirk's life when he gets too close to the truth about some long missing diamonds. She convinces Montague to let her take the man back to his family, pray for his recovery, and maybe she can learn the location of the diamonds. It's a miracle Felkirk survives, but he's awake now and with selective amnesia. A blessing for Justine who, not knowing any other way, tells the Duke and his wife that she and Will were married via elopement. Now here's William, wide awake, with no memory of his "wife."

Distilling down to it's essence, what we have here is a Rescue Fantasy, which I normally deplore - but Justine is one of those heroines who is one part crafty and two parts stuck between a rock and a hard place. After her father's murder, and her mother's death, she and her sister are at the mercy of Montague. To protect Margot, Justine took the part of sacrificial lamb. She's completely at his mercy even as she skirts around the truth looking for a way to achieve her and her sister's freedom.

It all gets a little melodramatic at the end, and the "mystery" of the missing diamonds isn't much of a mystery, but the Sword of Damocles-like tension that hovers over the romance (ooooh, when will William's memory return?) kept me invested and the pages turning. Not a knock-out read, but an enjoyable one.

Final Grade = B