THE COURTEOUS CAD by Catherine Palmer

This is the last story in the Miss Pickworth series and the author finished well! There were even folks I had met from her English Ivy Series in this story, which was fun to see. This story was all about Miss Prudence Watson, who appeared in the first two books and who is the youngest of the Watson sisters. She has come along way and has changed a little in each story. Now she finds herself touring the English countryside and comes across a cause she wants to fight for; the inhumane working conditions of the local worsted mill in Otley. Her and the owner of the Mill, William Sherbourne, have a hard time getting along, but they harder to fight it, the harder they fall at the end into each others arms. It is a story of forgiveness on many different levels.

I enjoyed this story and Catherine Palmer does an excellent job of making you feel you were walking the streets of Otley, Yorkshire in 1817. You feel saddened at what the poor people had to endure working in the mills and a little astonished at the children and the dangerous jobs they had to work at. There was such a class distinction then and even good people had a hard time thinking there was anything wrong with thinking that the poor will always be poor and the rich were just born to be rich. I like a book that brings to life the history of the time it is writing in, and throws in some good romance as an added extra! I have read quite a few of Catherine Palmer's books, and so far I have enjoyed them all!