Review - The Scoundrel in Her Bed by Lorraine Heath

The Scoundrel in Her Bed by Lorraine Heath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Scoundrel in Her Bed is the third book in Lorraine Heath’s Sins for All Seasons series, and tells a much different story than the previous two books. The focus of the series is the Trewlove family - a group of individuals who were sold to a “baby farmer” in infancy. The practice was common at the time as a means to rid the nobility of unwanted illegitimate children. For a fee a woman would take in the child, and often the child perished soon after. This book focuses on Finn Trewlove and Lady Lavinia Kent. The two fell in love despite their very disparate social positions, until circumstances separated them. Now, eight years later they have reconnected.

In this book the main characters have to deal with the issues that caused their separation and the repercussions from it. After eight years they are both very different people than the young couple who fell in love without a care. Can they rebuild on that, do they even want to? At one point the heroine muses “They’d changed once, and they would change again, and she didn’t know how one remained in love when people constantly changed.” This is an question that is not exclusive to a historical setting, but all relationships everywhere.

Amidst the relationship issues there are other, darker themes in the book that are dealt with as well. The other books in the series have touched on the issues of baby farming in more roundabout ways, but this book tackles it head on. The book is good, but heavy. Parts of the narrative are definitely tearjerkers, and while of course there is a happily-ever-after, Heath takes us on a very long route to get there.


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