Review: A little too static over the course of the novel but ultimately satisfying enough
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 29, 2013
In brief, after years of traveling, a young British woman on a voyage by sea from America back to England with her father in 1820 suddenly faces a future with two undesirable alternatives, become a paid companion or go to her unsavory uncle, a drunk, who stands to inherit the barony upon her father's demise, and live with him and his unseemly actress wife, thus guaranteeing her social ostracism and spinsterhood. On board is a marquis noted for his cold aloofness. In a twist of fate, she penetrates his reserve and he impetuously offers her marriage to spare her either unacceptable choice. However, he is so touched by the girl's innocence/goodness, he vows to make a clean breast of his past and its depraved secrets before he ever takes her to bed, sort of allowing her at several points to 'opt out.' For her part, she feels unequal to becoming a marchioness and unlovely for various reasons, in particular because he refuses to bed her after their marriage even though he's not a catamite and has had umpteen mistresses. Both feel deeply unworthy, even as they feel attraction and a fundamental, and very touching, empathy toward one another. It's this empathy that proves to be the light at the end of an overlong tunnel and gives this story its grace.So he has a big, ugly, unforgivable secret that has colored all his perceptions of his past and prevents him from making her his wife in truth. She feels very much at sea in her new role and his rejection isn't helping matters.His position remains adamant, creating a constant refrain in his mind of 'I am depraved and unworthy, so off to bed you go alone, dear.' It was 'I can't tell her, she'll hate me,' for much of the story. (After just a few iterations, I'd have gotten his point.) All during this time, she tries to understand him but her own insecurities get in the way. Still, she has a knack, well established, for caring for others, for gleaning their needs and for patience with the recalcitrant, so she is balm to his old wounds. When it finally comes, the big resolution felt sketchy given how thoroughly ingrained were his habits of thought. In effect, all was resolved after a long-overdue conversation, in which she asks him yet again, 'Is it me, or what?' When he reveals his secret to her, throwing it in her face like a challenge, she gently makes some very smart, rational observations, after which it's suddenly 'Oh. Maybe I'm not such a louse after all.'His past was heartrending when at last it came to light, but his flat, vague and constant refusals up till then wore on me without making me feel more suspense or sympathy or whatever I was supposed to feel. A traumatic past isn't healed overnight or by a few cogent comments that make one think differently, but that's how this came across to me. Despite this abruptness, how they meet and end up married, how she wins his trust and he her acceptance is truly romantic and very well written.