todayiamadaisy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
todayiamadaisy) wrote2017-01-02 12:44 am
todayiamadaisy) wrote2017-01-02 12:44 am
A Heart of Stone
Happy New Year, f-list.
I made it to fifty books in 2016, because the last one was this one, so let's get down to business. That business being: Barbara Cartland's Love and the Loathsome Leopard. This is not the Dame at her best, I must say. It's a bit dull. I believe this is because the hero's name is John. John and/or Stuart. Either way, he has a perfectly normal name, and that is the problem. You can't be a Cartland hero unless you're called Valient or Kimball or Sholto. Or Norvin. Remember Norvin? Now there was a proper hero name.
So, John and/or Stuart. He started out as John, but ran away from his abusive father when he was fifteen, and joined the army as Stuart. He became one of the Duke of Wellington's "leopards", the troops who defeated Napoleon. That is apparently what they were called, but John and/or Stuart takes it very seriously. He is called The Leopard by his men. He "had in a strange way a look of a leopard" (spotty?). He has leopard-like hearing and sight. He refers to himself as a leopard. He's just really into leopards, okay?
Then John and/or Stuart's father died, and so John and/or Stuart became Lord Cheriton, only he doesn't tell anyone. That's the backstory you need to know.
The book begins with Lord Cheriton being tasked by the Prime Minister himself with infiltrating a gang of smugglers called the Larks. Where do the Larks do their smuggling? Larkswell Village. What is near Larkswell Village? Larkswell Hall. That's Lord Cheriton's house! What are the odds?
So Lord Cheriton goes home to Larkswell, where no-one recognises him, even though he grew up there and looks like a leopard, which would make him quite distinctive. Out of curiosity, he goes to see Larkswell Hall, which he assumes has fallen down. To his great surprise, he finds it shabby but looked after, being lived in by squatters: a young woman called Wivina, the orphaned daughter of Larkswell's late vicar, and her younger brother, who are waited on by all of Lord Cheriton's father's servants. You had a better class of squatter back then.
If you are wondering what Wivina looks like, well, we don't know at first because she's busy putting flowers in a vase when Lord Cheriton barges in. Then she turns around:
"... he looked at her more closely and realised, now that she had her back to the window, that she was in fact very lovely." So from the front, she's lovely. From the back, meh. "Her eyes were blue, the colour of the delphiniums which stood in a vase beside the chair she had indicated to him, and her hair was very fair, so fair that it was, he thought, the colour of the dawn creeping up the sky to dispel the night."
Wivina, not knowing that she's speaking with Lord Cheriton, says that she's afraid that Lord Cheriton will kick her out of the house if he finds out she is living there. Lord Cheriton tells Wivina that he is Stuart, a friend of Lord Cheriton, and he will put in a good word for her. Wivina agrees to let Stuart NotLordCheriton stay in the house overnight, but says he has to leave in the morning, as the smugglers don't like strangers and will surely kill him as they killed her father, the vicar, by pushing him off a cliff.
While they are talking, a particularly nasty smuggler turns up and twirls his moustache a bit. Lord Cheriton takes a dislike to him.
Lord Cheriton meets Wivina's brother, Richard. He's bookish, and the nasty smuggler has promised to send him to university if Wivina marries him. Over dinner, Lord Cheriton persuades Richard that this would make Wivina unhappy, and making Wivina unhappy would make Richard unhappy, so perhaps it would be best all round if Wivina didn't marry the nasty smuggler. Richard is on board with that.
Dinner continues. Stuart NotLordCheriton says that he was one of Wellington's loathsome leopards and Wivina gasps, "Of course!", then looks embarrassed. Lord Cheriton knows why. "If you are referring to the fact that I look like a leopard," Lord Cheriton replied, "may I say I am well aware of the resemblance and I am in fact rather proud of it!"
Richard goes to bed. Stuart sits by the fire and finds it charming that Wivina sits at his feet. Stuart NotLordCheriton and Wivina have a chat and realise that they are in love. Obviously. They also realise they can't be together until they defeat the smugglers. Wivina is concerned that two people can't defeat an army of smugglers, but Stuart NotLordCheriton has an answer for that. "Remember, Wivina, that I am not only a solder but also a leopard, and the leopards defeated the eagles." This makes sense to Wivina, so maybe they are meant to be together other after all.
