The Impetuous Duchess (redux)
Jan. 16th, 2014 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyWhat better way to pass a hot, hot, HOT evening than sitting outside with the last Cartland in my possession? Stand by for: The Impetuous Duchess, which tells the frankly ludicrous tale of... an impetuous duchess!
The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Jabina Kilcarthie
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes, but only when she's not being impetuous.
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, it's her father, known only as Sir Bruce.
And his unsympathetic wife: No, she was nice and sometimes French, but she's dead.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Drue Minster, the Duke of Warminster
Female friends of heroine: None.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: Two: one who is sometimes called Freddie and sometimes called Freddy, and one who is French, the Vicomte Armand d'Envier
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, it's escaping from Napoleon this time.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: In a surprise twist, it's the Duke! He stabs his employer while pretending to be a valet to escape from France.
Heroine requires rescue from: Everything.
Duels fought: None, although there are several non-duel fights.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: In another surprise twist, it begins like that when the Duke is injured when his carriage overturns.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: Then his lips possessed her and there was only a fire rising within them both and the wonder of the stars.
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.
And a new category I have decided to add because it crops up in every book I've read so far:
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: Twice!
Champagne-coloured pantaloons are the new diamond-studded snuff boxes.
This book turned out to be something of a surprise. I mean, it's ridiculous, so it's not that much of a surprise, let me reassure you about that. But there were several action sequences in this book and they were, let's say, less absurd than the romance. I think Dame B. may have missed her calling.
Let's get into it. The book begins with the young Duke of Warminster travelling through Scotland on his way home to England. Although he is only 24, good-looking and a decent sort of chap, he lives an old man's life, staying at home in the country, studying old books and avoiding women, because he is burdened with a DARK SECRET that prevents him from living a normal life. He stays overnight at a remote inn and as he is leaving the next morning, the innkeeper asks a favour. The regular coach has been delayed and there is an elderly woman who needs a lift to the next town; could the Duke take her? The Duke isn't keen on this, as he's a Duke, not a coach service, but he agrees. He is pleased to find that the old woman just wants to sleep, so he can read his book in peace.
The weather is stormy and the roads are bad, and when the coach goes over a particularly big bump, the old lady is thrown off her seat and into the Duke's arms. He realises that she's not an old lady at all, but an 18-year-old girl whose name is, oh dear, Jabina. Jabina is... perky. Really perky. Clive James once wrote about someone who was so perky he wanted to cover him with a tarpaulin and nail down the edges, and I think he may have just finished reading this book at the time. Jabina is pretty darn perky. She's not feisty. Just perky. Chipper.
Anyway, the Duke demands an explanation, and after giving him a bit of sass, Jabina tells him what's up. Her father is forcing her to marry Lord Dornach, one of his old friends, so Jabina has stolen fifteen pounds from the housekeeper and is running away to Nice, where her maternal aunt lives. The Duke says that's ridonkulous, because a young gel like Jabina can't travel alone to an enemy country during a war. Jabina's all, whatever do you mean, Duke, what could possibly go wrong? The Duke, seeing that she really is that stupid, doesn't argue. He says he doesn't want any part of this, so he will drop her off at the next inn as planned.
However, the coach goes over another, even bigger, bump, turning over. The Duke is knocked unconscious and when he wakes, he is in a strange house with Jabina tending to his head wound. It turns out she organised his coachman to find help, and they've all been taken to the nearest manor. Lord and Lady McCairn were thrilled to have the Duke of Warminster recuperating in their spare room, but wanted to know who is the young lady travelling with him? And Jabina, not wanting to cause a scandal by having it put about that she was travelling unattended with the Duke, told them she was his wife. The Duke is not thrilled to hear this, but they're only going to be there for a few days, so... fine. Once he is on his feet, Lady McCairn, who isn't stupid and has guessed that they're not really married (only she thinks Jabina's his mistress), takes them on a tour of her portrait gallery, telling them the funny story of one particular ancestor who pretended he was married to save a young woman from some punishment or other, only to find that, surprise!, Scotland has a law called Marriage by Declaration, so just saying you're married is enough to make it official. So, she says, if you two weren't married before, you are now, haha.
