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jacey
Not my favourite Heyer by any means, but still worth reading. Gervase Frant, having been estranged from his father for most of his life inherits the earldom, much to the chagrin of his younger half-brother, Martin, and his father’s second wife, an annoyingly boring dowager with barely two brain cells to rub together. He’s in the army (just after Waterloo) and waits a year to resign and go home – home being a rambling old castle in Lincolnshire – and is met with barely concealed hostility from his stepmother and half-brother, though welcomed by his amiable cousin, Theo, who stewards the earl’s holdings exceedingly well. Soon after Gervase’ old army friend arrives and there ensues some rivalry for the hand of Marianne whom Martin considered to be ‘his’, though Marianne has other ideas. After a couple of suspicious accidents it becomes obvious that someone is trying to murder Gervase. Suspicion naturally falls on the hot-headed and ill-tempered Martin, but there is no proof. This isn’t so much a whodunit as a who’s-trying-to-do-it. Gervase figures it out with the help of Miss Morville, a guest at the castle and a young woman possessed of a great deal of solid common sense, though, sadly, not looks. The romance in this Regency romance, is downplayed in favour of the attempted murder plot, but it’s sweet all the same, even though we don’t get to see much of it from inside the character’s heads. The heroine is stoically intelligent and her parents (who have raised her to be solidly republican) are amusing. So why isn’t it one of my favourites? Perhaps because the main viewpoint characters are heavily male the conversations are somewhat verbose and a little stiff at times. Yes, I know, that’s Heyer all over, but this took a little chewing through in the early chapters and only picked up pace towards the end. Also Ms Heyer doesn’t reveal much of what’s in her characters’ heads, so we’re locked out of Gervase’s thought processes, simply to make the end reveal a surprise.
