"Rescued From the Tower" by Kate Carteret

Rowena has lived all of her life as the daughter of Lord Edward and Lady Eleanor Lockhart. Neither of her parents have ever taken much interest in their daughter and her only friend seems to be her maid Violet. With a good deal more freedom in than most young ladies her age, she enjoys spending much of her day taking long. solitary walks. Usually she never runs into anyone or anything of interest, until one day she takes a different path where she finds a small hidden cottage behind an overgrown hedgerow.

Lord Elliot Spencer is the son of Duke Bartholomew of Darrington. While Elliot is young, fit, and has impeccable manners, his father is older, vastly overweight, and seemingly has neither good manners nor regular bathing habits. The duke considers his son to be less of a man than himself and is constantly telling him so. And as Elliot seems determined not to take a wife until he finds a woman he can love, the Duke has decided to take a new wife himself in the hopes of getting himself a new heir to replace his only son.

Elliot often visits a small cottage he has found hidden in the woods a good distance from his home. It is here that he first meets a young woman that he has never seen in the area before. They seem to share an enjoyment of long walks and each possess curious minds. They quickly become friends and agree to meet again at the small hidden cabin in a few days. However that evening Rowena is told by her parents that she will be marrying the older Duke of Darrington whether she wishes to or not.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. I felt the characters were well described and easily visualized. There were some things about the behavior of Lord and Lady Lockhart that had me wondering how they could behave as they did, but those things were explained before the end of the book in a manner that made complete sense in this story. I do wish, however, that the book had gone through another round or two of editing and proofreading as I ran across a number of typos and other grammatical errors. I did enjoy the story, but would have enjoyed it much more had it contained fewer errors.