Saturday, May 30, 2015

Friday's Child

I adore Georgette Heyer. This one was so much fun. Young Viscount Sheringham fancies himself in love with the great Beauty (always a capital B), Isabella, but when he proposes, she rebuffs him. Sheringham, otherwise known as "Sherry", is in debt from gambling and won't get control of his fortune until he turns twenty-five or marries. Not willing to wait, he decides to elope with a young orphan girl who is related to his neighbors. Little Hero is young, barely out of the schoolroom, but a sweet girl and has had a crush on Sherry her whole life. Faced with the prospect of being sent off to be a governess, eloping with Sherry seems like a fairy tale. Her family is glad to be shut of her, although Sherry's mother is horrified when she finds out and goes around claiming Hero is ruining Sherry's life.
Married life doesn't change the young Viscount at all, he continues to carry on as if he were still a wild bachelor, which is fine with Hero. He can do no wrong in her eyes. But she continually gets into scrapes because she's not sure how to behave, and it's very vexing for Sherry to have to keep bailing her out. Finally, she commits a terrible breach of protocol and Sherry threatens to send her to the country to live with his mother for awhile so she can learn how to be a proper lady. Hero is horrified at the idea of being separated from him and living with a woman she knows hates her, so she runs off to some of Sherry's close friends, begging for help.
Sherry's friends are all rather fond of "Kitten", and one of them arranges for her to go stay with his grandmother in Bath. They all decide to keep this from Sherry, as a way of teaching him a lesson. They think he really does love his wife more than he realizes, he just needs to know it. And of course as soon as Sherry realizes Hero has run off he is distraught and tears apart London, looking for her. It had the most lovely happy ending and was quite sweet.

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