Immodest Proposal [Paperback]

Monroyal entices a young, penniless soldier, younger son of an earl, into playing cards with him, and soon Captain Brain Sheffield is in debt to Monroyal to the tune of fifteen thousand pounds. Not a problem, Sheffield is told by Cynthia's father; there is a way in which you can pay your debt. Cynthia offers to give Sheffield the fifteen thousand if he will give serious consideration to marrying her.

And so, after much contemplation and changes of mind on Sheffield's part, he accepts the money, yet even then he cannot make up his mind whether to marry Cynthia or not. It doesn't help that he then discovers Monroyal is Cynthia's cousin, which makes him believe that he was set up - which he was, though by Monroyal and not Cynthia. And this is one aspect of the book which is quite distasteful: Monroyal, exceedingly rich in his own right, takes a very large sum of money from his cousin. She never finds out that the gambling debt was to him, which leaves him in the position of having deceived her quite badly. And second, Monroyal actually chose Sheffield to be Cynthia's suitor: why then does he bait the man every time they meet and act as if he despises him?

Though I cannot blame Monroyal for despising Sheffield. This reader does, too. The man is weak, vacillating, stupid and mistrusting. At every opportunity, he will choose to believe other people rather than his own wife - and when he believes that the baby she carries is her cousin's and not his own that is, to me, the last straw. Add to that Cynthia then finding him in the middle of an orgy, with a half-naked woman on his lap (and the reader also knows that he has slept with a prostitute the night before) and I cannot see why or how she could ever forgive him. The man is a waste of space.

I couldn't at all see why Cynthia didn't simply marry Monroyal. Their relationship is extremely close, much more so than friends, and yet it's not a relationship of siblings either. He flirts with her; he is physically affectionate towards her and she to him; he makes it clear that he finds her attractive (and even offers to become her lover), he kisses her and, while she's shocked, she doesn't find it distasteful. Even after her marriage, Monroyal is the man she confides in, looks for at every family gathering, writes to regularly and so on, even though she claims to herself that she loves her husband.

In addition, all the chemistry in the book is between Cynthia and Monroyal, not Cynthia and Sheffield. In any scene both men are in, it is Monroyal, not Sheffield, who attracts attention and interests the reader. He is the one we are told is devastatingly attractive, charming, very protective of Cynthia and so on. Had I not already read Monroyal's own book, written after this one, I would have been expecting Sheffield to die in some way and that the book would end with the two cousins together. As it happens, Oliver has to have her characters make some very unconvincing moves to bring about a resolution - in particular Monroyal, whom I cannot believe would have persuaded Cynthia to accept Sheffield's apology.

Like Oliver's later work, this book was a mistake. Two stars only, and both of those are for Monroyal!

wmr-uk

Breakdown = romance 3.5(B-); plot 3.7 (B); characterization 4.2 (B+); writing 4.4 (B+)

Recommended - with some reservations.
Comments - avoid if you cannot stand an immature hero who commits adultery casually

See my review of An Inconvenient Wife or my list "Patricia Oliver's Seven Corinthian series" for the other books in this series
[Written September 9, 2002]