Temporary Wife [Paperback]

Charity Duncan seems to meet Anthony's requirements. Little does he know that her submissive manner is assumed, due to her having lost previous employment because she stood up for the rights of a chambermaid. Dressed in dull brown, she stares at the floor and seems so perfect for Anthony's purpose that he proposes to her.

Charity accepts, because her family is very poor and her brother is struggling to pay off debts so that he can marry his sweetheart. After all, the marquess promises that she will only have to play the part of his wife for a matter of weeks. Then he will give her a home and a pension - six thousand pounds a year! - and she can have her freedom, except for the wedding ring. Anthony himself, he declares, never wants to marry for real, never wants to have children of his own.

So they marry, and Charity accompanies Anthony to Enfield, the Duke of Withingsby's home. There, she finds an apparently cold, unloving family, and realises that her husband wasn't joking when he said he wanted to spite the father he loathed. However, Anthony has seriously underestimated Charity...

Gradually, she breaks down the ice which surrounds her husband's heart and, bit by bit, she becomes his confidant. She, on the other hand, learns that passion doesn't have to have anything to do with love.

While she seems to be making progress in helping Anthony to reconcile with his family, isn't she only hastening the time when he'll inform her that he doesn't need her any more, and thus of her own departure? After all, he did marry a temporary wife...

In Balogh's inimitable style, she gives us a poignant story which examines relationships in all their manifestations, and shows us that love and hate are often closer than we think. And typically in a Balogh novel, the apparent villain is not so evil as he might have initially appeared. This is a wonderful romantic tearjerker, well worth the secondhand price you might have to pay!

Anthony, the heir to a dukedom, marries an impoverished mouse of a gentlewoman below his station. He acquires this "temporary wife" in order to "stick it" to his estranged father (the duke) after he has been summoned home.

His bride, Charity Duncan, seems like the perfect little "mouse" to enrage his father. His plan is to marry her, use her for a few weeks to assert his independence from his father, then separate from her permanently.

Charity agrees to this because her family is in debt and, as the eldest sibling, feels this marriage is the only way to save her family from poverty and hardship. You see, Anthony will make her a wealthy woman for life if she marries him and lets him use her as a pawn for only a few weeks.

Things do not go as planned for either of them. Charity's warm presence in her new husband's stuffy, loveless family causes heartache, enlightenment, healing, love, grief, etc. Anthony learns very quickly that Charity is NOT a mouse. Charity learns quickly that there is more to Anthony than the cold, calculating, rigid man he seems.

The relationship between Anthony and Charity is a unique one and develops with care. This is NOT a case of "First comes love, then comes marriage". The sequence of events in their relationship is unconventional and they all unfold in a very satisfying way.

Great book! Read it!