Before going to bed, they kiss. "As he held Wivina close to him and his lips became more demanding, more insistent, he thought that what he felt for her was part of the beauty and love that he had known with his mother, and that which he had found in the silver of the lake and the dark mystery of the woods." I mean, the silver of the lake and the dark mystery of the woods is one thing, but his mother? No, Lord Cheriton. No.
Lord Cheriton sneaks out of the house that night to watch the smugglers do their smuggling. Here we come to the part where the Dame has done a bit of research and is keen to show it off with a few pages about the sort of ships that smugglers used. Luggers, they were called, and then I skimmed until Lord Cheriton came back into frame. Lord Cheriton overhears the nasty smuggler and his boss discussing an offer they have received from France: Forty thousand pounds to smuggle Napoleon off Elba!
Lord Cheriton gets himself out of there, and finds the house being watched. He and his man-servant sneak away with their horses, and that's the last we see of them for a while.
Wivina wakes and thinks about Stuart NotLordCheriton. Although she loves him, she doubts that he will be able to overcome the nasty smuggler. She thinks about the nasty smuggler and how he killed her father and how she can't trust him. She's still thinking that when the nasty smuggler turns up and tells her that Richard has been injured in a horse-riding accident. Wivina grabs her cloak and goes with him. And that's how easy it is to kidnap Wivina.
Wivina is now on the smuggler's boat for France, where she will be forced to marry the nasty smuggler and help free Napoleon. Fortunately, the ship is becalmed, delaying their arrival in France for a day. Will that be enough time for Lord Cheriton to catch up?
Meanwhile, Lord Cheriton has come back with troops, and they arrest all the other smugglers. He goes back to Larkswell Hall, where his father's old servants, who still don't recognise him, tell him that Wivina has not returned after going somewhere in a hurry with the nasty smuggler. He realises they've gone to France. That seems like a leap, but okay. Lord Cheriton pops down the docks, where he commandeers a ship from the Customs Service. Here, the Dame has done a bit more research and tells us that the Customs Service had cutters that were bigger than the smuggler's luggers. "They were therefore craft of low free-board and great depth of keel with enormous sail area for their size." They set sail for France.
In France, Wivina has had a crack at escaping from the inn where she is being kept, but the nasty smuggler has caught her. Just as he's about to drag her out to get married: Cannon fire! Lord Cheriton has arrived and is firing on France. The smuggler runs out and aims his pistol. Lord Cheriton shoots him dead. With a rifle, not the cannon, although that would have been hilarious.
Lord Cheriton notes approvingly that Richard (who was also kidnapped) has a black eye from being beaten while trying to help Wivina escape. Lord Cheriton thinks that for this service, he will not only send Richard to university, he will also send him to a doctor to do something about his gammy leg. That does sound like he wouldn't have bothered about the doctor otherwise. Anyway, he finds Wivina and says "let's go, babe" and she asks where:
"To Larks Hall," he answered. "Your home — and mine!"
She looked at him with a question in her eyes and he explained,
"I am Lord Cheriton!"
The end.
The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Wivina Compton
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes. "Who — told you it was — empty?"
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, her crippled brother.
And his unsympathetic wife: No, he's only a teenager and he's well-meaning, if something of a liability.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Lord Cheriton, whose real name is John Heywood, but who goes about in disguise as Stuart Bradleigh, neither of which are absurd names.
Female friends of heroine: None, although there are some female servants.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: He has a man-servant called Nickolls who might as well not be in the book, but Lord Cheriton is a decent enough chap, if slightly obsessed with leopards.
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, they are brought together by a hatred of smugglers.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: No bitter former servants, just a smuggler who gets sick of Wivina turning down his marriage proposals and kidnaps her.
Heroine requires rescue from: Being kidnapped by the smuggler and taken to France to get married (to be fair, she did have a go at escaping before she was rescued).
Duels fought: None, unless you count the smuggler standing on the dock pointing a pistol at Lord Cheriton's warship's cannon. Literally outgunned.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: No, surprisingly.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: Most of the book is from Lord Cheriton's point of view, including the end, which notes: "He kissed her until her eyes shone like stars."
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: No, but before he goes down to dinner, Lord Cheriton looks in the mirror and notes to himself that "[h]is tight-fitting champagne-coloured pantaloons and cutaway coat became him well, as did the high white cravat contrasting with his sunburnt skin."