The Duke is not happy about this. So not happy that he stops being the point of view character, and we spend the rest of the book with Jabina instead.
Jabina is also not happy, because she didn't mean to marry the Duke. She frets all day while they're travelling to the next inn, then, after dinner, when they're finally alone, the Duke tells her off for being so impetuous, so she runs away. She makes it to the end of the village, where she is mugged by a drunk in a kilt (that's how he is described), who steals her fifteen pounds. The Duke, who has come looking for her, runs after the drunk in the kilt, but can't catch him. He brings Jabina back to the inn and says he will personally deliver her to her aunt in Nice, just to make sure she's out of his hair. He will also look into ways to annul the marriage without causing a scandal.
So they sail the Duke's yacht to Calais, then take a coach to Paris. Here the Dame does a thing I have noticed before, where if she does a bit of research, she will put it all in, just to let us know that she knows what she's talking about. Hence we are treated to several pages on the different types of coach service available in France during the Napoleonic Wars, and how they differed from those in England. Which is not to say it's not interesting, and it's certainly more interesting than anything Jabina's doing, and if I ever find myself wanting to go from Calais to Paris in 1803, I will know to catch a coche rather than a diligence, so thank you, Dame B.
The Dame also does another thing here that she often does, which is to set up a sub-plot only for it to go nowhere. So don't expect to go to Nice or meet Jabina's aunt, is what I'm saying. (The aunt is something of a puzzle. Jabina's mother was French, but her sister, Jabina's aunt Elspeth, is English and married to a Frenchman Then again, Jabina changes from Scottish to English and back several times during the book, so nationality seems to be fluid in this family.)
Anyway, they arrive in Paris, and Jabina begs for them to stay a few days to do a bit of sight-seeing, and the Duke agrees, because... why not? He's a titled Englishman travelling in an enemy country known for not being keen on titles or Englishmen, so what could go wrong? Honestly, that is not the Duke from the first paragraph, is it? I think Jabina' been a bad influence on him.
So they take rooms in Paris, pretending to be brother and sister, and the Duke buys Jabina six beautiful dresses because... he doesn't want his accidental wife to be badly dressed? I don't know. They go dancing and he introduces her to the Vicomte, who has been his best friend since they were at Eton together. Despite the fact that they were at Eton together, the Duke seriously thinks that the Vicomte is going to believe that Jabina is his sister. The Vicomte doesn't believe this. He asks Jabina about it, and she tells the whole story. The Vicomte is delighted to hear that they're married and tells Jabina about the DARK SECRET that prevents the Duke from living a normal life. I bet you'd forgotten about that, hadn't you? I had. It turns out that the Duke's mother was a bolter. She was... the impetuous Duchess! Just like Jabina! Do you see? Oh, it's clever. Anyway, she ran away from the Duke's father, the previous Duke, with a younger man, only for the two of them to drown in the Bay of Biscay in a shipwreck. Ever since, the Duke has sworn off women, particularly impetuous ones. And that's all we ever hear about that.
The next morning, the Vicomte turns up in a rush with bad news. Napoleon has declared all English people in the city prisoners of war, and the army is on its way to pick up the Duke and Jabina. The Vicomte takes them to the Royalist underground, who smuggle them out of Paris disguised as a valet and lady's maid to an army general and his wife who have been posted to Calais. Jabina and the Duke actually have to work, which they are not happy about, and for the nouveau riche, which they are even less happy about. Oh, the humanity. Somewhere around here Jabina decides, as she inevitably would, that she loves the Duke. The party stops at yet another inn, where Jabina wants to go dancing with the other servants. The Duke tells her to peek through the window of the tavern, where she sees soldiers embracing scantily-clad prostitutes. Jabina decides that's not her scene at all, so she goes back to their rooms, where the general accosts her and is going to 'ravish' her. Jabina screams and the Duke comes in and runs the general through with his own sword. They hide his body in a cupboard and run away. And who among us wouldn't?
