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Reading progress update: I've read 28%.
I don't know where to begin.
Hestia Royce is an orphan, albeit a wealthy one. She has apparently inherited a large house in Sandercombe upon the deaths of her parents some months prior to this story's beginning. One assumes she is of age and/or has no male relatives -- or even older female ones! -- to "protect" her or to negotiate a marriage for her. Or perhaps her engagement to the duke's youngest son was arranged by her parents before their deaths. At any rate, she went off to Badanholt unaccompanied by any chaperon, only to be jilted at the altar by the Lord Isaac Quinn.
She returned to Sandercombe, where she lives in her big house and sits around doing nothing all day for five (or maybe six or seven) weeks.
When Leo Tyndale comes calling, Miss Royce does not even have a servant to answer the door. (How, then, does this lady even get dressed?)
Leo has been a missionary in India, for crying out loud. How would he NOT know proper etiquette? Grasping a woman by the arm and not letting go? Hello? (Well, at least he didn't grab her by the . . . . . . )
The writing is falling apart, too. The syntax is questionable at times, and Ms. Murdoch has a strong affinity for adverbs and said-bookisms.
My brain is weeping.
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