Review: A Fiery Escort for the Roguish Marquess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel

A Fiery Escort for the Roguish Marquess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel by Scarlett Osborne
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Based on the description, I really thought I would enjoy "A Fiery Escort for the Roguish Marquess." It sounded like it might be a sort of historical "Pretty Woman" (hooker with a heart of gold meets a rich man and they fall in love), with some added intrigue thrown in to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, I ended up being very disappointed overall.

Details are incredibly important in a historical romance, and the author seems to have gotten a lot of them mixed up here. For example, hotels and hotel bars didn't exist during the Regency as she seems to have been envisioning them. There were lodging houses and coaching inns, but not hotels, as such, prior to the mid-19th century. Ernest and his friend Archie, as well as the baron, would probably have gone to a gentleman's club like Brooks or White's to play cards and drink in the evenings, not to a hotel. It would not have been particularly easy for Rachel, as a prostitute, to just waltz in and pick up a high class client like the baron. Women weren't allowed in gentleman's clubs. Given that Rachel's interaction with the baron was a relatively important part of the plot, I can see why the author wanted it to work the way she pictured it, but unfortunately, it just wasn't realistic.

Another major problem is that "escort" is too modern a term for prostitution; it was not widely used in this context until the 1920s/1930s, and was also likely American in origin, not British. I could have overlooked it if it were only used in the title of the book, but the word was used repeatedly, by many different characters in several situations, throughout the book. If the author really wanted to use a euphemism for "prostitute," she could have referred to Rachel as a "courtesan" instead, though what Rachel did was really too common for that. She was a prostitute, plain and simple. If the author didn't want to call her that, maybe she should have given her heroine a different profession (barmaid, perhaps?).

Then there is the alcohol the characters supposedly drank. There wouldn't have been any such thing as "cheap" brandy during the Regency - it was all imported from France or elsewhere in Europe, and a lot of times it had to be smuggled in due to high taxes and trade embargoes. Customers of the White Lion would have been drinking locally produced gin or ale because those were the cheap drinks of the early 19th century. And as for the baron's "fine French whisky"? It couldn't possibly have existed. There was no whisky produced in France until at least the 1980s!

Aside from the above mentioned (and other) historical inaccuracies, there were a lot of things about the plot didn't make sense. For example, Ernest says he loves and respects his father, yet seems to avoid him all the time and be afraid of him in some ways. Also, he acknowledges that his mother had a tendency to keep a lot of mementos from his childhood, so when he found the chest with Unity's things, why was it so strange to think that his mother would have kept those too? And how did he even know that the items had belonged to his sister? They easily could have been his mother's garments from her childhood. I can't accept that Ernest "just knew" his sister was alive as a jumping off point for the entire rest of the story. It's just not believable.

There is also the incredible coincidence of Rachel being best friends with the woman who turns out to be Ernest's long-lost sister. Again, it strains credulity. There are so many hints dropped about the woman's identity that you will see the "big reveal" coming from a mile away, too.

The one thing I did (somewhat) enjoy about this book was watching Ernest and Rachel fall in love. That said, I hated that Rachel continued to take clients while she was involved with Ernest. I get that she didn't want to take money from Ernest because she didn't want their relationship to be based on a transaction, but surely she could have let him help her in some other way, such as finding a more respectable job? Ernest never even offers, though, which is kind of disappointing. He does buy her 5 loaves of bread at one point, so there's that. (All Rachel ever seems to eat is bread. How she remains alive based on that diet is a mystery, but I digress.)

At any rate, given the number of historical inaccuracies and things that just don't make sense about the plot, I really can't recommend this book. I'm not sure I would read any of this author's future books either, unless I was sure that they had been better researched and edited.

*ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

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