Nice! Excellent characterization, great motives, good solid reasons for all secrets - I never once told the protagonists that they were idiots and to talk to one another, as I usually do. Relia's plight was quite solid - though actually the dragonslaying struck me as a trifle too easy. Her solution, while highly peculiar, made sense - and worked better than she expected. Thomas' reasons for accepting made solid sense too - and let him obscure the other reasons! Their dealings with each other, and then the matter of the election; the crisis at the party, which was _not_ presented as a chance for them to suddenly gasp out their true feelings - yeah, this is good. And I'm interested to read the stories of the other characters mentioned - some completed within this story, but Olivia certainly has some matters to learn, and I'd like to know more of Alan and Jane - yeah. I'll be looking for more from this author. ( )

The Lady and the Cit is a marriage-of-convenience story, but a rather unusual one.

Aurelia Trevor is an heiress, but until she turns 25, she won't have control of her estate, Pevensey Park. In the meantime, her uncle and guardian is running the estate into the ground, and pressuring her to marry her cousin, the "Terrible Twyford." The solution seems to be for her to marry someone of her own choosing, but with Twyford becoming bolder and threatening to compromise her to force her to marry him, time is running short. So she writes letters to various friends and acquaintances telling them she's in search of a husband.

The initial prospects are quite amusing, in a 3-Bears sort of way. The problem is that Aurelia doesn't need just any husband: she needs one who'll allow her to live at Pevensey Park and run it by herself.

Enter Thomas Lanning, a cit (for those of you not familiar with Regencies, this means he *gasp* works for a living, in the city--a definite class difference). Aurelia proposes a business-like arrangement, thinking that a Cit would be so honored to be marrying a Lady that he'd be easily manipulated.

Of course, he's not. Thomas hadn't intended to marry, but the lure of Pevensey Park is too much to turn down, so he agrees.

In addition to a stormy romance (these two are adversaries from the start), The Lady and the Cit is also full of fascinating details about elections in England at that time.

It's always fun to watch two characters who are all wrong for each other fall in love, fighting it every step of the way. Even more fun watching them struggle not to admit it. ( )