A Duke of One's Own - Emma Orchard

Another week has gone by in something of a blur. Work is busy; fortunately, after a not-great May, we've been flood-free for several weeks. There are interesting projects in hand, and on my part at least some excitement about today's election. I'm hoping for new faces and change, I'm not paying too much attention to polls - they've been wrong before. I'm not wildly optimistic about what the next few years will bring, the damage is too deeply rooted for a quick fix but if we can fix the water supply and work on the NHS as a country that would be something. 

I'm currently on a waiting list for an injection into my foot that will help with the referred pain arthritis is causing. I'm at the getting text messages to ask if I still need treatment stage of the process (yes I do, the arthritis has not gone away of its own accord). I hadn't considered the option of going private until the text landed, and haven't yet looked into it, but the pain is getting worse so at some point the consideration will be can I work like this? Or sleep. 

Altogether then there are a lot of distractions, so easy reading to keep my mind off the serious business of what kind of country we'll wake up to tomorrow is about all I can manage (current book is Lessons in Crime, the academic mystery themed British Library Crime Classics collection). I read A Duke of One's Own a little while ago, and because it was on a kindle app didn't exactly forget about it, but it was out of sight and therefore out of mind. 

Emma Orchard is a friend, we met during lockdown in the Georgette Heyer readalong on Twitter (as was). I like her books, I love the easter eggs for Heyer fans, the fact that her characters sometimes need to pee (I suppose it's part of the fantasy in a lot of romances that nobody has any bodily functions to contend with beyond sometimes being hungry). These books are funny, honest about female desire, and probably spicier than I would otherwise read.

The heroine of A Duke of One's Own is Georgie, sister to Lord Irlam, hero of the last book. Bridgerton style - because that's the current frame of reference, the Pendlebury's are a large and loving family of mostly boys. Georgie is a mess of a human being. She's young, stubborn, sexually curious, and full of hormones. It's a combination that has led to some very poor but entirely realistic decision making. 

The double standards applied to female sexuality are touched upon here, and although the consequences for stepping out of line might have been theoretically more severe in the past I sometimes winder how much they've really changed. I don't doubt for a moment that girls did mess around though, what mattered was not getting caught. For a woman in Georgie's position - a socially powerful family who will support her, and plenty of money, I also wonder how severe the consequences would even have been? 

This is Emma's third book, the tone is more assured each time, and again, the thing I really love here is that people might behave outrageously from time to time, but always in a way that makes sense for the character, and is understandable from a human perspective. Add to that humour, genuinely complex emotional situations, a hugely likable cast of side characters who get proper space and attention, and you have a series to really enjoy.