Fortune's Kiss by Lisa Manuel

Graham Foster is a treasure hunter in Egypt when he recieves word that both his nephew and a distant cousin have died, making him heir to the Barony of Monteith. Though he has been a Lord since presenting the King with some of the antiquities he found in Egypt at 24, but now he must put his estate in order, so he returns to England with his best friend, Shaun Paddlington.

Moira Hughes is intimately familliar with the Baron Monteith, the former one, at any rate, since he was her stepfather. Since she was to marry his heir, and he also died, she is doubly bereaved. But she could deal with that, only her stepfather told her on his deathbed of a codicil in his will that she believes would see them provided for. But his will provided no codicil that she knows of, and she and her mother have been unceremoniously kicked out of the house they once shared, and the only reason they have a roof overhead is thanks to the generosity of the townsfolk, who have granted them a place to live, but maintaining it and paying the rent will leave them near-beggared.

In desperation, she travels to the office of her stepfather's solicitor, but he will not even see her, despite her waiting outside his office while he sees more important clients. When he will give her no help, she decides to sneak onto the estate as a servant girl to search for the will she believes to be hidden somewhere on the grounds, possibly in her stepfather's old office, the library.

Meanwhile, Graham has already had a close encounter with her in the solicitor's office, and been smitten by her beauty, so when she turns up on his estate, and his younger sister is cruel to her, he protects her, and when she is found snooping through his papers, and his sister accuses her of theft, he protects her once again. When he hears her out, he cannot do anything but agree to help her find the codicil and the hidden will from her stepfather. She is disarmed by his charm and agreeing to help her, and is soon esconced on the estate as a guest.

But Graham has more to deal with than the will, as his mother, sister, and younger brother have all acted cruelly in kicking out Moira's mother, and there is resentment on the part of both Graham towards his family, when they believed accusations of cheating against him that got him kicked out of university, and on their part for his abandonment of them for over ten years while he was digging up treasures and antiquities in Egypt. As a result, his sister has become a petty termagant and her twin brother a man who seeks escape in booze and drugs, seeming determined to destroy himself at any opportunity.

His friend Shaun, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Graham's sister Letitia, and finds himself supporting her to Graham. But when Graham and Letty rescue their brother Frederick from a Opium Den, Letty finds herself assuming responsibility for keeping him away from drink and drugs, giving her a taste of responsibility for the first time in her life. Federick, meanwhile, cannot deny his twin anything, and so begins to reform under Letty's concern for him.

While Graham and Moira fall in love, they continue to track down the missing codicil. However, to her shock, Moira finds out that it wasn't for her and her mother at all. Instead, it goes to someone named Michael Oliphant. But Moira doesn't know any Michael Oliphant, so who can he be, and how did her stepfather know him? When the solicitor is killed, and his assistant goes missing, Graham and Moira will have to follow the trail to the bitter end... no matter what ugly truths and terrible deceptions they will find out about her stepfather.

I found this book fresh and charming. Though the characters are more or less stock (the plucky heiress fallen on hard times, the rogue rejected by his family who made good and now comes back to a position of power), the story doesn't seem like an overdone and rehashed plot that you've seen ten thousand times before. It's the interactions of the characters that make it seem so fresh, and the writer not taking the members of the family and turning them into stock villains. Letty, Graham's sister, could easily have been turned into a cast-iron bitch who ran roughshod over the heroine, but she was redeemed, as was Frederick, who could have turned into the family sad sack, always stumbling into trouble while inebriated. That, too, was averted.

The truth of the codicil is revealed in several stages, and the final outcome was completely unexpected, but threw a nice wrench into the story. I also liked the fact that the true villain of the piece (if this book could be said to have a villain) was someone who acted more from expediency than anything else. I am tired of villains who are evil for evil's sake, or who are EVIL in all capital letters, and this book was a nice change from that trope, although truth be told, the villain doesn't appear for 95% of the story, leaving the book to be mainly interaction between the hero, heroine and their families. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good romance. It's light and charming and will do its job keeping you occupied and entertained.