An Unwilling Bride

An Unwilling Bride brings together two people with every reason to resent each other: a ducal heir who has just learned he is illegitimate, and an independent schoolteacher steeped in the principles of the Rights of Women, both forced into marriage by the old duke's need to legitimize his bloodline. Beverley gives equal intelligence to both characters, refusing to make either the obstacle to their own happiness without reason.

Simon Prebble narrates with the command that makes him one of the standard voices for Regency fiction in audio, his British register giving the period setting its appropriate texture. The novel's ideological tension, between the aristocratic world's assumptions and its heroine's principled resistance, is handled by Prebble with enough wit to prevent it from becoming a debate and enough heat to make the romance convincing.