Girl falls for lazy lout, who we all know is really a bum, because despite his broad shoulders, slim hips, and handsome face, he has a mouth that turns down at the corners. When he runs off for fame and fortune, the noble, intelligent, and kind owner of the local paper comes to court her. But he's old! (30 to her 19) and scarred! (from a saber cut fighting the dern British at General Washington's side.) and he's not the handsome loutish lad, (who also is overdone of drink and deceitful, too. Can you see where this is going? If you guessed straight into marriage and a Big Misunderstanding, you're spot on. Add in self- divorce and criminal conversation (google it. Go ahead, I'll wait.) and some Federalism era politics you've got the basic story ( though considering all the talk of criminal conversation, which still is the legal term on the subject in North Carolina and some other states, Rachel's passage probably has an unintended double meaning.)

Actually, there were SE interesting bits here and there, mostly due to Paula Reid (Schwartz)'s good research. She was a friend of my mother's (known as my friend, the romance writer, who also wrote under the names
Paula Jonas, Paula Reibel, Paula Reidalos, and regency stuff under the name of Elizabeth Mansfield. I believe she took my mom to a Romance writer's conference once, which pulled my mother to a different sort of book to read. Until that time Georgette Heyers and Jane Austen were her chick lit. For the last 15 or 20 years of her life, whole new worlds were opened up, thanks to that trip.