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One of the things I most admire about Mary Balogh is her ability to look unflinchingly at her characters and their behaviour. This is one of those cases where I rather wish she had flinched, and given the hero at least one or two redeeming features. This was her first published work, so perhaps one should make allowances, but it\u2019s difficult. This is a fairly ranty review so it\u2019s quite spoilerish. Don\u2019t read unless you want to know most of the plot.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Six years ago, Richard, the Earl of Brampton, had met a passionate but regrettably anonymous stranger at a masked ball. She disappeared before the unmasking, and he was never able to find her again, although he\u2019s never forgotten her. Now, with his mother agitating for him to marry and sire the essential heir, he settles on mousy Margaret Wells, who will give him no trouble, and can be safely left in the country raising the heir while he maintains his mistress in London. What he doesn\u2019t know is that Margaret is the very same passionate stranger he remembers so vividly. He also doesn\u2019t know that she fell instantly in love with him six years ago. So the scene is set for a gradual rediscovery of that passionate interlude.<\/p>\n
Except that\u2019s not what happens. Richard decides that he can\u2019t inflict passion on his mousy wife, so sex is a brief, perfunctory affair, and she is too mouse-like to complain. And naturally, she can\u2019t possibly tell him that she was the stranger from six years ago. Wait\u2026 why ever not? Well, because the plot requires her to keep quiet about it, that\u2019s why. And so she does, but she\u2019s a bit sad, because she enjoyed all that sexy kissing and fumbling under clothes from six years ago and she\u2019d like a bit of that now, thank you very much. But when younger sister Charlotte arrives for her come out and asks why she\u2019s a bit sad, Margaret tells her the whole story, and Charlotte has the brilliant idea that Meg should dress up in her mask costume again and see if she can entice Richard into a bit of that sexy stuff. And so she does, arranging to just happen to bump into him at Vauxhall\u2019s, and would you believe it, he not only falls for his mysterious stranger all over again and gets hot and heavy with her, but he doesn\u2019t even recognise his own wife?<\/p>\n
Well, no, I wouldn\u2019t believe it, actually. They even begin a torrid affair in his best mate\u2019s bed, and even though he sees the similarities with his wife, he doesn\u2019t once twig that it\u2019s actually her. Yet the best mate, who doesn\u2019t know her half as well, recognised her instantly. How ridiculous is that?
\nThe other major stumbling block to credibility is Margaret herself. We\u2019re supposed to believe that her public persona is very calm and reserved, almost cold in its lack of emotion. Nothing, it seems, dents her composure. But somehow, put her in a Marie Antoinette costume, a wig and a mask, and she becomes an unrestrained nymphomaniac. I would have found this more credible if we\u2019d been shown any sign of this inner tempestuousness, but there\u2019s nothing at all, not a flash of anger or a sharp word or the slightest hint of a flounce. She doesn\u2019t even speak up for herself, simply accepting whatever neglect or implied insult her husband heaps on her head.<\/p>\n
The question of Richard\u2019s morality is more ambiguous. Nowadays, a hero who maintains his mistress after he\u2019s married and then has an unrestrained affair with a woman whose name he doesn\u2019t even know is a bit of a non-starter for a romantic novel, but when this book was written, almost forty years ago, heroes of this type were par for the course. And he does very gradually come to appreciate his wife. He dispenses with the mistress and he even gives up his affair with the mystery lady because he tells himself he\u2019s in love with his wife.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile there are a couple of side romances going on, for Charlotte and also for Richard\u2019s brother Charles. This may be an opportune moment to point out that there a great many perfectly respectable names for Regency characters, so it would be nice if authors would refrain from using two such similar ones as Charles and Charlotte. Anyway, the side romances aren\u2019t wonderful, but in the end they\u2019re better than the main event, which blows up in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n
Richard, you see, discovers the Marie Antoinette costume in his wife\u2019s wardrobe and the slow-top finally realises that she was the mystery lady all along. Whereupon he goes into a towering rage at being made to look a fool, because it\u2019s all about him, you see. He was the one who chose to have a torrid affair with a woman he believed was not his wife, but it\u2019s her fault for being a slut and enticing him (or something). She tries to explain but he doesn\u2019t want to listen, and then he crosses an inviolable line, in my view, by using violence against the heroine, his own wife. Even when she tells him not to hurt her too badly because she\u2019s pregnant, it doesn\u2019t calm him down because he doesn\u2019t believe her! Only when she finally blows her top and points out what a hypocrite he is does he realise that maybe she has a point. Then he cries, tells her he loves her and they go to bed and have passionate sex, and I can\u2019t tell you how much I despise him at this point. I don\u2019t have much respect for her, either, but he is far, far worse. I don\u2019t think he even knows the meaning of the word love.<\/p>\n
This was heading for three stars, because on the whole the thing is readable and even enjoyable for much of it, and even though I wanted to slap both hero and heroine upside the head, I make allowances for the age it was written in, and it was Balogh\u2019s first book, after all. My own first Regency was pretty terrible, too. But that ending made me so mad, I knocked it down to two stars. So there. Recommended only for completists, and definitely not for anyone looking for a clean read – there\u2019s an awful lot of sex in it. Or a lot of awful sex for Margaret, poor girl.<\/p>\n
The theme of this book, the Regency marriage of convenience and what it would be like in reality without the romance author\u2019s typical sprinkling of magical stardust, is one that interests me greatly. Balogh has tackled the idea in two other books (that I know of; there may be others). Dancing With Clara (1993) suffers a little from a depressing ending, in my opinion, but in The Obedient Bride (1989) she gets it absolutely right, and with a proper hero. I highly recommend it as an antidote to the insufferable Richard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things I most admire about Mary Balogh is her ability to look unflinchingly at her characters and their behaviour. This is one of those cases where I rather wish she had flinched, and given the hero at least one or two redeeming features. This was her first published work, so perhaps one […]<\/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":[63],"class_list":["post-5645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-balogh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645","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=5645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5649,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions\/5649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}