Who You Are Dealing With
Three people, two of whom are identical, and only one of whom has any idea what is actually going on.
Lady Amelia
Eldest daughter of the Earl of Marsham, with two younger sisters. The three of them were, in their season, “three of the most sought after young ladies of any season.” She married Robert young, for passion, and she has been married long enough for the passion to become a memory both of them are polite about.
She is the most strategically capable person in the entire five-book series and it is not close. Consider what she actually does: identifies the problem correctly, rules out the approach that will not work, invents a rival, secures a co-conspirator through blackmail, arranges the props, and then holds her nerve while her husband runs a counter-campaign she can see through from the first move.
The narration gives her the right frame going into it: “This must be how a warrior felt before going into battle. Cool, calm, and determined.”
She is also, and the book is unusually direct about this, a woman with an appetite. She “enjoyed the intimate aspects of marriage far more than any proper, respectable lady should,” privately suspects she “must be something of a tart,” and is entirely unbothered by the suspicion. Her theological defense is excellent: “if God had not intended for relations between men and women to be pleasurable, he would not have made them quite so, well, pleasurable.”
Her flaw is the one the whole novella turns on. She protects people by not telling them things. Six years of silence about the kiss, all of it well intentioned, none of it asked for, and she is the only one who paid for it.
Robert
A charming, handsome man of good family and one of the most respected solicitors in London. His cousin died, which made him the older brother and heir to an elderly uncle’s property and title. He looks forward to taking the uncle’s seat in Parliament and someday intends to be prime minister.
The novella is scrupulously fair to him, which is what makes the marriage plot land. He is not neglectful by temperament, he is reserved by temperament: he has “a natural reserve,” has “never been overly demonstrative,” and does not “freely express his feelings.” He also has “a great deal of ambition and passion. Passion for the law, for politics, and once, for her.”
He is not stupid and not inattentive, and the book proves it in one exchange. Amelia claims he pays no notice to what she says. He replies “And yet I did notice that.” He hears everything. He simply stopped responding to any of it, and could not tell the difference between a settled marriage and a stalled one.
His characteristic error is indirectness. Told to court his own wife, he agrees, explicitly rejects the idea of impersonating Harry because “She knows me too well,” and then does exactly that at the first opportunity. Even his sincerity arrives wearing someone else’s face.
To his credit, when he learns she saw through all of it, he is not humiliated. He is relieved.
Harry
Robert’s identical twin, and the more immediately appealing of the two. In their youth the brothers were “somewhat competitive when it came to the favors of lovely young women and not above impersonating each other in pursuit of whatever lady had caught their eye.” The book adds the detail that makes Robert’s insecurity real: “A lady who, as often as not, ultimately preferred Harry.”
He is the only person in the novella with a stated moral line, and he states it without hedging: “I never have, nor do I foresee a situation in which I ever would, seduce the wife of a friend, and definitely not the wife of my brother.”
He is also the one who tells Robert what to do: “Court her, Robert. Flirt with her. Win her heart all over again. You did it once, you can do it again.”
And then he is blackmailed into helping the woman he refused to seduce deceive the brother he refused to betray, which is a fairly rough week. His compliance is instant: “As I have no choice, I’ll do what you want.”
His one selfish moment is at the door, and it is beautifully placed: “Just out of my own sense of importance and curiosity, was there ever a moment when you considered choosing a different brother?” Amelia asks whether he wishes her to be honest, and the book moves on, which is the correct decision and very funny.
The six-year-old incident is his: he kissed Amelia while pretending to be Robert. Her journal entry at the time makes clear she did not think it was in Robert’s interests, and that she was “too startled to protest.” The novella lets that sit as a real trespass rather than smoothing it into a prank.
The two who wander in from the series
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Oliver, Lord Norcroft | Appears in the closing scene, still unmarried, telling Sinclair he would not wager on staying that way. His own book is Seduction of a Proper Gentleman. |
| Sinclair | Also still unmarried, and defiant about it: “I shall fight to my last dying breath.” He is the first person in the series to suggest the tontine may have brought a curse on all of them. He falls in Secrets of a Proper Lady. |
And one who does not exist
The secret lover. He is in the title and he never appears, because Amelia made him up. The anonymous flowers were ordered by her, from Harry, under duress. The rival she is fighting is one she built herself, because the thing she was actually up against had no shape to fight.
Read directly from the novella, Kindle edition, and described in our own words. · Book hub · Plot · Arcs