Fortunately, they are near to where they wanted to be, where they will be stowing away aboard a smuggling ship. They have to get past army sentries first. Jabina gets rid of one by pretending to be a maid looking for her mistress's dog; the Duke gets rid of the other by bashing him on the head with a large rock. Jabina in 'more subtle than the Duke' shock! They then find the ship and insert themselves into one of the cargo barrels just like in The Hobbit. Only instead of having a barrel each, they squeeze into the one, where Jabina makes conversation by asking just what the general was going to do when he ravished her. The Duke decides that being trapped in a barrel crossing the sea at night isn't really the ideal time to explain that.
Unaware of their non-tobacco cargo, the smugglers take them across the Channel. They are stopped by a Customs ship, but the Duke stands up and shouts to the Customs officers who he is, thus giving the smugglers time to throw the rest of the cargo overboard. Customs lets them go, and the Duke gives the smugglers an IOU for a hundred pounds for their trouble. The smugglers find two ponies somewhere (they probably stole them), so the Duke and Jabina ride to the Duke's cousin's house nearby, where they are waited on by servants, the way nature intended.
After a hot bath and a long nap, Jabina asks the Duke if she can stay on as his housemaid after they get their marriage annulled, just so she can be near him. The Duke says no, because he's been in love with her since that time he saved her from the drunk in the kilt back in Scotland (seriously, that's how he describes the mugger). They decide to stay married and devote their lives to defeating Napoleon (again, seriously, that's their plan). The end.
Quotes:
The Duke travels across the Highlands in style
His Grace for instance always travelled with his own crested linen sheets, soft lambswool blankets and his special goose-feathered pillows.
How hard can a cloak be?
"What is it?" the Duke asked, putting on his cloak with some difficulty in the absence of his valet.
Sadly, this doesn't happen
"What do you think your father will do when he finds that you have disappeared?" the Duke asked.
"He will come tearing after me with a thousand of the Clan brandishing their Claymores!"
Unlike the last half-French heroine, Jabina doesn't have weird eyes that give away her hybrid freakishness
"You don't look French to me," the Duke said.
The Duke spends exactly one paragraph thinking about his mistress, and then we never hear of her again
He hoped that Marguerite would not hear of his adventures in Scotland, for she would undoubtedly be hurt by the idea that he might have married without his telling her first.
To be fair, I think all nationalities would regret that bitterly
She was Scottish enough to regret bitterly that she no longer had fifteen pounds in her handbag.
Jabina starts to warm to the Duke when she finds out he can speak French
...she realised that his accent was exceptionally good and he had a vocabulary that she had not thought possible for an Englishman.
Such nice people!
...the French people not only looked charming but were vastly obliging to strangers. Never, she thought, had she met such politeness or affability.
And yet so bad
"You will find the French for all their charming manners are often very cruel to animals."
The Vicomte humours the Duke's pretence that his wife is his sister
"I have a feeling it might embarrass him to realise that I am not deceived by your pretended relationship."
Quite literally overkill
"You — killed him with his — own sword!" Jabina said in a wondering tone.
"I wish I could have shot him with his own pistol and blown a hole in him with his own cannon!" the Duke said savagely.
No, Jabina, going on the run was the right thing to do
[If he loved her] Would he not have held her in his arms and kissed her after the General had frightened her and they had hidden his body in the Breton cabinet?
Jabina worries what might happen if they fall asleep while crossing the Channel in a barrel
"Drue!"
"What is it?"
"When two people sleep — together in a bed, they have a — baby —you don't — think that we —"
"No!" the Duke said decisively.
The smugglers' reaction to being stopped by Customs
"Aye, we be trapped!"
Do you think, Jabina?
"She had the feeling that Madame Delmas would be exceedingly annoyed at losing her expensive and valuable cloak, but perhaps it would pale into insignificance beside the fact that she had also lost her husband!
Jabina spends two pages pretending to pour a drink while she thinks about how much she loves the Duke, and the Duke wins a little of my affection by having enough of her soap operatic ways
"I am waiting to talk to you, Jabina," the Duke said. "It's difficult to have a conversation with the back of someone's head!"
