The Foundling - Book 20

I really have been on a Heyer kick lately.  The Foundling is another funny, well-written escape into Heyer's world of Regency England.  The hero of this story though is not some handsome, powerful man of the world.  Instead we have the Duke of Sale.  The only surviving child of his parents both of whom died when he was a baby (well, his father died before he was born).  His uncle Lionel as his guardian has spent the last 24 years being overbearingly overprotective as have all of the Duke's servants.  He has never been allowed to fend for himself in the slightest.  And the Duke's sweet and diffident personality, and the fact that he is slender and slight of stature, only seems to make matters worse.

This book is really a coming of age story about how the Gilly, the Duke, learns to be his own man.  He does it by running away and getting into many madcapped situations which involve trying to extricate a cousin from being blackmailed, rescuing a runaway boy who is fleeing an overbearing father, protecting a beautiful foundling who is as captivatingly beautiful as she is simple, dealing with a clever, grandiose opportunist who is trying to raise himself out of poverty by somehow tricking money out of the Duke.  Along the way we meet the many comical characters that make up the Duke's many retainers and family members and all the color he encounters in landlords at inns, constables, coachmen, etc.  This is a colorful roller coaster of a yarn.  There is also a bit of romance, for Gilly has just gotten engaged to Harriet; an engagement he has been pushed into and feels ambivalent about.

I thoroughly enjoyed this romp.  Gilly is a lovely character, immediately likable.  My only complaint is that I thought Heyer slows down a bit when winding up all the various threads of her story.  I kept thinking we'd got to the end when yet another little problem would rear its head and the Duke would have to once again prove that he was his own man and solve it.

Two thumbs up just for the sheer enjoyment factor of this book and also the wonderful character development in it.

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