strange and random happenstance: Devil's Cub

The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
Published by: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 1934
Format: Paperback, 307 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

The Earl of Rule has decided that he will marry. What's more he has decided to align himself with the prestigious Winwood family who have fallen on hard times due to their fatal love of gambling. The problem is that he has chosen to marry the eldest daughter Lizzie and Lizzie is desperately in love with another, Edward Heron. What's worse, Edward is a penniless soldier so Lizzie's mother will never allow her to follow her heart when their fortunes could be saved. Lizzie therefore breaks with Edward breaking her heart in the process. But her younger sister Horatia has an idea. Very improperly she approaches Lord Rule with a compromise. He should marry her instead. The reasons being that her sister Lizzie is in love with another, her sister Charlotte would never marry him, and seeing as he just wants to align himself with their family he can have her and she will let him live his life however he wants. The adorably stammering Horatia's bargain intrigues Lord Rule so he agrees to marry her, a girl barely out of the schoolroom. This sends shock waves through the ton. His sister doesn't know what Rule is about, his cousin and presumptive heir Drelincourt is very put out, and as for Rule's mistress Lady Massey, she sees her hopes and dreams shattered and takes comfort in the arms of Rule's rival Lord Lethbridge. And while Horatia's family is shocked by her behavior, her brother Pelham, returning from the continent, welcomes Rule into the family as all his debts are swept away by his generous brother-in-law. But if Rule thought he'd have an easy time with his new bride he's in for a surprise. She seems to have inherited the family's fatal flaw and now that she has access to money she is gambling it away like nobody's business. Not to mention how much she's spending on clothes and fripperies and carriages. What's wrong with spending a fortune on diamond encrusted shoes? Yes, they pinch a little, but they look fabulous. Lord Rule is very sanguine about his new wife's spendthrift ways, after all she amuses him to no end, that is until she decides to befriend Lord Lethbridge. This is a step too far. A step she takes to be daring. But could this end their marriage or bring them closer together? Only when the farce is concluded will the victor be declared.

The fatal flaw of The Convenient Marriage is that the setup just doesn't deliver. Horatia seems rather put together with making this sacrifice for her family, so it's rather shocking to discover she is nothing but a flighty flibbertigibbet with the family's fatal flaw. You start out thinking, hey, this is someone I could root for, she's clever and is going to reform a rake. She is the classic too stupid to live heroine so by the end you are actually wishing for her to be thrown over by her husband and ruined by Lethbridge. Though Lethbridge himself was an ass. In fact every single character in this book is annoying. Except perhaps Pelham's friend Pommeroy, but he is amusing because he's an idiot and says the most shockingly stupid things. And all these characters and their farcical situations just can't make you care one little bit. They're staging fake attacks by highwaymen as what they see as a logical attempt to get back incriminating evidence. What!?! I mean, seriously, why am I supposed to find this interesting. I literally could barely finish this book. What's odd is that Georgette Heyer does go in for the farcical and can succeed, Devil's Cub being an example of something being so far over the top it somehow works. But there at least you could root for Sophie, here, literally there is no one to root for. Even Lord Rule is a rather removed rake. He is like this disinterested observer to his own life. If he can't even be bothered to take an interest why should we? What's more, with Lord Lethbridge and Lady Massey it seemed as if Heyer was going to bring a little Les Liaisons Dangereuses action to the scene, she was actually setting it up, and then, what, got bored? Because that doesn't even deliver. The Massey goes off to Bath and Lethbridge kind of just folds. Nothing follows through, it's all just a chatoic mess of characters I don't care for. I honestly didn't even know what to write for this review. The book is a nonentity. The Convenient Marriage can just got slink off to wherever it came from and never darker my door again. Because it did darken it. When I'm reading a book I don't like I get grumpy. And boy did this book make me grumpy. Not to the level of wanting to watch it burn, but close.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Bath, Devil's Cub, Earl of Rule, Gambling, Georgette Heyer, Horatia Winwood, Lady Massey, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Lord Lethbridge, Rake, Regency Romp, Spendthrift, The Convenient Marriage, Too Stupid To Live