True romance
She gave a deep sigh of happiness.
"When I think that you — killed a man for me I can hardly believe it!"
The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Jabina Kilcarthie
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes, but only when she's not being impetuous.
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, it's her father, known only as Sir Bruce.
And his unsympathetic wife: No, she was nice and sometimes French, but she's dead.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Drue Minster, the Duke of Warminster
Female friends of heroine: None.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: Two: one who is sometimes called Freddie and sometimes called Freddy, and one who is French, the Vicomte Armand d'Envier
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, it's escaping from Napoleon this time.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: In a surprise twist, it's the Duke! He stabs his employer while pretending to be a valet to escape from France.
Heroine requires rescue from: Everything.
Duels fought: None, although there are several non-duel fights.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: In another surprise twist, it begins like that when the Duke is injured when his carriage overturns.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: Then his lips possessed her and there was only a fire rising within them both and the wonder of the stars.
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.
And a new category I have decided to add because it crops up in every book I've read so far:
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: Twice!
Champagne-coloured pantaloons are the new diamond-studded snuff boxes.
This book turned out to be something of a surprise. I mean, it's ridiculous, so it's not that much of a surprise, let me reassure you about that. But there were several action sequences in this book and they were, let's say, less absurd than the romance. I think Dame B. may have missed her calling.
Let's get into it. The book begins with the young Duke of Warminster travelling through Scotland on his way home to England. Although he is only 24, good-looking and a decent sort of chap, he lives an old man's life, staying at home in the country, studying old books and avoiding women, because he is burdened with a DARK SECRET that prevents him from living a normal life. He stays overnight at a remote inn and as he is leaving the next morning, the innkeeper asks a favour. The regular coach has been delayed and there is an elderly woman who needs a lift to the next town; could the Duke take her? The Duke isn't keen on this, as he's a Duke, not a coach service, but he agrees. He is pleased to find that the old woman just wants to sleep, so he can read his book in peace.
The weather is stormy and the roads are bad, and when the coach goes over a particularly big bump, the old lady is thrown off her seat and into the Duke's arms. He realises that she's not an old lady at all, but an 18-year-old girl whose name is, oh dear, Jabina. Jabina is... perky. Really perky. Clive James once wrote about someone who was so perky he wanted to cover him with a tarpaulin and nail down the edges, and I think he may have just finished reading this book at the time. Jabina is pretty darn perky. She's not feisty. Just perky. Chipper.
Anyway, the Duke demands an explanation, and after giving him a bit of sass, Jabina tells him what's up. Her father is forcing her to marry Lord Dornach, one of his old friends, so Jabina has stolen fifteen pounds from the housekeeper and is running away to Nice, where her maternal aunt lives. The Duke says that's ridonkulous, because a young gel like Jabina can't travel alone to an enemy country during a war. Jabina's all, whatever do you mean, Duke, what could possibly go wrong? The Duke, seeing that she really is that stupid, doesn't argue. He says he doesn't want any part of this, so he will drop her off at the next inn as planned.
However, the coach goes over another, even bigger, bump, turning over. The Duke is knocked unconscious and when he wakes, he is in a strange house with Jabina tending to his head wound. It turns out she organised his coachman to find help, and they've all been taken to the nearest manor. Lord and Lady McCairn were thrilled to have the Duke of Warminster recuperating in their spare room, but wanted to know who is the young lady travelling with him? And Jabina, not wanting to cause a scandal by having it put about that she was travelling unattended with the Duke, told them she was his wife. The Duke is not thrilled to hear this, but they're only going to be there for a few days, so... fine. Once he is on his feet, Lady McCairn, who isn't stupid and has guessed that they're not really married (only she thinks Jabina's his mistress), takes them on a tour of her portrait gallery, telling them the funny story of one particular ancestor who pretended he was married to save a young woman from some punishment or other, only to find that, surprise!, Scotland has a law called Marriage by Declaration, so just saying you're married is enough to make it official. So, she says, if you two weren't married before, you are now, haha.
