RogerBW's Blog

The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer 09 May 2025

1946 Regency romance. Elinor Rochdale is travelling to take up a post as a governess, only to find herself made a strange offer: if she will marry someone's reprobate cousin, she need never see him again, but she will not lose by it. She declines, of course, but soon finds that she has no choice.

Although this is categorised as a Regency romance, the romance is very much in the background: it's not until the last chapter that anyone declares themselves, and even then it's not in a usual pattern. Instead, this is Heyer writing a story of espionage: the reprobate cousin Eustace manages to get himself mortally injured, so Elinor is rushed through the formalities of marriage only to find herself in possession of a house gone to ruin… and, apparently, a missing secret document? After all, it's early in 1813, and Wellington has planned his next campaign season…

Which means there's a hollow in this book where the gradually-developing romance would normally be; there are signs here and there, but mostly the story is about Elinor's trying to cope with her untenable situation dealing with Eustace's sympathetic relatives—some of whom may themselves be working for the French and wanting to recover the document. Meanwhile she is defended by Lord Carlyon, who set up the marriage plan to pacify that section of his family who think that Carlyon drove Eustace to the bad as a way to inherit his property; but more, in practice, by his younger brother Nicky, who is perhaps the acme of Heyer's idiotic but well-meaning young men. He's all for the adventure, and quite unwilling to believe that Elinor might not enjoy, as he does, the prospect of French agents breaking in through the secret passage…

It's all good fun, though perhaps it sometimes leans a little too hard on the core joke of Nicky enthusiastic for adventure while Elinor tries to put up with both him and the fear of being murdered in her bed. Still, there is Nicky's hopeless dog Bouncer, who makes up for a lot.

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