Ilze

The story might have gotten at least a 3-star rating from me for the first 2/3 of the book. But after the hero, in all sincerity, tells the heroine he loves her, things just go downhill, mainly because the heroine turns into a complete ninny at that point ("no, he doesn't really love me, he's just saying that to get me to marry him") and the author dwells on her "ninnyness" at great, excruciating length. The resolution of the plot with the "bad" stepbrother and "good" brother is just bad. That aspect of the plot was never believable to begin with. He would surely not become the head of the family at age 19 - some sort of wardship until he reached the age of majority, which was 21 in England in that time, would have been in place, and the whole business of the youngest son being the legal inheritor of an entailed property seemed extremely fishy to me.