Adam Mannion, Esquire, born of common blood but educated with the noble, learns of the fabled “Sleeping Beauty of Northumberland,” reputed to be absolutely gorgeous and obscenely wealthy. She was locked away on her family estate in the wilds of northern England, where few would bother to tread in search of her. Needful of funds, however, he decides he has nothing to lose in taking the chance to find her and, hopefully, marry her. He needs her money to pay off his late father’s debts, and is hoping to have some seed money to make his own fortune on the stock exchange.

Adam is not impressed when he arrives at Rathford Manor – it’s old, rundown, and creepily quiet, as if the whole place is under some sort of gothic spell. He’s not very impressed when he meets the Sleeping Beauty, either. Lady Helena Rathford is half-starved and wearing servant’s clothes, toiling to care for the too-big manor house with very little help.

Mercifully for Adam, Lady Helena’s father, George, is still alive and kicking, and as master of the house, has the ability to arrange for Helena’s hand in marriage over his daughter’s protestations. No one is blind to the fact that Adam is more or less a fortune hunter, but George Rathford senses something sincere in him, and tells Adam that he can marry Helena on 3 conditions: that he must visit her in Northumberland for at least 2 months at a time, twice a year; that he will provide her with as many children as she desires; and that he always treats her with kindness – raise one hand or voice in anger, and he’s cut off before he knows what hits him.

Adam agrees to these conditions, and sets about trying to win over his erstwhile betrothed. He can see that she’s basically living her life in mortal fear, but he doesn’t understand why. What mysteries are lurking in her background? Why has she chained herself up in this big, empty house for five years? Why does she (and her father) allow a coarse old woman called Kimberly to browbeat her within an inch of her life?

Adam is the first person in a long time to show Helena kindness and human decency – or at least, that she allows to be kind to her. She’s guilt-ridden and believes herself unworthy of happiness. It quickly becomes clear that Helena was raised to be a shell of blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty by her exacting mother, and said mother’s death has a lot to do with the cloud hanging over her. Kimberly was her mother’s confidante, and takes delight in torturing her by telling her that her mother is still watching her from beyond the grave.

It’s only after Adam treats her kindly that Helena starts to have confidence in herself again, begins to realize that she has to shake off the shackles of Kimberly’s weird hold over her, and has to take her life back into her own hands in order to have what she ultimately wants. Adam, meanwhile, is torn between nurturing his business interests in London and learning more about his beautiful, mysterious wife’s past.

They are drawn to each other and the depths of feeling that they sense in each other; the initial lust is quite tender and deepens pretty quickly into love. I believed they were falling in love with each other, and there are some beautiful scenes between the two of them at their most vulnerable that pack a wonderful emotional punch. (The sex scenes are pretty steamy, too.)

There are lots of gothic overtones, which unfortunately ripen into a murder in the final third of the story. Kimberly turns up dead, Adam is arrested, Helena thinks Adam is just after her money even though he’s done everything to show her he loves her except say the words “I love you” (a personal pet peeve of mind, ugh), and of course there’s an evil villain monologue scene where he twirls his mustaches as he tells Adam and Helena all about how he was the one who faked Helena’s ‘madness’ and that he plans to murder them and frame them for Kimberly’s murder. The evil villain bit was too much and too thin to truly add much to the story; I think it would’ve been fine without this extra helping of misunderstanding and breakdown of communication. To the author’s credit, though, this extraneous bit of plot does dovetail nicely with the main secret from Helena’s past.

I enjoyed the way this book uses the Sleeping Beauty theme. Adam hardly considers himself a Prince Charming, fighting dragons to rescue his lady love. Helena’s life at the manor is like the sleeping spell that overcomes the village when the Sleeping Beauty is cast into her hundred years’ sleep. There are lots of descriptions of Helena that are drawn straight from the fairy tale (her beauty, her resting appearance, etc). The fiercely loyal servants are a decent stand-in for ‘the good fairies,’ and Kimberly is certainly malevolent enough to be the villain for most of the book.

There were some niggles, though, that took away from my enjoyment. The characters took awhile to settle into consistency, especially Helena. First she dislikes her father and calls him weak for not protecting her from her mother as a child, then she’s all upset when he doesn’t stand up for her to Adam, then she loves him again and knows that he loves her in spite of his weakness, etc. Internal consistency from the start would’ve definitely been a plus. There’s the aforementioned ridiculous murder plot that weighs down the last third of the book. And there’s a secondary love story between the local duke and his cross-class love match marriage that is so tantalizing I wonder if there’s a novel of it – and if there is, I want to read it! I definitely felt like I had a better sense of those characters than I did of the hero and heroine of this book. (Turns out there is: Strathmere’s Bride. It will be interesting to see the characters in this book from the perspective of that one!)

For all the niggles, though, I’d definitely be willing to read this author again. ( )

Adam Mannion needs money and Lady Helena Rathford has it. He sets out to marry her for her fortune and ends up with a whole lot more. A Victorian era romance, which is a timeframe that I enjoy reading in, it is also a murder mystery thrown into the mix. The mystery is well written and adds a nice twist to the romantic tale that just may help the two fall in love.

Overall, a good read. ( )