An Unladylike Secret by Amita Murray
Amita Murray is an award-winning London-based writer who has also resided in India and California; a self-described cultural nomad who seasons her sizzling love stories and historical mystery romances with a heady blend of historical facts, steamy heat, spice and suspense.
Jane Austen, the Grande Dame of Regency Fiction, likely would be shocked by the early-19th-century lusty Marleigh sisters romping with their chosen bad boy suitors. Most modern readers will consider her depictions as fairly tame for the current romance genre. Austen’s fellow contemporaneous author Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley would probably not have batted an eye.
An Unladylike Secret is the third and final novel in Murray’s Marleigh Sisters series. If time permits, read them all, but as each work revolves around a different sister, they do work well independently.
The Protagonists’ Origins
The three sisters are Lila, Anya and Mira, with a single year separating each girl. They are the illegitimate daughters of Nathaniel Marleigh, the Earl of Beddington, and Naira Devi, his beautiful Indian mistress. Naira had been a famous court dancer in Lucknow before what their daughters later realized was a sham wedding.
When their father was posted by Great Britain as an administrator in Colonial India, his proper English wife Sarah chose to remain behind with their young son Jonathan. The Earl was enchanted by the country and the charming young woman he fell in love with, and they made a rather grand home together in bustling Delhi, India, tended by several servants and gardeners.
Twenty years ago, when the girls were just ages 7, 6 and 5, both parents drowned in a boating accident.
Saved Yet Torn Apart
Disgraced by her husband’s flagrant desertion for a native woman, Sarah Marleigh was a virtual social outcast; she grew cold, embittered and harshly cruel. Nathaniel’s sudden death revealed his government salary had been inadequate to support both his luxurious life in India and his family in London.
Thus, Sarah was reluctantly persuaded by an Indian grandparent to take in the orphaned sisters with the stipulation that her debts would be settled and each girl’s schooling would be prepaid. It was still a hard bargain as she could imagine her husband’s mistress staring back at her in the faces of these lovely, innocent children.
Because the sisters were separated by being sent to three different boarding schools soon after their arrival in England, their once-close familial relationship devolved into distant rivalry. When Lila married, neither Anya nor Mira attended her wedding.
The Eldest Marleigh Sister
Amita Murray has set these novels during the Regency period in England, which lasted from 1800 until 1838, when Queen Victoria ascended the throne following King George IV’s death.
This engaging series began in 2023 with the publication of Unladylike Lessons in Love. Despite her fine education in an upper-class boarding school, eldest daughter Lila is keenly aware of being an outsider.
As an Indo-European illegitimate child, she clearly was not from “polite” society. She readily made friends at school but was never invited to their homes for holidays, nor did she make her debut. Lila possesses a fine mind, a tremendous head for business, and runs an exclusive gentlemen’s social and gambling club for the upper echelon of London society. Please do not be confused, this was not a brothel.
Lila charmed her guests and offered excellent food and beverages in an elegant atmosphere. She remained aloof from the attentions of her many admirers until Ivor Tristram barged into her life. Together, they solve a violent crime and fall passionately in love as she transforms into a social welfare advocate for wayward women and their offspring.
The Middle Marleigh Sister
Unladylike Rules of Attraction followed in 2024, featuring the second sister, Anya, as protagonist. As a young child in India, she had received rudimentary music lessons, and fortune smiled when she found a master sitar player and teacher while she was still in boarding school. She earns a good living as a singer and sitar player who is a great favorite in Queen Charlotte’s court.
Anya’s life becomes complicated when an elderly client and friend, Dowager Countess Budleigh, dies, leaving her an inheritance — but with strings attached. She must wed by her impending next birthday or the fortune will revert to the executor, the strikingly handsome and conceited Damian Ashton.
Her financial security is in his hands as he must also approve the bridegroom and consent to the marriage. The story becomes even more complicated when she is falsely accused of murder. A beautiful young damsel in distress, romantic complications and a crime to solve make for a lively, satisfying story as the three sisters begin to reconcile their perceived differences.
Now, the Youngest Marleigh Sister
An Unladylike Secret spotlights youngest sister Mira Marleigh’s own story. She is an extraordinarily gifted writer in an era when women authors customarily went unpublished. Thus, it was under the pseudonym “Aurelius” that she became a highly popular reporter of society gossip.
It was in the early 19th century’s weekly circulars, equivalent to modern tabloids, that her juicy tittle-tattle was published, which garnered generous earnings. The consequences of her reportage remained relatively benign until she related the whispered rumors of a violent quarrel between the Underwood brothers.
When Stephen is found dead, his older stepbrother Finnegan becomes the primary suspect. Her works had been inadvertently attributed substantial veracity, which consequently attracted the attention of the London police, prompting their single-minded hunt for Finnegan Underwood.
An Innocent Man on the Run
Finn Underwood is the legitimate, acknowledged son of a British entrepreneur and the beautiful enslaved woman whom he married while on his sugar plantation in Barbados, despite his younger half-brother’s attempts to dispute this fact. His father freed his plantation slaves and brought his son to England to be educated.
Younger brother Stephen is a wastrel, a drinker, a gambler and a womanizer, despite his marriage to a lovely young woman who is pregnant with their first child. Stephen is insanely jealous that Finn, as eldest son, is the heir to his father’s vast estate despite his brother’s declared intention to share and to ensure their baby brother Richard is cared for and well-educated.
Finn flees to hide among smugglers and ruffians in Devonshire, where the rocky coast provides deep water caves ideal for their nefarious trade — and excellent hiding places.
Romance, Drama and Danger
Mira Marleigh is guilt-stricken and travels to Devon with her friend and benefactor, Ursula, in order to investigate with the intention of proving his innocence. Her sisters, Lila and Anya, and their respective husbands, are among the reinforcements who appear to support little sister in her quest for justice.
Naturally, romance blossoms and there is a great deal of excitement, drama and danger before a satisfying conclusion is reached with An Unladylike Secret. Once again, author Amita Murray has iced the cake, and readers may enjoy their teatime. If you have not yet read any of her work, you will be in for a savory treat!
About Amita Murray:
Amita is a writer, based in London. She writes in two genres: contemporary mystery and historical mystery romance. Her Arya Winters series of mysteries is published with Agora. The first came out in 2021. The second will follow in 2022. Her mystery novel Thirteenth Night won the Exeter Novel Prize in 2022. Her first novel The Trouble with Rose came out with Harper Collins in 2019, with the German edition with Random House Blanvalet in 2021.
Having lived in and around Delhi, London and California, Amita likes to write funny things about cultural encounters and relationships. She thinks of herself as a bit of a nomad, though a previous tutor also aptly suggested the label “cultural abyss.” (Use in a sentence: Amita, you’re a cultural abyss.) In 2016, her short story collection won the SI Leeds Literary Prize at a magical award ceremony at the Ilkley Literature Festival. The collection was partly written under a Leverhulme Writer-in-Residence grant at University College London in 2015, and stories appear in Wasafiri, SAND Berlin, the Berkeley Fiction Review and others.
She’s held writerly residencies with Leverhulme/University College London and Plymouth University/Literature Works. She has taught advanced fiction at the University of East Anglia and CityLit London. She’s been mentor at the British Council and writer in residence at Spread the Word.