The Duke is not happy about this. So not happy that he stops being the point of view character, and we spend the rest of the book with Jabina instead.
Jabina is also not happy, because she didn't mean to marry the Duke. She frets all day while they're travelling to the next inn, then, after dinner, when they're finally alone, the Duke tells her off for being so impetuous, so she runs away. She makes it to the end of the village, where she is mugged by a drunk in a kilt (that's how he is described), who steals her fifteen pounds. The Duke, who has come looking for her, runs after the drunk in the kilt, but can't catch him. He brings Jabina back to the inn and says he will personally deliver her to her aunt in Nice, just to make sure she's out of his hair. He will also look into ways to annul the marriage without causing a scandal.
So they sail the Duke's yacht to Calais, then take a coach to Paris. Here the Dame does a thing I have noticed before, where if she does a bit of research, she will put it all in, just to let us know that she knows what she's talking about. Hence we are treated to several pages on the different types of coach service available in France during the Napoleonic Wars, and how they differed from those in England. Which is not to say it's not interesting, and it's certainly more interesting than anything Jabina's doing, and if I ever find myself wanting to go from Calais to Paris in 1803, I will know to catch a coche rather than a diligence, so thank you, Dame B.
The Dame also does another thing here that she often does, which is to set up a sub-plot only for it to go nowhere. So don't expect to go to Nice or meet Jabina's aunt, is what I'm saying. (The aunt is something of a puzzle. Jabina's mother was French, but her sister, Jabina's aunt Elspeth, is English and married to a Frenchman Then again, Jabina changes from Scottish to English and back several times during the book, so nationality seems to be fluid in this family.)
Anyway, they arrive in Paris, and Jabina begs for them to stay a few days to do a bit of sight-seeing, and the Duke agrees, because... why not? He's a titled Englishman travelling in an enemy country known for not being keen on titles or Englishmen, so what could go wrong? Honestly, that is not the Duke from the first paragraph, is it? I think Jabina' been a bad influence on him.
So they take rooms in Paris, pretending to be brother and sister, and the Duke buys Jabina six beautiful dresses because... he doesn't want his accidental wife to be badly dressed? I don't know. They go dancing and he introduces her to the Vicomte, who has been his best friend since they were at Eton together. Despite the fact that they were at Eton together, the Duke seriously thinks that the Vicomte is going to believe that Jabina is his sister. The Vicomte doesn't believe this. He asks Jabina about it, and she tells the whole story. The Vicomte is delighted to hear that they're married and tells Jabina about the DARK SECRET that prevents the Duke from living a normal life. I bet you'd forgotten about that, hadn't you? I had. It turns out that the Duke's mother was a bolter. She was... the impetuous Duchess! Just like Jabina! Do you see? Oh, it's clever. Anyway, she ran away from the Duke's father, the previous Duke, with a younger man, only for the two of them to drown in the Bay of Biscay in a shipwreck. Ever since, the Duke has sworn off women, particularly impetuous ones. And that's all we ever hear about that.
The next morning, the Vicomte turns up in a rush with bad news. Napoleon has declared all English people in the city prisoners of war, and the army is on its way to pick up the Duke and Jabina. The Vicomte takes them to the Royalist underground, who smuggle them out of Paris disguised as a valet and lady's maid to an army general and his wife who have been posted to Calais. Jabina and the Duke actually have to work, which they are not happy about, and for the nouveau riche, which they are even less happy about. Oh, the humanity. Somewhere around here Jabina decides, as she inevitably would, that she loves the Duke. The party stops at yet another inn, where Jabina wants to go dancing with the other servants. The Duke tells her to peek through the window of the tavern, where she sees soldiers embracing scantily-clad prostitutes. Jabina decides that's not her scene at all, so she goes back to their rooms, where the general accosts her and is going to 'ravish' her. Jabina screams and the Duke comes in and runs the general through with his own sword. They hide his body in a cupboard and run away. And who among us wouldn't?
