A Christmas Gambol
By Joan Smith

   Country mouse Cicely Caldwell just wants to get her novel published, but Lord Montaigne wants her to pose as the authoress of a bestseller. The book in question is a gothic novel called “Chaos is Come Again,” a work that is as bad as it is popular. Cicely gets to stay with her recently married best friend Meg, and see something of London. So far so good, but Montaigne hasn’t reckoned on Cecily’s forthright nature which cuts through to the very bone of many problems as well as creating quite a few of her own.

   Joan Smith is the author of over a hundred Regencies and it shows in this practiced piece of fun. To start with there is the delightfully sensible but charming Cecily and the romantic and kindly Montaigne to make a change from petulant or simpering misses and overbearing alpha males. I love humor in a romance—surely one of the strengths of Georgette Heyer’s books apart from her exhaustive research—and there is plenty in here. Also, I always enjoy Regencies that focus on the London Season rather than more rustic pleasures and this is an enjoyable excursion through the salons and ballrooms. Then too this novel manages to convey in an admirably short space a true feeling of life in fashionable Regency London. Like a good glass of champagne, this happy tale fizzes in all the right places.