This is probably the silliest book I’ve ever read. It starts well with an interesting premise well handled, then veers sharply into extreme farce from which it never really recovers, the romance being shoved aside in the scampering round after dead bodies (yes, really! If you’ve ever wondered what a Regency version of Weekend At Bernie’s looked like, this is as close as you’ll get).
This is how it starts:
‘It was an arranged marriage. Unlike most such marriages of convenience, this one was arranged by the bride-to-be herself. Miss Daphne Whilton of Woodhill Manor, Hampshire, left the crowded lawn of her birthday party and approached Lord Graydon Howell, heir to the Earl of Hollister, where he stood apart from the other guests under a shading elm tree. She kicked him on the shin to get his attention and said, “All of the other boys are toads. You’ll have to marry me, Gray.’’
Lord Graydon rubbed his leg and looked back toward the others. The boys were tearing around, trying to lift the girls’ skirts. The girls were shrieking or giggling or crying for their mamas, who were inside taking tea with Lady Whilton. At least Daffy never carried on like that. And she could bait her own hook. He nodded. “I s’pose,” he said, and they shook hands to seal the contract.’
Isn’t that glorious? Of course, they’re children, so inevitably as they grow up they change somewhat, but they’re still best friends, and the marriage is still an understood thing. And then Daphne reaches an age to make her debut, comes up to London and is incensed to see Graydon entertaining his mistress in a box at the theatre directly opposite her. There’s a huge dust-up, the engagement is off and he removes himself from her orbit by joining the army. So far, so very promising, and when her mother and his father decide to get married and Graydon is scheduled to be home in time for the wedding, I had the highest hopes of a slow and steady rapprochement.
And then everything went off the rails in spectacular fashion, devolving in double quick time into a morass of disappearing dead bodies, incompetent thieves, a wicked baron, a similarly wicked valet, a pickpocketing dog and a whole heap of equally implausible stuff. And in the background, one of those hugely overplanned, flower-bedecked, inviting the entire extended family weddings that never actually happened in the Regency. And that’s without mentioning the dull but respectable rival suitor and the rejected mistress. I plodded dutifully through it, in the hope that the romantic denouement would redeem the book, but it really didn’t.
In a book of this age, I don’t expect the deep character-driven romance that modern readers enjoy. I can accept that the Heyer ideal of a ‘Regency romp’ was still holding sway. That’s all fine. I can even accept that the hero might have had a mistress in the past. But what I can’t accept is a hero who professes himself chastened by his lady-love’s admonishments and determined to be worthy of her and win her back, yet the first thing he does when he returns to Blighty from his army stint – the very first thing! – is to set up a mistress again. I get that the ex-mistress turning up to the wedding is intended as comedy relief AND an obstacle for the reinstatement of the hero with the heroine, but please, this man is not hero material.
So for that alone this only rates two stars for me. If you really love the old-style comedic romp, and you don’t mind the implausibility of it or the constant trickle of Americanisms, you might well enjoy this, but it wasn’t for me, sadly.