Thank you for the opportunity to read Only Enchanting. Unfortunately, I did not download the book before it was archived in November 2014. I do not plan to finish the book.

Another amazing read, I enjoy the characters and storyline. A page turner for me. This series is a winner!

Does Mrs. Agnes Keeping exude somewhat of an Austen*esque air? Perhaps she does. When Flavian, Lord Ponsonby asks her to waltz, she tries to keep her excitement in check.

"Mrs. Keeping,” the rather languid voice of Viscount Ponsonby said, “d-do tell me I have no rival for your hand for this particular s-set. I would be devastated. If I am to waltz, it really must be w-with a sensible companion.”

Agnes plied her fan and turned toward him.

“Indeed, my lord?” she said. “And what makes you believe I am sensible?” And was that a compliment he had paid her? That she was sensible?

He moved his head back an inch and let his eyes rove over her face.

“There is a c-certain light in your eye and quirk to your lip,” he said, “that proclaims you to be an observer of life as well as a d-doer. A sometimes amused observer, if I am not mistaken.”

Goodness gracious. She regarded him in some surprise. She hoped no one else had noticed that. She was not even sure it was true.

Self-aware heroines are common in Mary Balogh’s stories—heroes that notice that self-awareness, particularly at the start of a courtship are a rarer breed. Their conversation made me sit up and take notice of Viscount Ponsonby. He sustained a triple head wound in battle on the Peninsula: “He was shot in the head, he fell off his horse and landed on his head, and as he lay there wounded, his body was trampled on by a horse and rider.” The results are lingering—in the beginning, amnesia and “gaps in his memory even after he recalled his identity.” He stutters because word recall and even conversation is no longer easy for him.

His physical difficulties do not dilute the powerful impact he has on his dancing partner: “He was gloriously handsome and so overpoweringly attractive that she was unable to muster any defensive wall against his allure.” Flavian is a heady brew for the 26 year-old widow, particularly when he returns to the subject of her sensibleness at the end of their dance.

“Not s-sensible after all, then,” he said. “Only enchanting.”

Enchanting?

Flavian leaves soon after the dance but he returns five months later for a gathering of the Survivor’s Club. The survivors are like family to him: “But these, his six friends—George, Hugo, Ben, Ralph, Imogen, and Vincent—were the family of his heart.” Agnes and her sister Dora, like everyone in the village, are excited by the gathering but Agnes must be forgiven for taking particular notice of Flavian: “It really, really was not fair that he looked even more handsome and virile on horseback than in a ballroom.”

Dear Reader, do you suspect that Flavian and Agnes are going to embark on a relationship leading to marriage? You would be correct. But there are many aspects of Flavian’s previous life that Agnes is confronted with when they start their life together, giving Only Enchanting somewhat of a gothic air.

I thoroughly enjoyed it: Mary Balogh has a way of writing about pain and loss, second chances, and the slow but steady growth of love between two people that is irresistible.