April Lady by Georgette Heyer
“It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.”
A year into their marriage, both Nell and Giles are deeply in love with each other but assume that the other had only entered a marriage of convenience. Misunderstandings between the two are exacerbated by the unwitting actions of Giles’s spoiled, willful sister Letty, who’s determined to marry a poor diplomat, and Nell’s brother Dysart, who’s always in debt and borrowing from Nell.
This story is delightful different as the main characters learn to truly love and trust each other after they are married. Nell’s story is timeless in the manner of most young wives who have been taught an ideal of marriage and are badly advised and ill-prepared for the practical realities of relationships and the stumbling path from naïve ignorance to self-confidence.
Georgette Heyer combines a fast-moving story with a lot of humor. She has a way of conveying meaning and situations about a time period where only those who lived in that century could have understood. The choice of words and meaning is exquisite. This book, April Lady, is full of intrigue, misunderstandings, and deep emotion. She adds just the correct subsequent detail that adds to the expectation of crucial moments that satisfy the reader to the highest degree. I have read most of her books but revisiting them once again gives one as much pleasure as the first.
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