Fleur feels very badly about the way her first marriage turned out and blames herself for Frederick’s death, but the damage she does in her new marriage she does out of fear and a sense of self-preservation.įleur’s refusal to confide her problems and past to Anthony make her a frequently aggravating heroine. What’s different here is that, as characters, Fleur and Anthony are more psychologically complex and self-aware than many of Balogh’s. Also, like many Balogh couples, Fleur and Anthony have to be forced to the pinnacle of misery before they will communicate at all freely with each other about their feelings. The power situation between Anthony and Fleur – with him having all of it and her none of it – is very similar to several Balogh books I’ve read. In some ways Grahame’s novel reads rather like a Mary Balogh romance. That is when the blackmailer strikes, and Fleur is forced to make a practical marriage and pretend it’s love.
Their stations in life are too disparate, and her feelings for him are too fledgling to be love. But she never expects that Anthony will propose. After her husband’s death, he is quick to make her acquaintance, and they begin a friendship that is healing for Fleur. Her beauty, radiance, happiness, and affectionate nature beckoned to him then. That is when Sir Anthony Camwell offers her marriage.Īnthony has been in love with Fleur since the first time he saw her – the night before her life went to pieces. She fears very much that she will be forced to become the wanton she is portrayed in the paintings in order to never be publicly called one. She has little money, and that won’t last long. Fleur is only just beginning to recover from the sad events of her life when the paintings’ owner comes forth and begins to blackmail her.
The subject matter is quite sexual, and if the paintings were discovered, Fleur’s reputation would be completely sullied. But one evening everything goes wrong, and the two of them begin a downward spiral that will end in poverty, substance abuse, despair, and death.īefore Frederick died he sold several paintings of Fleur that were never meant for outside display. At one point their life together was picture book perfect, and they were considered the happiest couple in Paris. Her husband, Frederick Brooks, was a painter of some renown.
0 kommentar(er)