I made it to fifty books in 2016, because the last one was this one, so let's get down to business. That business being: Barbara Cartland's Love and the Loathsome Leopard. This is not the Dame at her best, I must say. It's a bit dull. I believe this is because the hero's name is John. John and/or Stuart. Either way, he has a perfectly normal name, and that is the problem. You can't be a Cartland hero unless you're called Valient or Kimball or Sholto. Or Norvin. Remember Norvin? Now there was a proper hero name.
So, John and/or Stuart. He started out as John, but ran away from his abusive father when he was fifteen, and joined the army as Stuart. He became one of the Duke of Wellington's "leopards", the troops who defeated Napoleon. That is apparently what they were called, but John and/or Stuart takes it very seriously. He is called The Leopard by his men. He "had in a strange way a look of a leopard" (spotty?). He has leopard-like hearing and sight. He refers to himself as a leopard. He's just really into leopards, okay?
Then John and/or Stuart's father died, and so John and/or Stuart became Lord Cheriton, only he doesn't tell anyone. That's the backstory you need to know.
The book begins with Lord Cheriton being tasked by the Prime Minister himself with infiltrating a gang of smugglers called the Larks. Where do the Larks do their smuggling? Larkswell Village. What is near Larkswell Village? Larkswell Hall. That's Lord Cheriton's house! What are the odds?
So Lord Cheriton goes home to Larkswell, where no-one recognises him, even though he grew up there and looks like a leopard, which would make him quite distinctive. Out of curiosity, he goes to see Larkswell Hall, which he assumes has fallen down. To his great surprise, he finds it shabby but looked after, being lived in by squatters: a young woman called Wivina, the orphaned daughter of Larkswell's late vicar, and her younger brother, who are waited on by all of Lord Cheriton's father's servants. You had a better class of squatter back then.
If you are wondering what Wivina looks like, well, we don't know at first because she's busy putting flowers in a vase when Lord Cheriton barges in. Then she turns around:
"... he looked at her more closely and realised, now that she had her back to the window, that she was in fact very lovely." So from the front, she's lovely. From the back, meh. "Her eyes were blue, the colour of the delphiniums which stood in a vase beside the chair she had indicated to him, and her hair was very fair, so fair that it was, he thought, the colour of the dawn creeping up the sky to dispel the night."
Wivina, not knowing that she's speaking with Lord Cheriton, says that she's afraid that Lord Cheriton will kick her out of the house if he finds out she is living there. Lord Cheriton tells Wivina that he is Stuart, a friend of Lord Cheriton, and he will put in a good word for her. Wivina agrees to let Stuart NotLordCheriton stay in the house overnight, but says he has to leave in the morning, as the smugglers don't like strangers and will surely kill him as they killed her father, the vicar, by pushing him off a cliff.
While they are talking, a particularly nasty smuggler turns up and twirls his moustache a bit. Lord Cheriton takes a dislike to him.
Lord Cheriton meets Wivina's brother, Richard. He's bookish, and the nasty smuggler has promised to send him to university if Wivina marries him. Over dinner, Lord Cheriton persuades Richard that this would make Wivina unhappy, and making Wivina unhappy would make Richard unhappy, so perhaps it would be best all round if Wivina didn't marry the nasty smuggler. Richard is on board with that.
Dinner continues. Stuart NotLordCheriton says that he was one of Wellington's loathsome leopards and Wivina gasps, "Of course!", then looks embarrassed. Lord Cheriton knows why. "If you are referring to the fact that I look like a leopard," Lord Cheriton replied, "may I say I am well aware of the resemblance and I am in fact rather proud of it!"
Richard goes to bed. Stuart sits by the fire and finds it charming that Wivina sits at his feet. Stuart NotLordCheriton and Wivina have a chat and realise that they are in love. Obviously. They also realise they can't be together until they defeat the smugglers. Wivina is concerned that two people can't defeat an army of smugglers, but Stuart NotLordCheriton has an answer for that. "Remember, Wivina, that I am not only a solder but also a leopard, and the leopards defeated the eagles." This makes sense to Wivina, so maybe they are meant to be together other after all.
