An American Duchess

Western novelist Fyffe (the Prairie Hearts series) flings her focus across the Atlantic for a simplistic culture-clashing drama set among the gentry of Kent, England, but fails to understand Victorian aesthetics, and the story’s events feel more like rehashed moralistic fairy tale than romance plot. Rancher Emma Brinkman Northcott and businessman Beranger Northcott, protagonists of Heart of Mine, depart Colorado for Beranger’s childhood home after he learns that he’s the new Duke of Brightshire, much to the distress of relatives who hoped to inherit and do not appreciate their new duchess’s uncultured American egalitarian ways. Emma would rather hang out with the help; she befriends Charlotte Aldridge, on leave from her mean aunt’s bakeshop to fill in for her cousin in the castle scullery, and the shy, kind gamekeeper’s nephew, Tristen Llewellyn. Tristan hopes to get Charlotte’s attention away from Beranger’s flirtatious cousin, but fears her response to learning about his past. Fyffe’s fans may appreciate seeing established characters in a new context but will be disappointed by the split romantic focus, and Victorian romance fans will be thoroughly unimpressed. (July)