Judith’s review of Lord Dragoner’s Wife by Lynn Kerstan

Love cannot be bought or bartered, and a marriage may be built on the finest of threads. 

Delilah, the smart and likable daughter of an ambitious merchant, fell in love with Charles Everett from afar. While she married for love, Charles only married her to salvage his aristocratic family’s disreputable accounts. Believing she had no more interest in a real marriage than he did, he abandoned her after their wedding night to seek honor in the war against Napoleon. 

Now, six years later, he returns, vested as Lord Dragoner but embroiled in secrets and controversy, to insist she free herself by divorce. Delilah has never stopped hoping he would one day return to her, the beautiful man with pain blazing in his eyes. She longs for them to build a happy family, like the one she grew up with, and she’ll do whatever it takes to win him over. 

English divorce laws require the wife be discovered in an act of adultery, and Charles decides he cannot subject her to such an ordeal. He leaves on a mission that may take his life. Following him to France, Delilah is caught up in the dangerous life he leads. Dragoner, surprised to find himself working with a partner equally intrepid and wily, begins to see her in a whole new light. But if they are to create a future together, they must escape intact from officials and criminals determined to chase them down.   She will risk her own life to prove he is far more heroic than his bittersweet mysteries might reveal and that they do have a marriage of the heart.

It is a well-known fact that a large number of aristocratic marriages in the 19th century were based on financial needs rather than on any kind of affectionate regard.  But I have to admit that in the case of this novel it was a painful process to watch–a woman who truly came to love the man she would marry only to have him leave her days after their wedding and absented himself from home and hearth for six long years.  Now Delilah is Lady Dragoner and her husband has returned.  She is aghast to learn that he wants out of the marriage but is calmed somewhat to realize that he is, after all, a man of some sensibility and will not subject her to the misery of a public divorce based on charges of adultery.

This is a novel filled with tension–that of an unwilling husband for a willing wife, a time of war, of financial constraints and uneasy liasons built on the difficulties Europe faced because of Napoleon’s power ambitions.  And yet, underneath it all is the determination of a woman whose enormous intelligence has worked in her husband’s favor and on his financial behalf, whose understanding of the real world is far grander than Delilah’s husband had ever considered, and whose heart is committed to a man who still doesn’t want her.  Yet she wants him, and this complex novel is filled with the brilliant undertaking of a wife who is now wooing her husband with new wealth and some of the oldest strategies since the Garden of Eden.  Those of us who know the extent to which any woman will go to keep the man she loves can fully appreciate the depth of feeling that drove Lady Dragoner to think and plan and carry out strategies that will ultimately flummox Lord Dragoner.  Perhaps in a word or two:  he simply didn’t know what he had in Delilah.  She managed to outwit him every time.

This book was incredibly enjoyable for me.  I really like stories that present the characters with a complex problem and which allow readers to observe how they manage to resolve some fairly narly life and relationship issues.  So it is here and thus this was a tremendous read for me.  I like Kerstan’s writing anyway, having read and enjoyed a number of her books.  I hope that all who really appreciate well-written historical romance will take the time to read and enjoy this fascinating book.  Be aware:  this is a really strong heroine!  She would have been what the British call a “ripper” in our contemporary time.  The fact that she pulled all this off in the 19th century tells us that she really knew how to “work the system.  I think you’ll really like this book.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5

(Originally released October 2, 1999)

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This title is available from Bell Bridge Books.  You can buy it here or here in e-format.