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A broken marriage is a really difficult setup for an author to tackle, but I felt it worked really well, and the focus was very much on the principal couple, as it should be, rather than the minor characters or the subplots.<\/p>\nA broken marriage is a really difficult setup for an author to tackle, but I felt it worked really well, and the focus was very much on the principal couple, as it should be, rather than the minor characters or the subplots.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: society sophisticate Oliver, the Duke of Avondale, had astonished the ton by marrying country mouse Miss Belle Anderson, a girl of no particular beauty, connections or fortune. Despite their very different backgrounds, he had clearly been besotted with her, for no obvious reason, yet as soon as they had married, he had stopped trailing round in her wake and gone back to his old habits, and within a month she had run back to the seclusion of her father\u2019s house. They agreed to a formal separation, and there was talk of divorce. And then Lady Hathaway inadvertently invited them both to her house party\u2026<\/p>\n
I confess, I found it implausible that Belle would agree to go to a house party at all, since she\u2019s barely left her father\u2019s estate since leaving her husband. But there\u2019d be no story without that, so let it pass. Oliver is not quite so reclusive and Lady Hathaway is his cousin, so that part is more plausible. And despite Lady Hathaway\u2019s best intentions, the two meet accidentally and quite unaware that the other will be there, and while Belle is enjoying a moment with her cicisbeo. However, the two manage not to flounce (because, again, there\u2019d be no story if they did), and the stage is set for an extremely awkward house party. He thinks he\u2019ll just have a nice chat with his wife, perhaps recreate a pleasant moment from the early days of their marriage, and she\u2019ll come back to him. But she\u2019s edgy and snippy, and things go off the rails pretty fast.<\/p>\n
We learn quite early on (because the author tells us) why they fell out. After a fairly intense courtship, when he followed her about like a puppy, once married, he assumed she would immediately adapt to the rather vapid and dissolute society life that he was used to, spending time with his gossipy friends and pursuing her own interests, mostly without him. She was hurt by the disappearance of the charming pre-marriage man who wanted to spend time with her. She disliked his friends and fell in with a crowd of lower gentry types, who went off in big groups to look at museums and watch balloon ascensions, things she would have liked to do with her husband. He bought her expensive, showy presents that she disliked. He was insulted that she rejected these attempts to please her.<\/p>\n
And all of that (and more, because there\u2019s a reason why Belle left so abruptly) has to be resolved before they can get together again. Their altercations are marked by bitterness and downright rage, which I found unusually intense for a book of this era. Anyone expecting a lot of light-hearted banter will be sorely disappointed. The pair find it difficult to talk to each other in any way that doesn\u2019t end (and sometimes start!) with hostility. And yet right from the start, it\u2019s clear that Oliver, at least, is determined to win Belle back. One has to wonder why on earth he didn\u2019t go to her father\u2019s house, where she was hiding out for the best part of a year, but still, he didn\u2019t, so this is his best opportunity to talk to her. But every time he tries, they end up fighting.<\/p>\n
There are some lighter moments, fortunately. Belle\u2019s cicisbeo, Arnold Henderson, who\u2019s been quite happy to squire her about and enjoy a delicate flirtation, is horrified to meet her husband. He had planned \u2018to walk and sit and ride and talk with her, to dance and flirt discreetly and entertain her, and it was not only extremely difficult but actually impossible to do so with Avondale glowering at him with murder in his eyes. Avondale was a big man, for one thing, a good three inches taller than himself and a couple of stones heavier, in all the right places. Shoulders like a dashed door, and of course he was a famous boxer, in an amateur capacity.\u2019 Poor Arnold spends the entire house party avoiding Oliver like the plague, in the hope of not getting knocked down by him, and his efforts are highly entertaining. Then there is the gossiping Lady Dempster, who ignores all the rules of politeness in order to find out what is going on between Belle and Oliver.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Oliver has turned his charm on Belle and taken her riding, which is the right thing to do. She\u2019s halfway to being won over, until a certain lady arrives from London, and everything falls to pieces again. The whole book is like this\u2026 two steps forward and one (or two or three) steps back, as the two fight their own anger to get on terms again, as they both want. Sometimes it\u2019s external events which throw them into a tizz, and sometimes it\u2019s their own stupidity or just an infelicitous word or two. Always it\u2019s Oliver pressing forward towards a reconciliation and Belle hesitating and pushing back. The dialogue between these two is perfectly judged. Joan Smith has always had a skilled hand with that, but here she is absolutely superb, and every encounter between the two combatants (word used advisedly) is compelling, with the comedy moments brilliantly interspersed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not exactly a spoiler to tell you that everything works out in the end, although I really hope that Oliver can control that temper of his, or everything will fall apart again. A fascinating look into what happens when two people from different worlds fall in love but fail to communicate sensibly. Five stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A broken marriage is a really difficult setup for an author to tackle, but I felt it worked really well, and the focus was very much on the principal couple, as it should be, rather than the minor characters or the subplots. Here\u2019s the premise: society sophisticate Oliver, the Duke of Avondale, had astonished the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-5589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5593,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5589\/revisions\/5593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}