Lord Dragoners Wife [Paperback]

And what if he turns up after six years, still handsome, still unattainable, and informs you that he wants a divorce and nothing further to do with you? Well, if you're in love with him, as Delilah always has been, you first of all show him the impossibility of a divorce under English law (and well done, Kerstan, for getting that right! I'm fed up with writers in this period who assume that it's easy!), and then you try to show him that despite the past he'd be welcome in your life.

Finding himself almost killed with kindness on his attempt to rid his wife of himself, Dragoner flees back to France, where his reputation has sunk so low that it cannot be retrieved, it seems. After all, he got captured during the war and, apparently, switched sides and has been working with the French. And this is one of several reasons why he thinks that Delilah would be better off without him. He's got the reputation of being a traitor, and once that news filters back to England no-one will want to be associated with anyone connected to him.

Of course, he isn't a traitor, as we find out very early in the book, but he's not in a position to tell anyone the truth. But Dragoner has other reasons for believing himself unworthy of Delilah, as he keeps telling her he is. His family background and his actions during the war (unfaithful to her many times) are also part of it. So he keeps her at a distance, especially when she follows him to France and tries to become the kind of woman she thinks he might want. He fends her off with sarcasm and Shakespearean quotations, and when that doesn't work, he tells her bluntly that he is a traitor.

How Delilah and Dragoner move from this state of estrangement to repair their marriage is told amidst a background of the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, danger and espionage. It's very well done; Kerstan's careful research is evident. What stops this book getting five stars from me, though, is that I'd have liked a little more 'tell' as well as 'show'. While it became clear by his reactions to her that Dragoner was beginning to fall in love with his wife, I would have liked to see more of his thought processes, especially in the second half of the book.

But I certainly enjoyed Lord Dragoner's Wife enough to take a look at other titles by Kerstan.

I must concede that the characters were dynamic and very well depicted. I found this more so for Delilah than Dragoner. In fact, the opening impression of him is that he is a real sleazeball, and that image is hard to shake throughout the book, no matter what he does. If he really is merely misunderstood, why does his jerkish behavior come off so convincing to everyone?

I thought that the plot was very slow and plodding. The main characters dwell for interminable amounts of time on the mess they have made of their marriage. When the action picks up 2/3rds through the book, it seems unreal. I won't give the ending away because that would ruin it for you, but I read the whole end with complete disbelief at the sheer implausibility. At least the beginning, though slow, is realistic and often insightful.

Overall, this book has great characterizations, but a slow, plodding plot and, in the end, an unrealistice ending.