Romance loves a Cinderella trope, doesn’t it? The impoverished-yet-well-born lady marries a duke. Or even a peasant marrying a duke. The genre isn’t picky. Sometimes it goes the other way - a low-born man marries an heiress. However it goes in a particular story, it’s a fun one to play around with.
By chance, I ended up finishing these two books relatively close to each other. Now, I had read Project Duchess as an eARC from NetGalley back before it had been officially released. But I was browsing through my library’s OverDrive catalog looking for a good romance audiobook to listen to and I saw that Project Duchess was available. So I checked it out, since I’d never listened to the audio version. The Duke Buys a Bride was a first-time read for me.
And both of these use the Rags to Riches trope, but both in vastly different ways. Because they were similar in that fashion, I decided to review them together and compare how these two use the trope.
First off, Project Duchess -
In this initial installment of Sabrina Jeffries’ Duke Dynasty series, we are introduced to a huge blended family. Lady Lydia has been married and widowed by three dukes. She has had children by all three of her husbands - three sons and one daughter (the daughter is the twin sister to one of the dukes). So these half-siblings are all family, yet their separate relations are not blood related... it gets a little confusing if you’re not paying attention.
Anyway, Lydia’s latest husband, the duke of Armitage, has died and her third son, Sheridan, is now the Duke. They’re all at Armitage Hall to prepare for the funeral when Lydia’s estranged eldest son, the Duke of Greycourt (known as Grey) is summoned to attend his mother in her time of mourning. He meets up with his younger twin half-siblings - Marlow Drake (the Duke of Thornstock, or “Thorn”) and Lady Gwyn Drake, and Sheridan Wolfe, the Duke of Armitage.
On the estate are Sheridan’s cousins through his father’s side, Beatrice and Joshua Wolfe. Financially, Beatrice and Joshua are hanging on by a thread. Their uncle before Lydia’s husband was a total bastard towards them and they don’t have a lot of options. Joshua works as the estate’s gamekeeper after being wounded while serving in the Royal Navy. Lydia decides to sponsor Beatrice in society and have her and Lady Gwyn debut together (Gwyn hasn’t debuted because her father was an ambassador to Prussia before returning to England and... well... dying.)
Grey is volunteered to help prepare the ladies for their debuts, since he’s not doing much (sarcasm very much intended). And there’s a mystery that overarches the entire series (this is a Sabrina Jeffries novel, after all). See, when you decide to have a dowager duchess widowed three times so you can have a family of dukes (hence “Duke Dynasty” - then you have the play on reality TV shows... it’s all very meta) - that’s going to be quite odd. Sheridan wants to know why his mother’s husbands keep dying and he suspects Joshua. Grey is enlisted to help Sheridan figure it all out - by getting close to Beatrice.
So that sets up the story.
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| This is the large print cover and, I gotta say, I really like it! |
As far as Rags to Riches is concerned - Beatrice is still the granddaughter of a duke, albeit not in the line of inheritance. But she should have been provided for a lot better than she was. The Duke of Armitage before Sheridan’s father was a piece of shit and didn’t care about his niece and nephew... well... he cared about Beatrice, but not in any way that an uncle should do with his niece (repeat after me: EW). But Lady Lydia is determined to make this right and Beatrice is willing to go into society, if only to secure a future with a decent husband.
Grey has his own issues, but finances is certainly not one of them. But beyond the money and the titles, Grey sees Beatrice for more than just being a poor relation (by marriage). In all the time they spend together, their personalities start to click and they help each other heal from past traumas. And it’s not like one set the other down and said “Tell me how you feel about XYZ.” It’s something that happens naturally from them being in each other’s company so much. And it’s beautiful to witness.
Really, the Cinderella trope in this one isn’t as front-and-center as some uses of it. But it certainly plays a role in how Grey and Beatrice’s relationship plays out in the story. It’s merely one aspect of the story, though it certainly is there.
(PS - If you haven’t read this series, I suggest you start. It’s a treat and a delight. But I’m a huge fan of Sabrina Jeffries, so I’m automatically biased.)
Now, with The Duke Buys a Bride by Sophie Jordan - this one is a little more off-the-wall. I’m learning that about this author, and particularly this series of hers. It’s not to the level of “crazycakes” like Bertrice Small, but there are some far-fetched ideas that you just have to accept if you’re going to read these. If you can do that, you are going to have some highly entertaining reading sessions.
Alyse Bell is “married” to Mr. Beard - an old man who her father arranged to have her go to his household so she’d be taken care of after her father died. They may have been married on paper, but she was a glorified housekeeper for him. She took care of his house and his children and that was it. Now that his children are gone and he wants to really marry someone else, Alyse has to go. And in this little village in the north of England, the only way to do that is to sell your marriage contract off to someone else. It’s a Wife Auction.
[Suspension of disbelief, here. Though part of me would not be surprised to learn such things actually happened.]
Alyse thinks that she has a young man who is willing to buy her off of Mr. Beard and they’re going to move to London and find work and things will be great. But when her beau doesn’t show up for the auction and she is left to the mercy of whoever pays the most for her (not a happy thought, considering some unsavory characters in the town have the money for it), who should arrive but our good friend the Duke of Autenberry, Marcus Weatherton.
Marcus is fleeing London because his best friend is in love with his stepmother (remember that?) and he’s heading through this little village after being found drunk in a stable and smelling like cow crap. He’s not had a good week. But he sees the Wife Auction taking place, sees Alyse on the stage being leered at and described like a broodmare, and he is disgusted by the scene. In a moment of gallantry, he bids for Alyse and ends up with her.
And no one knows he’s a duke. That’s the kicker. He doesn’t make a big deal about it, he looks like he’s slept in a barn (which, he did) and he doesn’t wear any nice clothes. And why in the world would a duke be going through this part of the country?
At first, Marcus just tells Alyse that she’s going to be his housekeeper in one of his estates up north. They are NOT married. Which suits Alyse just fine. But after days on horseback getting there and staying in inns... well, what do you THINK happens?
Eventually, Alyse discovers that Marcus is a duke - which is HUGE for her. She’s never dreamed of being a duchess. She’s a peasant. She never had any lofty ideas like that for herself. And on paper, at least, they’re married. True, neither one of them really considers the bill of sale binding (and it kind of isn’t - at least, not in England). But Scotland, where Kilmarkie House (Autenberry’s other estate) is - that’s another matter.
This one is unlike most romances I’ve read. I’m sure it’s happened in other books, but of the ones I’ve read, the lowborn lady is still connected to the ton in some way - through a relation or marriage or just the determination of the crown that someone cares for an estate after a peer dies. But Alyse is COMPLETELY outside English high society. And Marcus finds that he wants that. It is a straight-up Cinderella story, even more than the original Cinderella was.
Now, could that happen? Did it ever happen? Hell if I know. I tend to think that answer is no. Though I’ve heard of real-life stories that actually happened that sounded too ridiculous to be true. And that’s the thing: I don’t need my romances to be plausible. It’s fun when authors mix things up a bit and give us something a bit more off-beat. Romance is a fantasy, just as much as an actual fantasy story is. It’s just done in a different way.
So there you go - two Rags-to-Riches romances that take the trope in interesting directions. Check them both out and see what you think. Do you like the slightly more plausible story in Project Duchess or do you like the out-of-the-blue stranger-than-fiction tale in The Duke Buys a Bride? Or maybe both?
