What a lovely book this is, and now I know why Georgette Heyer has such a huge and loyal following! This was new ground for me, and a quite delightful discovery: so fresh, so logical, so neat and tidy.
The hero of A Civil Contract is the genuinely charming Adam Deveril, home from the Peninsular War due to the death of his profligate father, forced to 'sell out' his commission and try to salvage what remains of the Lynton estates while providing for his mother and sisters. Enter Jonathan Chawleigh, a plum character, bluff and blustering self-made man of business, a rich widower with his eye on a step up in society for his only daughter, Jenny.
A marriage to be arranged, then, and one of convenience: Jenny comes with a vast and apparently limitless 'dowry', Adam is an aristocrat of the highest order. But there's also Julia, Adam's sweetheart, a young woman of beauty and spirit, and the two have, have they not, an 'understanding'. What's to be done?
What is done is played out over 375 beautifully-judged pages in which period detail abounds - but never intrusively - characters develop and sometimes surprise, and the story moves on fluently and at a smartish pace to an ending which will satisfy and please. What more can you ask of a novel?
I know that along with Heyer 'virgins' like me, there are staunch fans and afficionados reading this book, so what did you all think?
