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I generally liked this novel. It revolves around how a marriage once destroyed by infidelity can be healed. I have pretty strong views on this subject so I’ll talk about what ruffled my feathers. I’m like Viola, the heroine, at the start of the novel, looking at things in black and white. The author didn’t persuade me to think in gray matter, too bad Viola did. Luckily in the end she got what she deserved – a loving, devoted, adoring husband – but you could have fooled me. I still thought the hero was shy of truly learning how to love at the end of the book. However, you can be the judge.

Viola is the sister of a Duke and at the age of nineteen she knew she was in love with Viscount John Hammond. She also knew that despite the circumstances of his situation, he loved her, not the money she brought with her. How naïve she had been. John knew nothing of love; he was all empty words and passion.

“When unaccompanied by his love, a man’s desire was like the wind. It had no substance, and it was impossible to hold onto.” – pg 186

Now eight going on nine years after their vows, John has come to the decision to get himself an heir. For that, he will need to woo his way back into his wife’s bed. This task would prove impossible until he changed. But can a man like John, change his spots?

In the last ten pages he did. Until then the brute refused to take blame for more than half the novel and managed to in nearly every conversation lay the whole troubled affair at Viola’s feet. This is much like what happens in the movie Something to Talk About starring Julia Roberts. This made me really mad and when it wasn’t John telling Viola how she made him break his marriage vows and slip into other women, it was the Duke’s wife that was telling her how she wasn’t looking at things from John’s point of view.

John broke his vows. Period. The end. Case closed. What kind of man has to hide his dirty deeds behind his innocent wife? In today’s world with all the diseases that can be caught, a man who cheats ought to be charged with attempted murder if he slips back into his wife’s bed (undetected or not) without first having himself checked out thoroughly.

Viola first turns John away from their marriage bed when she learns that he kept a mistress during the entire time he was courting her. All his words of love, adoration, devotion were lies. She might have forgiven him those if the other woman wasn’t involved. After all impoverished lords needed funds and heiresses to make them solvent – he could have learned to love her.

John waits a month and leaves Viola to live a separate life. There he has count them, five, mistresses in the space of the years prior to his most devout attempt at reconciling. He only does it because he needs a legitimate heir to the viscountcy. Viola is the only woman who can grant him this. So once again he plans to use false words to get her into bed and if that doesn’t work the law is on his side and he can force her there.

But in his own words the five mistresses were her own fault for being cold to him. Poor baby. Eventually he says he is sorry for his part in breaking their marriage by using his young nephew to be his buffer. I don’t think Viola had any part to breaking the marriage. Distraught as she was she stayed with him (granted making him take separate sleeping quarters and refusing to allow him to use passion against her to win his way back into her good graces) until he left.

Marriage vows are not a one way street. A man and his needs can be resolved with a hand not another woman or any of her body parts. Fidelity goes both ways. If he required it of her then it was not an unreasonable request for Viola to make of him. John said it was and refused to be sexually blackmailed. Well what the hell was he doing when he refused to promise fidelity but sexually blackmailing his wife?

Has anyone read this book? What do you think?

Rating: 2.5 Stars

Originally posted 2008-10-06 15:07:06. Republished by Old Post Promoter

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Categories:

2.5 Stars, Baroness or Viscountess, Book Review, Counts, Marquis, Viscounts, England, Estranged, Heiress, Historical Romance, Laura Lee Guhrke

Tags:

black and white, brute, dirty deeds, duke, feathers, gray matter, heir, heroine, infidelity, innocent wife, john hammond, julia roberts, kind of man, marriage vows, nine years, novel, point of view, starring julia roberts, viola, viscount