England 1761
Respectable country miss Clarissa Astley runs off to London after her dastardly guardian, Uncle Luke, absconds with her little brother (and the Astley heir), ten-year-old Francis Astley. She manages not to get herself killed and takes a servant's room in a nunnery (brothel). She has received an anonymous letter informing her that Francis is in a "babby farm" and will likely die from neglect.
Jasper Sullivan, Earl of Blackwater, must find and marry a woman of ill-repute, a woman that needs saving, in order to inherit his Uncle's wealth. With creditors nipping at his heels, he devises a plan to find a prostitute, make her his mistress, marry her then wait out his Uncle's demise, at which point they'll get a *gasp* divorce. Well, an annulment. Clarissa practically knocks him over in Covent Garden while she's stalking Luke, and Jasper decides that she will do. They eat, she storms off (a habit of hers) and Jasper follows her back to the nunnery. Clarissa has let him believe that she is a prostitute and gives him a fake last name because she doesn't want it to get back to Luke that she is in London.
Clarissa decides that becoming this man's mistress will be the only way to provide a safe place for Francis until she turns 21 and has legal guardianship of him. When she turns 21 in a few months, she'll just take Francis and run off, leaving all of her "earnings".
So I've read several Jane Feather books and this one felt very different from the others. For one thing, it was S-L-O-W. Sure it takes place over maybe two or three weeks, but I just kept thinking, When is something going to happen? Also, one of the elements of tension is that this is just a business arrangement: he'll dress her up, show her off, marry her (which feels inaccurate for the time period, pre-Regency), then divorce her on the grounds that the marriage was never consummated. How in the world do you convince a church that you never consummated a marriage with your mistress? And Jasper's Uncle converts to Catholicism, which, even for a Black Sheep who wants to infuriate the rest of the family, is a stretch in 18th century England. Perhaps that's the point, but it feels insincere.
On the whole, this book was passably entertaining. The final scene with Uncle Luke was anti-climactic. Clarissa's virginity was dealt with in an interesting way. Was I able to put this book down? Yes.
Will it deter me from other Jane Feather books? Probably not.
