Shameless (The House of Rohan) Review

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Shameless (The House of Rohan) ReviewBoth Lady Melisande Carstairs and Lord Benedick Rohan are on missions. Melisande is on a crusade to rescue and reform prostitutes and has turned her late husband's giant townhouse into a group home for her soiled doves. Benedick has decided it's time to find his third - hopefully last - wife, a plump mousy sort who'll give him an heir and a spare and then fade into the wallpaper while he continues his lifestyle of debauchery. Their missions collide when Benedick sends for one of his past favorites for a brief encounter.
Sooner than either would like, Benedick and Melisande end up together again when she comes to him for help. Girls have come to her house beaten and raped, telling her the presumed defunct Heavenly Host - a secretive club where the very rich engage in all sorts of sexual practices - has been reassembled. The girls have told Melisande that acts with children at the club are no longer consensual and it's turned dark and violent and now a girl is missing. Benedick's ancestors were the founders of the club and Melisande goes to him for help in finding the girl. He's not particularly willing - not only does he not believe her, he's not all that eager to spend any time with the tart-tongued, disagreeable Melisande.
Despite being unable to shake her off during the investigation, Benedick is forced to admit that even if Melisande is maddening, he's attracted to her and she's begun to realize that maybe there's a reason women enjoy sex with the right partner and Benedick might be just the right partner for her.
This is probably the most classically "historical romance" of all four Rohan books. There's a dashing rakish hero who's been unlucky in love and now is looking only to marry someone he won't care about, an older spunky widow who's devoted herself to some controversial charity and there's a dangerous mystery that's uniting them long enough that they'll realize they're a good match. Of course the others had the same bare bones classic plots too, but Stuart took them to another level by making her heroes completely dastardly and putting her heroines in truly awful conditions. To varying degrees of success, she also had secondary romances. Neither of those are present here and it made for a little blander reading than I was expecting.
When Benedick first appeared in Breathless, he was married to Annis, his first wife whom he loved very much. She died in childbirth, as did his second wife, which had contributed to his reasons for wanting nothing more than a sturdy broodmare of a wife to drop a couple of babies and then just leave him alone. Unlike Francis and Adrian, he was never written with any sexual darkness and he wasn't forceful about anything. Unlike Lucien, he wasn't particularly evil although he said cruel things when he wanted to make Melisande leave him alone.
Melisande - who was nicknamed "Charity" in a not-altogether friendly way - was a bit of a combination of the heroines of the previous Rohan books. She was a little "off the shelf" because of her age (30) but still mostly sexually innocent. She was a champion of the less-fortunate, smart and a little dowdy - a fixer-upper for a Rohan. What set Melisande apart was her tendency to argue about everything, although Benedick contributed his fair amount. They didn't banter much, they out and out argued. I liked her more toward the end of the book and when she was with her "gaggle" and best friend Emma.
While there wasn't a secondary romance developed in Shameless, there were some other important things happening. Benedick's brother Brandon who'd last been seen as a happy carefree man is now a scarred and disfigured wreck, thanks to the Afghan War. He's been staggering around Benedick's townhouse for two months drunk, likely drugged and certainly up to something very bad.
There's also a really wonderful, funny little storyline with Benedick's sister Miranda and her husband Lucien. She's as delightful as ever and I love how her relationship Lucien turned out - and Benedick hates him just as much as he always did, which is equally hilarious. When Breathless ended, I was disappointed. He was so incredibly evil for nearly the entire book that his redemption felt as brief as a blink. This little look at their marriage completely satisfied me. I'm also happy that at the end of Shameless there's a tiny epilogue - it's completely appropriate given the storyline.
Technically compared to other historicals, this is a fine book - Stuart is a great author who can make dialogue snap and write steamy sex scenes without ever being graphic and she's done that here. My problem with the story was that I was comparing it to the other House of Rohan books and I found it a little lukewarm - whether it's good or bad, Stuart is famous for her dark, seemingly irredeemable heroes and Benedick never was that for me. I wasn't really that surprised when he and Melisande fell in love and I never even needed a grovel scene - sacrilege in a Stuart romance.Shameless (The House of Rohan) Overview

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