The Affectionate Adversary

‘The Affectionate Adversary’ by Catherine Palmer is a Christian regency romance and the first book of three in the Miss Pickworth series. (Miss Pickworth is the pen name of someone in society who writes about the nobility in a column the newspaper titled The Tattler.)

Charles Locke is on his way to India aboard the ship Tintagel. His father, James, has been saving up his money and investing it. The duke that he worked for gave him a large sum when James retired. Together with the money that he saved for years, it is enough for Charles to travel to India and buy all the tea he can get. Together father and son wish to start a tea trade with their own merchant ships. They have carefully planned out every step they must take to reach their goals. Everything was taken into account, except for the pirates that attacked the ship Charles was on!

Lady Sarah Carlyle, the widowed Baroness Delacroix, has not had an easy childhood or marriage. But now that both her parents and her husband are dead, she can live life the way she wants to. She has inherited her father’s vast fortune and her husband left her with a title. She is the only one in her family who has given her heart to the Lord. She has made it her mission to help the poor and to spread the gospel. Her two younger sisters and her nephew, the new Baron Delacroix, just don’t understand why she wants to spend time in Asia and throwing all her money away to the poor and not give it to them.

Sarah is aboard the ship the Queen Elinor which is heading back to England from Asia. They come across the Tintagel, which has been attacked by pirates. Most on board are dead, dying, or badly injured. The hold is empty of cargo, including Locke’s chest of gold coin. When Sarah first meets the badly injured Charles, she takes it upon herself to personally see to his care.

While Charles is fevered, he asks for Sarah’s hand in marriage at least once a day! After he recovers, he asks for her hand again. Can she believe that he really loves her? They have talked some while he was healing, but he doesn’t know that she a baroness and part of the ton, or that she has lots of money. His offer does tempt her since he would be marrying her for her, and not for her money or connections.

This is a good book, but there were many times that I was frustrated by how Sarah’s view point of money was skewed. I have already reviewed the third book in this series, which deals with her youngest sister Prudence, called The Courteous Cad and have reviewed it under that name at the end of February. Also in this book, Anne Webster is introduced and she is the main female character in the second book.

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