Love in the Time of Scandal

The second I’ve read in this series, I love Caroline Linden’s pacing: allowing the characters to reveal themselves and their intentions incrementally, and building their connections and the plot with careful pieces of action and insight. In Love in the Time of Scandal, our focus is brought to Penelope and Benedict: acquaintances of long standing, and well-suited to one another but separated due to changes in circumstances and some bad behaviors from Benedict. A failed courting of Penelope’s sister fell apart when she married his former best friend, and hard feelings still exist on Penelope’s behalf. Benedict is in need of a bride with a healthy dowry: he wants to escape his father’s overbearing and cruel nature and he sees this as his only option. Penelope is well provided for, but isn’t particularly interested in Benedict: in fact she loathes the man, and when her friend Frances mentions a man courting her, Penelope is full of advice about guarding oneself from fortune hunters. Until she realizes that Frances may be falling for Benedict, and that just won’t do. Outspoken and bold, Penelope isn’t worried overmuch about her future, but that will change. Scandals run deep here, and some answers are forthcoming, but Benedict and Penelope are thrown together in a scandal when he is consoling her after a fortuitous impulse to follow her, interrupting a vicious attack and rape. As was the way of things, Penelope bears the brunt of the scandalous whispers, and Benedict, being a man of his day, feels it his duty to offer for her hand. And we are off and running. The two are perfectly suited in temperament and personality: neither is slow to respond with a quip or wisecrack, both are deeply caring people, and both have the wrong end of the stick in their beliefs about each other. While they dance about their attraction on the way to a happy ending, the backstory of Benedict’s life with his father and the resulting guilt that has driven many of his actions since provide an understanding of his actions, fears and motivations. Bit by bit Linden weaves the tale that mixes the lives and fortunes of Penelope and Benedict into a solid form, with a few knots and holes that leave room for more action, adventure and love to come. Working well as a standalone story, you’ll want to read the earlier books in this series to meet all of the wonderful characters that are introduced in the Scandals series. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.