Regency Buck -- Georgette Heyer

Rather than obey their guardian's command to stay in Yorkshire, Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Sir Peregrine travel to London with the intention of setting up house.  After all, they've never met this guardian -- their father appointed him in his will without discussing it with them.  For that matter, he appointed Lord Worth their guardian without even discussing it with Lord Worth himself!  (Sir John Taverner was a tad difficult.)

On their way there, they have multiple run-ins with a very rude man.  Once together, and then each of them separately.  The following conversation occurs just after the rude man discovers Judith on the side of the road with her shoe off (she was, of course, trying to dislodge a pebble):

She looked him full in the eyes.  "If my brother had been with me you would not have accosted me in this fashion," she said.

"Certainly not," he agreed, quite imperturbably.  "He would have been very much in the way.  What is your name?"

"Again, sir, that is no concern of yours."

"A mystery," he said.  "I shall have to call you Clorinda.  May I put on your shoe for you?"

She gave a start; her cheeks flamed.  "No!" she said chokingly.  "You may do nothing for me except drive on!"

"Why, that is easily done!" he replied, and bent, and before she had time to realize his purpose, lifted her up in his arms, and walked off with her to his curricle.

Miss Taverner ought to have screamed, or fainted*.  She was too much surprised to do either**; but as soon as she had recovered from her astonishment at being picked up in that easy way (as though she had been a featherweight, which she knew she was not) she dealt her captor one resounding slap, with the full force of her arm behind it.

He winced a little, but his arms did not slacken their hold; rather they tightened slightly.  "Never hit with an open palm, Clorinda," he told her.  "I will show you how in a minute.  Up with you!"

Just after that, he does something EVEN MORE SHOCKING, so shocking that it made me GASP OUT LOUD. 

OF COURSE, the rude man and Lord Worth are one and the same.  So Peregrine and Judith find themselves both suffering under his rule.  Worth dismisses Judith's suitors without consulting her and refuses to raise Peregrine's allowance.  They are lucky to have the friendship and support of their amiable cousin, Bernard Taverner.  Or are they... ?

The pluses:  a poisoning plot; a couple of kidnappings; Lord Worth's hilariously misogynist young servant Henry; Beau Brummell, who is the personification of awesome; many, many descriptions of the clothing of the young Regency Buck(s), most of which were so outrageous that they had me snickering; and then there is Mrs. Scattergood, who should be heard rather than described:

"Lord, my dear!" said Mrs. Scattergood, in some dismay.  "Never say you are bookish!  Poems!  Oh well, there may be no harm in that, one must be able to talk of the latest poems if they happen to become the rage.  Marmion!  I liked that excessively, I remember, though it was too long for me to finish.  They say this young man who had been doing such odd things abroad is becoming the fashion, but I don't know.  He was excessively rude to poor Lord Carlisle in that horrid poem of his.  I cannot like him for it, besides that someone or other was telling me there is bad blood in all the Byrons.  But, of course, if he is to be the fashion one must keep an eye on him.  Let me warn you, my love, never be behind the times!"

The minuses:  Okay, so a lot of people might find Lord Worth offensive.  He bosses Judith and Peregrine abominably, he's high-handed, doesn't explain his reasons for his actions and doesn't give them the information that they'd need to make major decisions even if he'd allow them to make the decisions in the first place which he won't so I guess it's all moot anyway but still.  Huh.  Sounds a tad like Edward Cullen. 

Anyway, he didn't particularly bother me at all, because as with many of the Heyer books, it's pretty clear how things are going to go from the beginning and I knew that Lord Worth must have good reasons for doing what he did even if he was an ass about it.  Also, I loved him in An Infamous Army, so I couldn't really work up a good head of feminist steamy outrage. 

No, the minus for me was that there was so little interaction between Judith and Lord Worth that I never felt any swoon.  I never believed in the romance, and that's a bad thing in a romance novel.  But I loved Beau Brummell so much that the book wasn't a dud.  And the bad guy was so ridiculously bad by the end that it was fun.  And I did love Henry.

So, not my favorite, but I still enjoyed myself.

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*Because that would have accomplished... what?

**I love that fainting is apparently something that ladies actively choose to do in these books.

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Previously:

The Alastair Trilogy
1.  These Old Shades
2.  The Devil's Cub
3.  An Infamous Army -- The characters in Regency Buck are major players in this one, but Regency Buck comes first.  I read them out of order, sadly.

Comments

[Electric Landlady]

Germaine Greer tore Regency Buck to tiny, tiny shreds in The Female Eunuch as epitomizing all that was bad about women's reading matter. (Goodness knows why it was chosen to be the exemplar of its kind; there must have been loads of worse romances out there.) I was never able to feel the same about it afterward, I'm afraid. But maybe I'll give it another go -- I'd forgotten about Beau Brummell.

Stay warm!

[Nic Dempsey]

I'm glad you liked the Beau...what's next?

[Roger Sutton]

I'm thinking it would be difficult to read a book with that title on the subway.

[Leila]

Oh, there's a duel, too! I forgot about that. And cockfighting!

EL: Yeah. Like I said, I could see the problems... they just didn't offend me. I'll have to hunt down a copy of the Greer to read that bit. It does seem odd that she'd choose this one. I know I've read worse, and I don't read a whole lot of the genre.

Nic: The Black Moth. Then The Spanish Bride. I think.

Roger: Every single time I picked this book up, I looked at the title and giggled. As did the co-worker who ILLed it for me.

[Kyra]

Ah-hah! I've been looking forward to seeing what you had to say about Regency Buck; I think it was the double-whammie of high-handedness *and* the lack of spark that meant I didn't like it. But it has been a long time since I've read it so maybe I have mellowed over the years.

Also I'm not convinced there are *ever* good reasons for behaving like an ass :)

I'm glad you enjoyed it though - are you going to tackle another?

[Leila]

Well, and I think I forgave him quite a lot of the assishness because he's so great in An Infamous Army. Still high-handed, but more human. And I didn't love it. But I still had fun with it. And I did love all of the stuff about cravats.

I forgot to mention, too, that the behavioral similarities of Judith and Barbara (from AIA) were fun to spot. No wonder they ended up getting along.

[Jen]

The Duke of Andover is basically Justin Alistair but without the redeeming qualities. I think you'll find some similarities to other characters in These Old Shades as well.

Spanish Bride is a bit dry but I was young when I read it, so you might like it better than I did.

I'd strongly encourage you to try Friday's Child or Cotillion, both of which are delightfully fluffy.

[Jenny]

Hilarious - Worth is exactly like Edward!!!
I've read this book many times and it was great to see it through your eyes. Spot on.

[Kyra]

The Black Moth is a very early work and thus a bit less ... I hesitate to use the word "good" ... then the others, in my opinion. And, like Jen above, I personally found The Spanish Bride a bit dry: too much history, not enough romance. But then I was reading these at about the age of 14 and actually my older self really likes the ones I didn't quite "get" during my teenage years.

A Civil Contract is quite melancholic but genuinely interesting... it appeals to a slightly matured sense of what love is but doesn't exactly induce giddy butterflies the way Friday's Child or Cotillion still do :) Cotillion is well worth it for Freddie - he's a very successful, rare sort of hero.

[Leila]

The Black Moth is her very first, I think. And someone here told me that These Old Shades is basically a re-write of it -- I wanted to read it while TOS was still fresh, and I figure that I'm going to read them all eventually anyway...

[Alena]

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Alena

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