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer
Published by: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 1932
Format: Paperback, 310 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Dominic, the Marquis of Vidal, has quite a legacy to live up to. His father, the Duke of Avon, was known as 'Satanas' and this Devil's Cub is on his way to proving he is the spit of his father. Vidal has left a string of bodies and broken hearts in his wake. But he has never trifled with women of a respectable class, until now. When his father hears that Vidal is fooling around with someone from the bourgeoisie he puts his foot down. This will not be tolerated. Vidal is starting to push boundaries that are there for a reason and when he conducts an impromptu duel in a gaming hell leaving his opponent for dead he has crossed one too many lines and his father banishes him to the continent before his crime catches up with him. But this still leaves the matter of the bourgeoisie unresolved. The young girl is a silly chit. Sophia Challoner has been encouraging Vidal all along despite his reputation, insisting to her sister Mary that she will be the one to put a ring on it. But the night before his departure for Paris he convinces Sophie to be his mistress, because in Paris such things are understood. Mary's worst fears are realized when Vidal sends Sophie the plan for their late night departure but accidentally addresses it to Mary. In that instant Mary comes up with a plan. She will take her sister's place and convince Vidal it was all a joke devised by her and her sister. He will be angry and she will return to her family, and no one will be ruined. She hadn't counted on his temper though. He takes Mary with him out of spite. When she recovers her senses she shoots him. During his recovering they come to realize that they are well suited and attracted to each other. Mary is so different than Sophia that he informs Mary that they are to be wed. This is not the outcome Mary wants. She wants to go home. But seeing as that's out of the question she'd settle for being a governess. As they duel over their future, back in England Vidal's mother is in a tizzy. Mrs. Challoner has approached her and told her of the kidnapping. The Duchess is so worried about what her husband might do to her son after he was specifically warned off the bourgeoisie that she flees to France hoping that she can figure something out before word reaches Avon. Because she is convinced that Mary is just like the odious Sophia and that she has trapped her beloved son. She couldn't be more wrong or more surprised about what happens. The course of love never has run smooth.

If there's one author that has been lurking around my to be read pile for a long time it is Georgette Heyer. I've oddly enough read two of her less lauded mysteries years ago but I have never taken the plunge into her romances until now. The first thing I should say is I probably should have read These Old Shades first as that is the first in this series but I'm not perfect. And I know that Heyer isn't either. Much like Dorothy L. Sayers she was an anti-Semite. In fact there's a push to reissue "sanitized" editions of Heyer's books for a modern audience, like they did with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. This is something I personally disagree with. Books should be left as they are, warts and all, so that we can discuss why things that were viewed by some as acceptable weren't and how we can move forward and evolve. But say what you will, Heyer is kind of the progenitor of modern romance and thankfully Devil's Cub appears to have nothing problematic going on as far as I could tell. Here we're dealing with the common romance trope of the rake and the virgin. But never before have I come across someone who isn't just a rake but leaving tons of dead bodies in their wake. It was disturbing hearing that Dominique's mother had forewarned him that his next kill might prove problematic for him. WTF!?! Seriously, within the first third of the book he's probably killed two people, one highwayman, and one drunk, who is still clinging to life. Sure, the duel is the one that got him in trouble, but shouldn't it be more troubling that he left a corpse by the side of the road and was like, whatever, my bad. And we're supposed to believe that someone could fall in love with this!?! But the further I got into the narrative the more I realized I shouldn't take anything at face value, because this, this is a farce. The crush and commotion of Vidal's family and their over-the-top behavior was hilarious. There are serious arguments on how best to get a large quantity of wine from Dijon to London and whether a carriage or a canal would be preferable. And since the majority of the action takes place in France, yes, we can call it a French Farce. There's some Shakespeare, some Aphra Behn, some She Stoops to Conquer. If it's over the top and nearly improbable, I could totally see it happening in Devil's Cub. So it wasn't at all what I expected, but in the end I think the levity is what I needed.