Booklog 26/2018 - Jane Aiken Hodge: Marry in Haste

[jacey]

I was curious to read this as Jane Aiken Hodge was a writer I read way back in my teens and twenties. I read a lot of recently written historical fiction, mostly Regencies, so I wondered how this would stand up. If you can ignore the bonkers premise… that Camilla Forest, fleeing a bad situation as a governess in a household with a lecherous older son, is picked up on the road (literally) by Lord Leominster when the coach she is waiting for doesn't turn up. Within a couple of hours he's proposed to her, a business arrangement because his fearsome grandmother will disinherit him if he remains single.

Once you've suspended disbelief for that element of the plot, the rest follows quite neatly. Leominster is dispatched to Portugal in the teeth of Napoleon's invasion and Camilla (while gradually falling in love with Leominster) has to navigate war-torn Portugal. In truth, though the characterization is less vivid than it could be and the sex scenes are less steamy that those written by some contemporary historical novel writers, it still stands up reasonably well today as a Gothic Romance. Though there are moments when the tension could be resolved instantly if the two protagonists simply talked to each other.