Etiquette with the Devil by Rebecca Paula

I found Jenny’s obsessive love for the boorish Rob off-putting, but they seemed to have had a long, contented marriage. It’s filled with period detail, richly drawn characters, and the battle between the Catholics and Protestants. Only her father’s recapture in England will bring her back to try and save him.įirst published in 1962, this novel is based on fact and true historical figures. She implores her father to allow her to travel to Virginia with Evelyn, secretly intending to search for this young man. But Jenny dislikes her new step-mother and pines for Rob. The duke orders Rob to be transported as a convict to Virginia.Ĭharles takes Jenny to France to protect her. Jenny’s beauty attracts a lecherous duke who kidnaps her, but Rob saves her. Charles, under sentence of death, sneaks back into England to see Jenny. She is shocked to have a traitor for a father, but his charm wins her over.

At school she is befriended by Evelyn the daughter of a colonial Virginia plantation owner. She does remember the North Country boy who brought her to London, Rob. Jenny grows to be a beautiful teenager and remembers little of her father. The earl is executed but Charles escapes to France after begging that his cousin raise Jenny and make a lady of her. You have Rebecca Paula’s Etiquette with the Devil. However, I’ve met some of my favorite heroines in this sub-genre. Some have dismissed these romances as being frivolous, their heroines as passive.

The rebellion fails and the brothers are imprisoned. The classic example is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Charles and his brother join the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 to put the pretender, James Stuart, on the English throne. Ashamed of the marriage, after his daughter Jenny is born Charles is captivated by her. Through a youthful misalliance, Charles Radcliffe, brother to the Earl of Derwentwater, is forced to marry a pregnant Northumbrian lass.

Etiquette with the Devil by Rebecca Paula