A Conformable Wife by Alice Chetwynd Ley

Somehow or other I missed Alice Chetwynd Ley's books when I was younger, and A Conformable Wife is the first of hers I've read. It will not, however, be the last, for I found it charming.

It is very much in the style of one of my favourite authors, Georgette Heyer, including the familiar formula of eligible young woman meets eligible bachelor, sparks fly, there are obstacles to overcome before they, and we, reach the inevitable happy ending, and so on. Like Heyer, I'm sure that Alice Chetwynd Ley's books will explore the many possibilities offered by this pattern in very entertaining fashion, and amongst her books I will expect to find mistaken identities, dastardly villains, abductions (usually foiled), misunderstandings between lovers, young men going to the bad through gambling... all the vicissitudes which Georgian society can throw up, and all leavened with humour and warmth.

The attraction of the Georgian period is, I guess, that some women were beginning to have a small degree of autonomy, particularly if they were widowed, when they might respectably manage their own incomes unless very young. It was also a time when women were beginning to write for publication, so we have, in their own words, the start of a recognisably modern, female sensibility. The rising middle class was a factor too, as more and more people became wealthy and respectable while not necessarily belonging to the aristocracy - though it obviously helped if you could marry a duke's daughter or a younger son, the latter almost invariably in need of an urgent injection of merchant-class money.

In A Conformable Wife, the Hon. Julian Aldwyn has decided that it's time he was married, and seeks a suitable wife, one able to manage a large household, and of respectable origins, obviously. His sister suggests her girlhood friend Henrietta Melville, who has kept house for her family until his death; despite being wealthy in her own right she now lives in her family home as a dependent relative of her brother and his resentful wife - it's not easy when the servants all defer to the former, instead of the present, mistress. Aldwyn, who in modern terms is positively phobic in his avoidance of love, having been once-bitten, proposes a marriage of convenience, since this will provide the rather dowdy Henrietta with her own establishment, and besides, they seem to get along quite well together. Henrietta retorts, in essence, that she's never had any fun in her life and doesn't see why she shouldn't have some now, and anyway, she'll marry - if ever, which at twenty-six, she doubts - for love, thank you.

Thus the stage is set for all the required elements, and the action moves to Bath, which is rather livelier than the family home. Henrietta embarks on a makeover, so that Julian fails to recognise her when he eventually turns up, and he's duly horrified by the number of conquests she has made. Need I say more?

Chetwynd Ley, like Heyer, is careful about her period detail, although - here, at least - she doesn't wield cant with such bravura. Perhaps she prefers not to compete? At any rate, readers shouldn't find themselves jolted out of the Regency by the annoying anachronisms which are all-too-common nowadays. Bath is well-portrayed and researched, but not in distracting detail - the author feels no need to show off her scholarship. Altogether, A Conformable Wife turned out to be an excellent place to begin my acquaintance with this author, and I look forward to many more of her books. My thanks to Sapere Books and NetGalley for my review copy.