Lady’s companion Prudence Lancaster is single-minded about finding her mother and filling in the missing pieces of her life.
Desperate, he hatches a scheme to snare an heiress only to be foiled by a most vexing and alluring-and unfortunately equally destitute-paid companion. James, the Viscount Glastonbury, doesn’t find a bride with a sizeable dowry, he’ll be in the poorhouse along with his interminable number of female relatives-all of whom he loves but are a drain on the negative fortune his father left when he died of a broken pocketbook. When we learn Max’s backstory and see that Max has been caught in this traumatic loop for years, you can’t help but want to give him a hug and console him.Welcome to the Phoenix Club, where London’s most audacious, disreputable, and intriguing ladies and gentlemen find scandal, redemption, and second chances.
Prior to London, it wasn’t clear why the reader should care about Max. The unkempt estate was a physical representation of his inner feelings. Max’s time in London is when you understand how hard it has been for him to cope and why he has been struggling to take care of himself. This is when I fell in love with this character. While interacting with large groups of people, Max gets overwhelmed and gets triggered multiple times. What really sold me on this story was Max’s interactions with the Phoenix Club members, his old friends, and the city folk. Ada is one of the few that sees beyond his grumpy demeanor and is determined to help him navigate through his trauma. She gets him to smile and soothes his nightmares. She slowly pulls the information out of him and helps him cope with his grief. It is not until Ada arrives to analyze the books, that we start to learn more about Max. Max has been in no condition to run the estate and has kept the fewest staff possible at the estate to keep it (barely) functioning. The gardens are overgrown, the horses have been sold, there are few very tenants living at the property the property is being slowly run into the ground. We are introduced to Stonehill, the Warfield Estate, we see a property in disrepair.
His mind is preoccupied with thoughts of Spain that he doesn’t notice what is happening around him. The traumatic events that happened in Spain during the war are still haunting Max, replaying in his mind. Max is very broken when we first meet him.
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