Venetia, by Georgette Heyer

‘One of the best of Miss Heyer’s sprightly romances’, says the blurb on the front cover of the dubiously pink 60s paperback edition that arrived on Friday. And it’s dead right.

The eponymous Venetia Lanyon is a 25-year-old beauty, who has spent her life immured in the wilds of Yorkshire. Her father has died, leaving her the mistress of ‘an easy competence’, and she lives with her intellectually precocious but utterly selfish younger brother, Aubrey, awaiting the return of their older brother who is stationed in France. She has two pretenders to her hand: the prosy, worthy and patronising Edward, who determinedly overlooks Venetia’s levity because he believes she has true delicacy of spirit beneath it; and Oswald, a 19-year-old Byron fan, who aims for the picturesque in his attire, and who even his father describes as ‘the silliest puppy in the county’.

Into this pleasant but dull and somewhat lonely existence walks Lord Damerel, owner of a nearby property and known to Venetia and Aubrey as ‘The Wicked Baron’. His exploits have been food for gossip and rumour since Venetia was a girl, and as recently as the previous year he scandalised the county by filling his house with fellow rakes and their Paphians. Shocking!

On first seeing Venetia, Damerel decides that her loveliness is well worth pursuing. Events soon push them into regular meetings, however, and the two become fast friends and then, of course, fall in love. So far, so straightforward romance. Unfortunately, since Damerel is 38 and a confirmed rake, gamester and hell-raiser, and Venetia is a country-bred innocent, her well-wishers all determine to separate the couple, believing that Venetia is too green to know what marriage to such a man would mean. You will not be surprised to learn that it all turns out well in the end; but it’s because Venetia takes her fate into her own hands.

Despite being beset by friends and relatives who all think they know what is best for her, Venetia plots her own course. Her friend Lady Denny, her aunt Hendred and particularly Edward all try to fit her into the appropriate role for a well-bred young woman, and she repeatedly confounds them by refusing to play along. It’s not that she is outrageous, but she refuses to think as she is told she ought and she turns her back on the path of society beauty who marries into respectable wealth that has been outlined for her.

Venetia is not blind to Damerel’s past, but she doesn’t care about it, nor does she judge him for it. When she discovers that her uncle in fact persuaded Damerel that Venetia was too good for him, she first plans her own social disgrace, and then coolly throws herself at his head. She is certainly in love, but her judgment is not clouded by love. She knows that when they are first separated Damerel does love her but is very much aware that he’s unlikely to be lonely for long:

…not for him the life of a celibate mourning his lost bride: he was very much more likely to seek forgetfulness in excess, and would probably be next heard of flaunting some dazzling lightskirt all over Europe…

And indeed, when she does arrive unexpectedly to see him, she finds him drunk, much to her amusement. A potentially cloying scene is therefore undercut by humour, and again the fact that Venetia is not in the least discomposed proves that she has no false expectations of Damerel. Where others see only his tarnished reputation, Venetia sees also his kindness, his humour and his consideration for others and these qualities outweigh his vices. She will go into marriage with him with her eyes wide open, not expecting him to change, and at core I think that is what I like about the book. Underneath that Regency frippery is solid common sense.