I have a few of Ms Willingham’s books somewhere in the TBR cordillera’s peaks and valleys, and I am pretty sure I’ve read at least one of her books before; however, my memory is not being helpful, so it feels like this ARC is my introduction to her work.

I am sad to report that it was not good, because I struggled to suspend my disbelief from pretty much the beginning of the book.

Beware: phonetic spelling to denote a Scots accent

This is the fourth title in the Secrets in Silk tetralogy, centered around the four Misses Andrews, daughters of Lord Lanfordshire.

The series setup is as follows: the father is an impoverished second son who goes off to war, leaving his family in a small property in Scotland. Mr Andrews eventually inherits the baronetcy, but they’re still poor, so the eldest daughter takes on work sewing, and eventually comes upon a way to make corsets more comfortable–which in turn becomes an actual business that soon essentially supports the family.

Shenanigans, of course, ensue: early 1800s, members of the gentry in trade (and undergarments, of all things), four daughters to marry, and so on and so forth. From the blurbs, I gather that the events in the third and fourth books happen more or less simultaneously.

Fast forward to 1815; Margaret Andrews is still unmarried, after a blackguard jilted her the day before the wedding some years ago. She’s always been a very prim and proper miss, but more so after the scandal; even so, after several seasons, it’s become clear that no man will offer for her. And now the bastard who ruined her reputation has kidnapped her younger sister Amelia from a ball the sisters were attending, and made off with her.

For reasons that are never clear to me, Margaret immediately concludes that the knave is taking Amelia to Gretna Green, to “force her to marry him”, and so sets out to intercept them, rescue her sister, and extract some revenge from the bastard in the bargain. Keeping in mind that it’s generally accepted that if a man and woman of a certain class are found together alone, that’s enough to compromise the lady, whereupon the man is expected to offer to marry her, the whole “taking her to Gretna Green” thing makes zero sense.

But okay, let’s pretend this follows.

Upon discovering that her sister is missing, and somehow concluding who kidnapped her and why, Margaret enlists the help of a family friend, the Earl of Castledon, who will follow the usual roads north, to try and catch up to the kidnapper (book three follows that thread–blurb here). Meanwhile, Margaret leaves the ball and does not alert her parents, does not go home, does none of the things that would indicate a modicum of common sense.

Instead, she takes the family carriage and an elderly footman to a tavern in a bad area of London, to hunt down Cain Sinclair, “the Highlander”, a Scot whom the family has known for a good decade, in order to beg him to accompany her, straightaway, to follow the “bad roads” north, in case that’s the route the villain has taken. And when he basically questions her sanity, she offers him both money and to get his younger brother into a private (read: for the children of the aristocracy) school, as a bribe.

I repeat: this twenty five year old gentle woman left a ball in the middle of the night, without even retrieving her wrap, to go to a seedy part of London in search of commoner, with the intention of leaving town alone with him to go chase someone who, if she’s even right about his motivations and goals, has likely taken a different road–i.e., the most direct route north.

And then she argues with Cain when he wants to stop and buy food and drink for the trip–which he has already warned her can last anywhere from a few hours to a couple of weeks, because taking back roads means both bad roads, and fewer, if any, inns.

At any rate, they leave London that same night and, because the roads are as bad as predicted, a few hours later the carriage overturns, and, get this, it catches fire.

Why? Oh, the oil lamps on the outside somehow ignite the carriage, and also the fire kills the driver, who apparently is not thrown off when the carriage rolls over, while Margaret and Cain are trapped inside.

Drama, drama, Cain saves Margaret, Margaret saves Cain; she has a head wound, he has a head wound and burns all over his body. Then Margaret–a gently reared lady who has never done any physical labor, or indeed exerted herself beyond the requirements of dancing–lifts an unconscious man twice her size onto one of the carriage horses, after which, she walks for three days, leading the horse, until she comes across a church and vicarage near a small village.

Whereupon Margaret–who, lest we forget, is still in her ballgown, after being through a carriage accident, fire, rain and mud–promptly bribes the vicar, with the pearls she’s somehow still wearing, into leaving her and the barely conscious Cain alone in the cottage “until her husband improves”–because apparently it’s more important “not to live in such close quarters with strangers” and to neither lie to them or tell them the facts, than having people who know what they’re doing help take care of a wounded man, let alone cook, draw water from the well, etc.

With this, and a short bit from Cain’s point of view about how and when he and Margaret had met a decade earlier in Scotland, we are at the beginning of chapter three of nineteen.

Between the sublime lack of common sense displayed by the heroine and my inability to suspend disbelief about any of the practicalities (the carriage catches fire in the middle of a downpour because of an oil lantern outside? the driver is burned to death in minutes? a carriage horse–not a riding horse, different beasts, different training–lets a woman push an unconscious man over its back?), I was hate reading by this point, and so decided to call it quits.

Mostly because, as I said at the top, I have a number of Ms Willingham’s books in the TBR, and people whose reading tastes generally enjoy her work (especially her Medievals and Viking era stories), so I want give this author another try, but not likely with a Regency, and probably not in the very near future.

Unlaced by the Outlaw is a DNF.

Unlaced by the Outlaw by Michelle Willingham is the fourth and final book in the author's Secrets in Silk quartet for Amazon Montlake (Attention: Kindle Unlimited users...). This series has mostly ranged from OK (the majority of the books) to Oh Man, That Was Really Good (the second book). This book is Margaret's story, the sister who is wound so tight that you'll find diamonds if you follow her into the bathroom. She's spent the entire series tap dancing around the hero, a totally unsuitable and way beneath her Scottish Highlander-type.

This is the sort of book that wraps up the series well, and is a pleasant distraction while reading, but doesn't have a lot of staying power. The high points of this series has been Willingham's interesting premise, her not throwing out the history baby with the historical bathwater, and the world-building. But I'll be honest - I think I prefer the author's medievals to when she ventures into Regency era.

Final Grade = C+