There was so much in this book that I ought to have disliked quite intensely – an improbably daredevil and sophisticated hero with a terrible reputation, a feisty heroine who refuses to admit she’s in love with him and berates him at every opportunity, a series of increasingly implausible events and (my personal automatic fail) a plot that would fall apart in two seconds if the main characters would just talk to each other. And you know what? I absolutely loved it. Who’d a thunk it?
Here’s the premise: bad boy Charles de Dagonet has been disinherited and disowned by his marquis grandfather after a pregnant maid was found drowned in a pond, and he was deemed to blame. He joined the army to make a living, but now that the war’s over, he’s returned home to try to clear his name and reclaim his inheritance. Catherine Hunter is the local vicar’s daughter, taking up a post as companion to Dagonet’s widowed aunt. The two meet accidentally on the moors, and instantly fall out. But their next meeting is even less pleasant – Dagonet sneaks into his aunt’s house, steals jewellery from her, and her son and daughter, and a kiss from Catherine, all at gunpoint.
To be honest, this scene is very funny. Dagonet has been forbidden the house, and the son (George, who stands to inherit everything that was supposed to be Dagonet’s) has posted heavies to make sure he can’t get in. So he duffs up the heavies (four of them!) and climbs in through a window, instead. When Catherine reaches for the bell pull to summon help, he throws a knife to slice through it. And having taken what he wants, trading pithy remarks and erudite quotations with Catherine the whole time, he then leaps out through the window again and disappears into the night. The whole thing is ludicrously implausible, and Dagonet impossibly clever and suave. It’s all so terribly Zorro that I wanted to yell, “Who was that masked man!” All that was missing was the swirling cape, I suppose. And yet – I loved it.
From there onwards, more and more unlikely events pile up, and Dagonet gets opportunities on every page to demonstrate his superb abilities at… well, absolutely everything. Horses, shooting, swordplay, music, apt quotations from a huge array of writers, lovemaking (naturally) and even playing hazard, a dice game that’s a matter of pure chance (unless the dice are loaded). Some gambling games are based on skill (like piquet) or bravado (poker) but anything with dice is only about probabilities. And all the time, he and Catherine are falling in love, and fighting it tooth and nail, because he’s a disgraced reprobate who can’t have anything to do with a virtuous vicar’s daughter, and yet they are thrown together at every turn.
The marquis grandfather is deployed as a plot device to bring matters to a head so that our protagonists finally recognise that they love each other and there’s a suitably romantic ending with a tasteful and not at all graphic sex scene. Completely over the top and outrageously silly, but very funny, with some lovely romantic moments along the way. I loved every moment of it. Five stars.