Savannah Purchase by Jane Aiken Hodge

This was on the freebie table, someone had apparently rescued it when it was discarded by the local high school library then passed it on. I suppose these aren't racy enough for high school students today, but I loved them - there are still a number of them on my shelves although I haven't read them in years.

I've always remembered them as gothic romances - but this wasn't terribly gothic. The initial situation could easily have fit the genre, but it really played out as a complicated situational romance. It opens with a young woman at the point of destitution in her ramshackle home after the death of her father realizing that his debts have left her with no resources at all. In sweeps her long lost cousin with a proposition. The resemblance between the two has always been remarkable and Juliet is to take Josephine's place in Savannah society (including with her unsuspecting husband) while Josephine goes off to try to arrange for the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena.

Only the nurse/maid who cared for them both as children in France is in the know. The husband is indifferent and a complete brute. Besides, if Juliet doesn't go along with the masquerade, she is likely to be imprisoned because her father made her party to his debts.

Predictably, Juliet immediately falls for her cousin's husband and falls afoul of her lover. It is pleasant and entertaining, the sort of book where you know from the beginning that everything will work out in the end.