I was hoping I’d had discover I had already reviewed this one, because I remember having quite a few thoughts about it but that was nearly three months ago.

Benton, Lord Carillon’s valet, and Mistress Castalia, a dressmaker, have both appeared in various of the other Albion novels. In 1925, a year after the main events of Goblin Fruit, Cassie has been commissioned to provide clothing for Carillon’s fiancée.

I found Benton and Cassie’s story somewhat disjointed. For much of it they don’t cross paths every day, maybe not even every week -- their lives only overlap when Benton, running errands for Carillon, has reason to stop by Cassie’s shop, to communicate about or collect an order.

I was less interested in the scenes which showed their respective lives outside of these meetings, because I knew those scenes were unlikely to further either the mystery or the romance, and yet, I also felt like more of those scenes were needed, because Benton’s and Cassie’s jobs are so important to each of them, and such a consuming part of their lives. And the main source of conflict between them is that they don’t properly understand the value of each other’s jobs.

(Or at the very least, Cassie doesn’t value his. I can’t remember what Benton thinks of hers, and how much he just contributes to their conflict by misunderstanding, and being misunderstood by, Cassie.
If I had written about this earlier, I might have had something intelligent to say about Benton being neurodivergent.)

The story took off once the two of them are working together more closely, both on site for a specific job.

In short, neither my favourite nor the most successful in this series, but if someone was enjoying the series, I wouldn’t advocate skipping this one. There’s enough that I remember fondly. ( )