BOOK REVIEW: Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer

After my last few intense reads, I wanted to read something light and fluffy, so I went to my go-to: Georgette Heyer.

Sprig Muslin is everything you expect from a Regency Romance by Heyer. An utter delight.

Sir Gareth Ludlow is a 35-year-old widower who is ready to marry again after mourning for seven years. His first wife was beautiful and vivacious, the life of every party. No other woman could possibly measure up. But that isn’t what Gareth (now much more mature) is looking for. He has his sights set on Lady Hester Theale, a shy, retiring, 29-year-old spinster who is rather ill-used by her family. Gareth has always admired her kindness and sensibleness. He’s fond of her. And given his own good looks, wealth, and high-standing in the ton, he expects she’ll say yes. So he sets off for the Theales’ country home to propose.

Along the way, in an inn, he bumps into Amanda, a strikingly pretty 15-year-old runaway. The girl makes up a ridiculous story (based on the old Romance Pamela) that Gareth sees through easily. He can tell the girl is highborn and cannot be allowed to roam wild, but she refuses to tell him who she is or who her people are. He has no choice but to offer her a ride–not to where she wants to go, which would result in her utter ruin, but, rather, to the Theales’ with him. So, he becomes her abductor.

To arrive at the home of the woman you wish to propose to with a pretty young thing on your arm is absurd. Everyone believes Amanda is his mistress, though no one can quite believe it because she’s so young they wouldn’t have thought it of him. And to bring his mistress to a proposal makes no sense whatsoever, but the men there wink at each other and the women fume. Gareth explains the situation to Hester, who understands immediately and tries to help deal with Amanda, befriending the girl, so that isn’t a problem. Nevertheless, when Gareth proposes to her, Hester turns him down. The problem (that she doesn’t explain but that is clear to the reader) is not that she doesn’t love him, but that she does. And she believes he is still in love with his dead wife.

So they are at a bit of an impasse. And then, Amanda escapes. Gareth has to set out after her.

The novel has a slow-ish start. Heyer has to set all the pieces up on the board. And, after Gareth leaves the Theales’, Hester disappears from the story for quite a long while, which is odd for the genre. But the story picks up speed when the chase after Amanda gets going. She is flighty but determined. Her goal is to be allowed to marry Neil, a soldier in the Horse Guards, and follow the drum. (Neil is a very upstanding young man, who refused to go against her grandfather’s wishes and wants to wait to marry her until she is older. So, Amanda hopes to force the issue.) Along the way, Amanda continues to tell stories that are more and more outlandish as she takes refuge in odd places, enlists unlikely helpers, and tries to outrun her abductor. But Gareth is equally inventive and much cleverer. The way the lies turn around on themselves had me laughing out loud.

Georgette Heyer does have some stock characters: the flighty ingenue; the patient, clever aristocrat who is always in control until he is not; the sensible but still fun no-longer-a-debutante lady. And the HEA ending is a given. Yet Heyer always finds a way to make the situations fresh and funny. Be a bit patient with the start of this one and you’ll be rewarded!