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Loading... Marry in Haste (1971)by Jane Aiken Hodge
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Alternative title Camilla This Regency is all it should be and far less formulaic than many. Serendipity: a discussion came up on refugees and I was able to talk reasonably about the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal. The novel starts out like a Gothic with a young governess (Camilla Forest) unjustly dismissed from her first position as a governess. The dark and mysterious Lord Leominster rescues her and proposes marriage the first night. Here the Gothic falls firmly back into Regency territory with its marriage of convenience and an interesting matriarch pulling the purse strings. Everyone knows how this will end; the interest is in how they get there. Adding to the interest is Chloe, sister to Lord Leominster, who manages to get into scrapes ... "why" would be giving away too much plot. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd suggest it for readers who enjoy the Regency time period and also like history and intrigue mixed into their fiction. Camilla Forest, having lost her post as a governess because of the attentions of her employers' oldest son, accepts Lord Leominster's sudden offer of a marriage in name only. He is on the verge of leaving for a diplomatic post in Portugal and needs a wife to placate his grandmother. His flibbertigibbet sister, Chloe, accompanies them when they go. As they attempt to forge a marriage, they find themselves plagued by secrets and misunderstandings, as well as the wider dangers of 1807 Portugal. First published in 1969, and now available as an ebook, this classic Regency romance holds up well. The only jarring note is the repeated reference to both 17-year-old Chloe and 20-year-old, newly married Camilla as "the girls." Worth reading. When she is dismissed from her position as a governess, Camilla Forest, daughter of a French nobleman who fled France, makes a marriage of convenience with Lord Leominster, who is a diplomat. She accompanies him and his sister to Portugal, where she slowly falls in love with her husband. This Regency-era novel I found to be intriguing. Camilla was a sympathetic lead, even though at times I wanted to shake some sense into her. Her situation and, in the beginning, her choices made sense for her. Lord Leominster was harder to read. He wasn't present for most of the narrative, which made the romance more difficult to understand. His sister was a terror and needed to be sent back to the schoolroom. Her character arc was the least believable part of the novel. Overall, not a bad read, and I would recommend this to readers of the Regency era, looking for a more historical edge. I received a free copy from netGalley for reviewing purposes. no reviews | add a review
Camilla Forest finds herself alone on a muddy road, left to fend for herself, when the carriage of Lord Leominster pulls up alongside. This sets off an agreement to a marriage of convenience with Camilla and Lavenham, the Lord. They move to Portugal, along with his sister, Chloe. Camilla finds herself falling in love with her husband. But will her French brother ruin everything? Jane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. She received a master's degree from Radcliffe College, Harvard University. Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer. She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, Passion and Principle. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including Polonaise, The Lost Garden, and Savannah Purchase, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers. She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.5Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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