Accidental Fiancee, by Mary Moore, was released in January 2015 by the Love Inspired Historical line. I've had a few false starts on this book, but I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago. I actually enjoyed the novel. It is the story of Lord Weston, Brandon Roth, a marquis who finds himself proposing to Lady Grace Endicott, who is a complete stranger to himself. The situation is a bit ironic. Grace finds herself in this mess because she was trying to warn Lord Weston from getting trapped into proposing to a marriage minded miss who wasn't above using scandal to force him into making an offer. Instead, Grace finds that she has inadvertently forced Lord Weston to offer for herself in order to protect her sister, Lydia, who has yet to make her come out in the upcoming season. Grace no longer considers herself available on the market, but does not believe that Lydia would be able to weather the scandal and make a suitable match unless she and Lord Weston deal with their problem discretely.
They agree to enter into a fake engagement where Grace would cry off and break the engagement after a few weeks, when the gossip would sufficiently die down, or when Lydia successfully finds a match for herself. Grace does not wish to be truly married to Lord Weston; he has a reputation of being a great rake, and she is mortified at the thought of even being perceived as one who would stoop so low as to trap the marquis into marriage. Grace's conscience is also severely tested during this time; she loathes the fact that she is essentially lying to the ton, and is uncomfortable with the realization that she is developing genuine feelings for Lord Weston as they spend more time with each other.
In Accidental Fiancee, Grace is the professing believer, while Lord Weston is the one who is making the journey towards faith. He is helped along in this by his mentor, Lord Langley, who had agreed to support the marquis in his endeavours to make reforms in the House of Lords if Brandon sets aside his rakish ways, which he has. What plagues Brandon is an inability to forget and forgive himself of the mistakes made in his past, which landed him the reputation of being an irresponsible rake. When Grace shows him, well,...grace...and acceptance in spite of his past, Brandon starts to see himself as more than what he has perceived himself to be up to this point. In the beginning, when he first enters into the fake engagement with Grace, Brandon is at first relieved that it is just a temporary measure taken to protect Grace and her sister. However, as he gets to know her and her character, he realizes that he wants to make the engagement real and binding.
Unfortunately, the path to true love does not run smoothly for these two. Besides Brandon's challenge of trying to convince Grace that he truly wants her to be his wife, our twosome must dodge opposition from a jealous widow who plans to become the next Lady Weston, and opponents to Brandon's work of reforms through the House of Lords. Will Brandon be able to win Grace in truth to become his wife? Will he be able to accept God's grace and forgiveness? The key verse that is imprinted at the start of the novel is from Ephesians 2:8 which says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God...." I've found sometimes that these verses, which are usually found at the start of all Love Inspired novels, to be perplexing as to why they were particularly chosen, but the verse for this novel is more than appropriate for this novel.
As I mentioned before, I liked this novel. I liked the theme of accepting God's grace and forgiveness...something that cannot be earned, but must be received as a gift. It was nice to read a historical with this inspiring message in it.