Before going to bed, they kiss. "As he held Wivina close to him and his lips became more demanding, more insistent, he thought that what he felt for her was part of the beauty and love that he had known with his mother, and that which he had found in the silver of the lake and the dark mystery of the woods." I mean, the silver of the lake and the dark mystery of the woods is one thing, but his mother? No, Lord Cheriton. No.
Lord Cheriton sneaks out of the house that night to watch the smugglers do their smuggling. Here we come to the part where the Dame has done a bit of research and is keen to show it off with a few pages about the sort of ships that smugglers used. Luggers, they were called, and then I skimmed until Lord Cheriton came back into frame. Lord Cheriton overhears the nasty smuggler and his boss discussing an offer they have received from France: Forty thousand pounds to smuggle Napoleon off Elba!
Lord Cheriton gets himself out of there, and finds the house being watched. He and his man-servant sneak away with their horses, and that's the last we see of them for a while.
Wivina wakes and thinks about Stuart NotLordCheriton. Although she loves him, she doubts that he will be able to overcome the nasty smuggler. She thinks about the nasty smuggler and how he killed her father and how she can't trust him. She's still thinking that when the nasty smuggler turns up and tells her that Richard has been injured in a horse-riding accident. Wivina grabs her cloak and goes with him. And that's how easy it is to kidnap Wivina.
Wivina is now on the smuggler's boat for France, where she will be forced to marry the nasty smuggler and help free Napoleon. Fortunately, the ship is becalmed, delaying their arrival in France for a day. Will that be enough time for Lord Cheriton to catch up?
Meanwhile, Lord Cheriton has come back with troops, and they arrest all the other smugglers. He goes back to Larkswell Hall, where his father's old servants, who still don't recognise him, tell him that Wivina has not returned after going somewhere in a hurry with the nasty smuggler. He realises they've gone to France. That seems like a leap, but okay. Lord Cheriton pops down the docks, where he commandeers a ship from the Customs Service. Here, the Dame has done a bit more research and tells us that the Customs Service had cutters that were bigger than the smuggler's luggers. "They were therefore craft of low free-board and great depth of keel with enormous sail area for their size." They set sail for France.
In France, Wivina has had a crack at escaping from the inn where she is being kept, but the nasty smuggler has caught her. Just as he's about to drag her out to get married: Cannon fire! Lord Cheriton has arrived and is firing on France. The smuggler runs out and aims his pistol. Lord Cheriton shoots him dead. With a rifle, not the cannon, although that would have been hilarious.
Lord Cheriton notes approvingly that Richard (who was also kidnapped) has a black eye from being beaten while trying to help Wivina escape. Lord Cheriton thinks that for this service, he will not only send Richard to university, he will also send him to a doctor to do something about his gammy leg. That does sound like he wouldn't have bothered about the doctor otherwise. Anyway, he finds Wivina and says "let's go, babe" and she asks where:
"To Larks Hall," he answered. "Your home — and mine!"
She looked at him with a question in her eyes and he explained,
"I am Lord Cheriton!"
The end.
The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Wivina Compton
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes. "Who — told you it was — empty?"
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, her crippled brother.
And his unsympathetic wife: No, he's only a teenager and he's well-meaning, if something of a liability.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Lord Cheriton, whose real name is John Heywood, but who goes about in disguise as Stuart Bradleigh, neither of which are absurd names.
Female friends of heroine: None, although there are some female servants.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: He has a man-servant called Nickolls who might as well not be in the book, but Lord Cheriton is a decent enough chap, if slightly obsessed with leopards.
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, they are brought together by a hatred of smugglers.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: No bitter former servants, just a smuggler who gets sick of Wivina turning down his marriage proposals and kidnaps her.
Heroine requires rescue from: Being kidnapped by the smuggler and taken to France to get married (to be fair, she did have a go at escaping before she was rescued).
Duels fought: None, unless you count the smuggler standing on the dock pointing a pistol at Lord Cheriton's warship's cannon. Literally outgunned.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: No, surprisingly.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: Most of the book is from Lord Cheriton's point of view, including the end, which notes: "He kissed her until her eyes shone like stars."
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: No, but before he goes down to dinner, Lord Cheriton looks in the mirror and notes to himself that "[h]is tight-fitting champagne-coloured pantaloons and cutaway coat became him well, as did the high white cravat contrasting with his sunburnt skin."