Ilze

4 solid stars for this one. A mostly character-driven story about a duke's bastard son and a woman from the gentry class whose wealth is pretty much wiped out and has to support herself and her sister by making copies of paintings by famous artists. Trouble is, she doesn't realize that the paintings she's copying (they're sitting in an attic) are stolen and the owners and government have been looking for them for years. The hero, who supports himself by being an art broker, has been assigned the task of figuring out what happened to the paintings, which apparently were stolen while being taken to be hidden in case of an invasion of Britain by Napoleon. He also just recently inherited a house from his father the duke which is very close to the heroine's home. Some of the coincidences in the book are a little too pat, but otherwise, it's a good, enjoyable romantic story with some mystery thrown in. No wonder Madeline Hunter is an auto-buy for me.