Fortunately, they are near to where they wanted to be, where they will be stowing away aboard a smuggling ship. They have to get past army sentries first. Jabina gets rid of one by pretending to be a maid looking for her mistress's dog; the Duke gets rid of the other by bashing him on the head with a large rock. Jabina in 'more subtle than the Duke' shock! They then find the ship and insert themselves into one of the cargo barrels just like in The Hobbit. Only instead of having a barrel each, they squeeze into the one, where Jabina makes conversation by asking just what the general was going to do when he ravished her. The Duke decides that being trapped in a barrel crossing the sea at night isn't really the ideal time to explain that.
Unaware of their non-tobacco cargo, the smugglers take them across the Channel. They are stopped by a Customs ship, but the Duke stands up and shouts to the Customs officers who he is, thus giving the smugglers time to throw the rest of the cargo overboard. Customs lets them go, and the Duke gives the smugglers an IOU for a hundred pounds for their trouble. The smugglers find two ponies somewhere (they probably stole them), so the Duke and Jabina ride to the Duke's cousin's house nearby, where they are waited on by servants, the way nature intended.
After a hot bath and a long nap, Jabina asks the Duke if she can stay on as his housemaid after they get their marriage annulled, just so she can be near him. The Duke says no, because he's been in love with her since that time he saved her from the drunk in the kilt back in Scotland (seriously, that's how he describes the mugger). They decide to stay married and devote their lives to defeating Napoleon (again, seriously, that's their plan). The end.
Quotes:
The Duke travels across the Highlands in style
His Grace for instance always travelled with his own crested linen sheets, soft lambswool blankets and his special goose-feathered pillows.
How hard can a cloak be?
"What is it?" the Duke asked, putting on his cloak with some difficulty in the absence of his valet.
Sadly, this doesn't happen
"What do you think your father will do when he finds that you have disappeared?" the Duke asked.
"He will come tearing after me with a thousand of the Clan brandishing their Claymores!"
Unlike the last half-French heroine, Jabina doesn't have weird eyes that give away her hybrid freakishness
"You don't look French to me," the Duke said.
The Duke spends exactly one paragraph thinking about his mistress, and then we never hear of her again
He hoped that Marguerite would not hear of his adventures in Scotland, for she would undoubtedly be hurt by the idea that he might have married without his telling her first.
To be fair, I think all nationalities would regret that bitterly
She was Scottish enough to regret bitterly that she no longer had fifteen pounds in her handbag.
Jabina starts to warm to the Duke when she finds out he can speak French
...she realised that his accent was exceptionally good and he had a vocabulary that she had not thought possible for an Englishman.
Such nice people!
...the French people not only looked charming but were vastly obliging to strangers. Never, she thought, had she met such politeness or affability.
And yet so bad
"You will find the French for all their charming manners are often very cruel to animals."
The Vicomte humours the Duke's pretence that his wife is his sister
"I have a feeling it might embarrass him to realise that I am not deceived by your pretended relationship."
Quite literally overkill
"You — killed him with his — own sword!" Jabina said in a wondering tone.
"I wish I could have shot him with his own pistol and blown a hole in him with his own cannon!" the Duke said savagely.
No, Jabina, going on the run was the right thing to do
[If he loved her] Would he not have held her in his arms and kissed her after the General had frightened her and they had hidden his body in the Breton cabinet?
Jabina worries what might happen if they fall asleep while crossing the Channel in a barrel
"Drue!"
"What is it?"
"When two people sleep — together in a bed, they have a — baby —you don't — think that we —"
"No!" the Duke said decisively.
The smugglers' reaction to being stopped by Customs
"Aye, we be trapped!"
Do you think, Jabina?
"She had the feeling that Madame Delmas would be exceedingly annoyed at losing her expensive and valuable cloak, but perhaps it would pale into insignificance beside the fact that she had also lost her husband!
Jabina spends two pages pretending to pour a drink while she thinks about how much she loves the Duke, and the Duke wins a little of my affection by having enough of her soap operatic ways
"I am waiting to talk to you, Jabina," the Duke said. "It's difficult to have a conversation with the back of someone's head!"
True romance
She gave a deep sigh of happiness.
"When I think that you — killed a man for me I can hardly believe it!"