This book is the first of two that tell the same story, from different perspectives, like Julia Quinn’s Duke of Wyndham experiment a few years ago that yielded mixed results. Rather than tell the truth and reveal the scandal, he decides to wait it out a few days- but while the women think that Christiana’s husband has arisen from the dead (suddenly way nicer than he had been before dying), Richard and his friend discover that the death wasn’t an accident, but murder. But now Richard is back, surprised to learn that his brother is dead, and that said brother married a woman under Richard’s name. This was apparently done to avoid the legalities of wills. You see, Richard is the elder twin George, the man to whom Christiana has been married, tried to kill his brother and thinking he succeeded, simply impersonated him.

Of course, when the real Earl of Fairgrave shows up at the ball, Christiana is shocked. So they do the obvious thing: Tell everyone that the Earl is ill, pack his dead body in ice, and head for a ball. Now he’s in trouble again, and Christiana and her sisters decide to find a poor lord for the elder one to marry, to gain access to a generous dowry provided by a deceased uncle. The reason Christiana had to get married in the first place was to pay off her father’s uncharacteristic gambling debts. However, her husband’s death now puts a damper on the plans for her sisters to find husbands. Instead of being upset, she’s delighted – despite being charming and making her fall for him while he courted her, after the marriage he became verbally abusive. The novel is quite a farce unfortunately, it’s not a particularly good one.Ĭhristiana Fairgrave doesn’t have the usual reaction when her husband drops dead.

While reading The Countess I couldn’t help but be reminded of Moliére, the 17th century king of comedy.

The countess by lynsay sands