Romance amongst 'dark satanic mill[s].'

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The Heiress and the Hothead by Sabrina Jeffries.  


Having inveigled an invitation to  a Christmas house party, the radical Lord Stephen Corry, meets his match in Miss Amanda Keane. Stephen is a prolific writer who champions the cause for better mill working conditions and practices. He wanted to interview the American owner Montague Mills for an upcoming article.
Mill owner Amanda, and heiress, has modern and compassionate ideas about cotton milling, workers conditions and the treatment of children particularly.
Answering a friend's call to help stir a would be suitor into action, Lord Stephen Cory finds himself under the mistletoe kissing a different young woman by mistake. 
A deeper than usual Christmas romance skating the surface of a not so light issue, conditions in mills and factories that are still present in various parts of the world.
I must admit that the dalliance during a fire took on a certain absurdity, that maybe fits with the surface story. On the other hand--maybe not!
Mill conditions and romance seem strange bedfellows but Sabrina Jeffries makes it work!

(I thought this title was familiar. Yes, like others I had read this Christmas novella before in the collection of Christmas stories, 'What Happens under the Mistletoe.' I must say that I'm somewhat nonplussed by the cost comparisons!)

A NetGalley ARC 

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