Review: One of My All Time Favorite Heroines
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 26, 2012
*HUGE SPOILER ALERTS***Catherine Audley (Cat) at 14 years of age is an amazing little lady.  She's beautiful, very intelligent and full of spirit.  Obviously, she has a life quite unlike most young ladies of this age.  Although marriage at 14 and 15 years of age might have been common in certain areas during this period, I struggled with how she was used by the men in her life.Her father, Thomas Audley portrayed as one of England's great Spymasters, allowed Cat great liberties.  She ran his household from an early age and was a hostess in his gaming club which was held in part of their home in Lisbon.  To her father's credit, he wanted Cat to have some understanding of the world of men, hence her involvement in his gaming parlor as a hostess.When "Blas the Bastard" came into her life as one of her father's spies, she immediately fell in love with him - he was 21, she was 14.  When her father had to leave Lisbon, he and Blas hatched up a plot to have Blas and Cat become married so that she could continue to live at Casa Audley in Lisbon and Casa Audley could continue to serve as headquarters for their spy network.  Blas promised to treat her as a sister but Cat made it plain she wanted to be treated as a wife.  Of course, Blas could not hold out and eventually he and Cat came to live together as husband and wife.Blas was passionately in love with Cat, however, they would go for months without seeing one another while he traveled as a spy and made maps for the British military, spending a lot of his time in the Peninsula area with Spanish guerrillas.  And, of course he had other women, one mistress for most of the war while little Cat stayed at home and longed for his return.  In truth, it was a difficult time for many families - husbands and wives didn't see each other for months and years. From the time Cat was 14 until she was 20, she had very little time with Blas - sometimes only once or twice each year.It was as though Blas was two different people.  Sometimes he came home and went straight to Cat and loved her.  At other times he came home and barely spent time with her. These two very different personas caused a tremendous amount of stress and hurt in Cat's life and drove me to distraction so that I found some parts of this book very frustrating because it goes on and on and on before it's resolved.But........... as you will eventually find out, you realize that Blas was indeed a BASTARD in so many ways!  And, I don't mean that he was illegitimate because of course he was not.  Both Blas and Thomas used Cat for their purposes.I gave the book 4 stars because the last one quarter of the book almost made up for the terrible things Cat went through.  All I can say is that she should have made Blas pay a much higher price (than she did) to get back in her good graces.  By the end of the book, I actually began to love him also.*SPOILER, SPOILER*  One last comment - I had to re-read the book due to one thing being revealed during the latter part of the book so that I could better understand what went on.... all I will say about that.