#indiechallenge – An Honourable Estate (L. A. Hall)

The blurb

Clorinda has brought about a happier state of affairs in the Earl of N-‘s family, but fears that this may have earned her the Earl’s enmity. The bad poet Mr W- Y-‘s behaviour is becoming increasingly and worryingly erratic. Bets are being laid on the likelihood of Clorinda’s remarriage, and the identity of the groom. There are still a deal of contrivances upon hand.

The author

L. A. Hall is a historian and retired archivist. Short stories by her have appeared in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women and The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women. She regrets to say that she does not own a pet wombatt.

The publisher

Sleepy Wombatt Press is the imprint under which the author releases the stories of Clorinda Cathcart and her circle.

The bookshop

Amazon, which as a general principle I try to avoid. But I did want a prettily bound volume.

The bingo card

This could count as: ‘Book from a series’ or ‘A Women’s Press’. The cast is as diverse as ever, so one could make a case for ‘LGBTQIA’ or ‘Marginalised People’. But I think it’s probably going to end up as ‘Favourite’.

My thoughts

The Comfortable Courtesan series has been my bedtime reading over the last several months, and it only took a little bit of cheating to make the end of one of them fall within the week of the IndieAthon.

As the cover suggests, the wombatt plays second fiddle to the mongoose in this tenth volume of Clorinda’s memoirs. We pick up the action at the point where she has exerted some subtle leverage upon the Earl of Nuttenford to induce him to provide appropriately for his family; the unforeseen consequence of some of her earlier contrivances is that he’s no longer in favour of a marriage between his daughter Lady Anna and the Marquess of Offgrange. Which is unfortunate, because everybody else is very much in favour of it…

And, as the title suggests, marriages, or lack of same, of one sort or another are the main preoccupation of this volume even after Lady Anna’s problems have been sorted out. There’s a shotgun wedding, an attempted abduction, and the aftermath of a too early marriage, as well as the usual glimpses of established relationships: Lady Jane’s unorthodox marriage to Admiral Knighton; the other Lady Bexbury and Captain Penkarding’s household; and of course both sides of Raxdell House, which Clorinda spends most of this volume visiting.

I wouldn’t recommend this book as an introduction to the series, but for longstanding fans it’s another delightful installment of Clorinda’s adventures, with the usual mix of the sensational and the gentle.