Read For:
For a large portion of Georgette Heyer's great public, The Quiet Gentleman will be one (if not the) favourite of her Regency novels. It is more intimately a family affair than any of her previous books. There is plenty of drama in it: in fact there is a series of those nearly fatal accidents that look very like attempted murder. Trip a horse, and you may kill its rider. An old bridge may well collapse, but why was no warning of its state announced?
Gervase Frant, Seventh Earl of St. Erth, who returns rather belatedly from Waterloo to his family seat of Stanyon, in Lincolnshire, arrives to find himself welcomed only by his cousin Theo, a gentleman as quite as himself; and encounters from his stepmother and his young half-brother hostility, and an open regret that he survived the wars.
However, he sails past all the dangers that await him with the smiling imperturbability to be expected of a Heyer hero.
There are of course all the charming airs and graces of the period, and plenty of romance, in the course of which the Cincerella theme delightfully triumphs. Finally, it will generally be agreed that Miss Heyer could not have given her readers a fuller measure of good things
My Review:
Another excellent Heyer Regency. I enjoyed the fact that Gervase is a bit of a self acknowledged "dandy" and that Drusilla was a "plain Jane" though quick witted and sensible heroine. The book is more mystery than anything else. Like The Corinthian, I could have stood more romance but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Heyer's Regencies seem more a love affair of the period than anything else. Her knowledge of Regency era is outstanding and daunting all at the same time-especially her use of thieve's cant as well as the cant used by the "up and comers" as well.
4 stars!
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