A-Z Romance! Drake

I picked up Olivia Drake's The Duke I Once Knew. Although I found the main character engaging, and I appreciated her desire to head out on her own, I found the premise somewhat unappealing:

She goes to work as a governess for the sister of a man with whom she lost contact years earlier. They blame each other for the ceased contact, and she never wants to see him again!

Yet she goes to work for his sister...

Right.

I think Elizabeth Bennet visiting Pemberley is allowable because (1) it is one day; (2) she is honestly curious about Darcy. She is shocked to encounter Darcy but accepts his appearance as an acceptable possibility. They use the encounter to reach a friendly peace, before Darcy determines to court her again.

But going to stay on an estate owned by a man whom one supposedly loathes because he broke one's heart--with the excuse that he won't ever visit--makes me roll my eyes. Even though the main character has limited options and is afraid her family will change her mind if she doesn't move rapidly (one of her more believable motivations), she does have other options.

Take Jane Eyre:

Jane spends eight years at Lowood as a student where she "had the means of an excellent education" and two as a teacher. However, once Miss Temple leaves, she finds she is tired of the "uniform" life.

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”

So she places an advertisement in the paper.

"A young lady accustomed to tuition is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen. She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music.”

She only receives one reply--from Mrs. Fairfax--but here is a young lady at the age of eighteen showing more careful thought and activity about her future than a character who is near thirty. She later uses her education to help at St. Rivers' school. 

I don't much care for female characters who treat every encounter as an opportunity to argue; however, I do rather like them to use their heads. I don't care for heroines who are maneuvered into situations they would never have brought upon themselves: oh, my, how did that happen? 

Elizabeth and Jane comes across as more modern than some contemporarily written historical characters.  

The issue of lovers who previously fell out beginning over--see Austen's Persuasion--will crop up again.