I do like Georgette Heyer regency romance novels and when a friend told me A Civil Contract was her favourite – well I had to read it. I found it really hard to find a copy, in the end I found an eBook at Booktopia and I read it on my Ipad.
Here’s the blurb …
Adam Deveril is one of the Duke of Wellington’s captains, and a hero at Salamanca. When his father, a crony of Prince Regent, is killed in the hunting field, Adam becomes the 6th Viscount Lynton of Fontley Priory, Lincolnshire. But he returns from the Peninsular War to find his magnificent home in disrepair and his family on the brink of ruin, with the broad acres of his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. He is madly in love with the beautiful Julia Oversley but soon realises that the drastic measure of a marriage of convenience is the only answer. Enter Mr Jonathan Chawleigh, a City man of apparently unlimited wealth with no social ambitions for himself, but with his eyes firmly fixed on a suitable match for his one and only daughter, the quiet and decidedly plain Jenny Chawleigh. A marriage is arranged.
Adam chafes under Mr. Chawleigh’s generosity, and Julia’s jealous behavior upon hearing of the betrothal nearly brings them all into a scandal. But Adam didn’t reckon with the Jenny nobody knew, or the unknown quality that lay hidden behind her demure and plain facade, who bring him comfort and eventually more…
I do like a romance novel where the heroine is plain and unassuming. This is classic Heyer; well-researched, lots of cant terms. I was a little bit disappointed in the ending when Jenny realises that she is not going to inspire in Adam the same passion he felt for Julia.
Here are Jennifer Kloester’s thoughts on it (she wrote Georgette Heyer’s Regency World)