ALL A WOMAN WANTS

When Victorian spinster Bea Cavendish crosses paths with burly Lachlan Warwick MacTavish, a coarse Scottish-American seafarer, Bea realizes that he may be just the man who can teach her about estate management. Having lost her domineering father recently, dependent and unworldly Bea feels ill equipped to run the heavily mortgaged estate she's inherited. Fortunately, Mac has a good business mind, and he's willing to assist Bea if she agrees to find a nanny for his four-year-old nephew and infant niece. What Mac is reluctant to tell Bea is that he has kidnapped the children from their dissolute father, the Viscount Simmons, after learning of his sister's death and the Viscount's neglect. An unlikely yet heartening romance blooms between Bea and Mac as they work to repair her estate. The only factor that threatens to keep them apart is Mac's determination to sail back to America with his two charges. Rice (Nobody's Angel) does a fine job developing complex, sympathetic characters, but her plodding narrative lacks march. Readers may not have Bea's patience to slog through the details of estate management in order to reach the novel's moving but inevitable conclusion (June 8)