![\"\"](\"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/clayborne.jpg\")
This is an odd sort of book. The reviews are mixed, to put it mildly, and I honestly thought I was going to hate it, and especially the nasty, suspicious, cheating husband, but I found it unexpectedly compelling. Strange.<\/p>\nThis is an odd sort of book. The reviews are mixed, to put it mildly, and I honestly thought I was going to hate it, and especially the nasty, suspicious, cheating husband, but I found it unexpectedly compelling. Strange.<\/p>\n
Note: There\u2019s not much of a graphic nature in the book, but the whole premise and the difficulties between hero and heroine centre on sexual matters, so if you prefer a more traditional read, avoid this one.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Jason, Lord Clayborne, and his new wife Rebecca hit a crisis on their wedding night. He discovers after consummation that she hasn\u2019t bled, and everyone knows that virgins always bleed the first time, don\u2019t they? Ergo, she\u2019s not a virgin. He might just possibly be prepared to overlook this heinous crime if she would just confess to it and apologise, but she doesn\u2019t. In fact, she\u2019s initially mystified by his pointing to the sheets (\u201cWhat do you see?\u201d \u201cNothing\u2026\u201d), but this doesn\u2019t clue him in. He explains, she\u2019s horrified, can\u2019t account for the lack of blood but assures him she\u2019s innocent of any such behaviour. He is so outraged by this wilful refusal to admit to her crime that he abandons her to shoot all over the country, including visits to London to take up with his former mistress (as we learn later). Meanwhile Rebecca uncomplainingly busies herself with running the house and waiting patiently for her husband to come to his senses.<\/p>\n
Now, at this point, Jason is a pretty unlikeable hero, right? Refusing to believe his wife, arrogantly assuming he knows everything there is to know about the female body and then huffily consoling himself with another woman – it\u2019s not a great look. And a lot of the negative reviews focus on that, which is understandable. But I have some sympathy with his position. Even today, there are plenty of misunderstandings between men and women, and even when a man may know something of the workings of women in general, he may not know just how the particular one he\u2019s intimate with works. And in the Regency, when there was no internet and not much public discussion of the facts of anatomy, it would have been much easier for a man to be ignorant of the wide variety of womanhood.<\/p>\n
So I can totally accept that he may not have known that some women don\u2019t bleed the first time, and if he genuinely believed that she\u2019d deceived him, his anger and hurt are all too understandable. A certain amount of avoidance of his wife would be expected in anyone of less than saintly character, and although the mistress is generally a no-no in a hero, I can see how he might have been so thrown off his axis that a determined woman could successfully seduce him. It\u2019s bad, but it\u2019s forgivable, I\u2019d say, although I see why others may think differently.<\/p>\n
The best part of a year goes by, and they\u2019re still estranged, but a multitude of new characters turn up, so there\u2019s a trip to London and then back to the country, during which time Jason and Rebecca are thrown together more than they have been, and he definitely starts to soften. It\u2019s clear that he\u2019s being gradually drawn back to her, just as when he was courting her. It\u2019s obvious to the reader that he\u2019s in love with her and perhaps he always has been, but he\u2019s not quite ready to be open with her. Probably a mistake, but it\u2019s very much in keeping with his character.<\/p>\n
But in London Rebecca discovers that he saw his mistress again after he was married, and that is the final straw. She takes off with yet another new character to live apart from Jason, and she won\u2019t even tell him where she\u2019s going. And because he loves her and can\u2019t bear her to be unhappy, he lets her go and even ups her allowance so she can afford to keep her horse.<\/p>\n
This is the point at which any half-sensible hero would have come clean about his feelings. Something along the lines of \u2018I love you and surely we can work this out without you leaving? Let\u2019s talk about what might work.\u2019 But of course talking is too simple, so we have to suffer through the whole separation thing before the author conjures up a tediously silly and overwrought subplot to bring the hero charging to the rescue.<\/p>\n
By this time, he\u2019s finally discovered that – oh noes! He was wrong about the whole bleeding thing so maybe his wife is innocent of wrongdoing after all. He\u2019ll have to grovel and (at last!) tell her he loves her. But she\u2019s constantly rushing round after other people and it\u2019s hard to get a moment alone with her, and when he does, he decides the time isn\u2019t right for grovelling, so we have to suffer through yet another tediously silly and overwrought subplot before he finally gets to grovel. It\u2019s probably not a sufficiently grovelly sort of grovel, considering the hell he put her through, but it does the trick, since (fortuitously) she\u2019s in love with him too. And that\u2019s another thing some reviews take issue with, but since he\u2019s actually very nice to his wife, apart from the whole abandonment and mistress thing, I can see where she\u2019s coming from.<\/p>\n
So for me, the main plot worked pretty well and I think the author did a good job of making both hero and heroine (mostly) likeable and understandable. My only real complaint is the plethora of plot-device extra characters who were wheeled on in the second half, and those tediously silly and overwrought subplots. There was also far too much space given to the minor characters, especially the garrulous governess and piously lazy clergyman (not amusing enough) and the annoyingly precocious child (not cute enough). All in all, about a third of the book and half the characters could have been dispensed with, without great loss. There are a few Americanisms, but nothing to frighten the horses. Too much talk of sexual matters for traditionalists, but I enjoyed it. Four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an odd sort of book. The reviews are mixed, to put it mildly, and I honestly thought I was going to hate it, and especially the nasty, suspicious, cheating husband, but I found it unexpectedly compelling. Strange. Note: There\u2019s not much of a graphic nature in the book, but the whole premise and […]<\/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":[25],"class_list":["post-5595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-matthews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","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=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5599,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions\/5599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}