Once Upon a Dream

Kingsley co-opts two fairy tales, Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet, in this second volume of her trilogy (following In the Wake of the Wind). Her Cinderella is Lucy Kincaid, an orphaned Irish noblewoman forced to cook and clean for two ugly British stepsisters and her wicked British stepmother, Eunice. Her handsome prince, a British duke named Montagu, first spies Lucy calling out passages of Childe Harold over an Irish cliff. But before he can marry his soulmate, Lucy has to go to the ball, and Rafe has to persuade her that it's okay for an Irish woman to marry a sensuously handsome, extravagantly wealthy, extraordinarily kind and magnificently virtuous Englishman. Even when she finally comes to her senses (""I'm saying that I don't care if you're a Montagu. I don't even mind that you're British. Or a duke""), it's hard to believe that Lucy, a generous simp who spends a lot of time bringing food baskets to starving Irish peasants, is any smarter than her two absurd stepsisters, who marry pig farmers. Once again it is underscored that in romance novels, elegant balls of any variety are not for the plain and ungainly. (Apr.)