Author: Mary Balogh
Publication Date: 1985
Setting: Regency England
If I had to name my favorite romance author, it would be Mary Balogh. She may not be the writer who has pleased me the most consistently--I've read four books by her that I thought were downright bad, plus a few more mediocre ones--but she is the writer that I'll always come back to, because most of the time, she's amazing.
In this blog, I'm going to write reviews of all the Balogh novels I've read. When I run out, I'll move on to another author, but that won't be for a while.
And now for A Chance Encounter, one of Balogh's first novels. Be wary that I discuss the entire plot, which, in this case, includes a legitimately exciting plot twist. Only read this post if you have already read this book, never want to read this book, or don't mind knowing the plots of books before you read them.
What Happens?
Like Pride and
Prejudice, A Chance Encounter opens
with rumors of a handsome, wealthy gentleman arriving in a quiet country town.
Flighty young Cecily Rowe and her devoted mama are all a-flutter about William
Mainwaring and his glittering crowd of aristocratic friends, but her
philosophical father and reserved governess-turned-companion, Elizabeth
Rossiter, react more stoically to the news. Still, Cecily’s father insists that
Cecily and the gray-clad Elizabeth have pretty new dresses to mark the
occasion.
After some protest, Elizabeth chooses a (relatively) festive
blue pattern. She’s an attractive but subdued gal with a quiet sense of humor
and, the narration heavily implies, a Dark Past. Unfortunately for her, this
Dark Past happens to be William Mainwaring’s snooty dude-bro, the Marquess of
Hetherington, who is also visiting the neighborhood. Back when she was a poor
lass with an unfashionable enthusiasm for her first Season, Hetherington was
just Robert Denning, a young aristocrat financially dependent on his Shady
Titled Uncle. They fell deeply in love and (I imagine) made out behind large
potted plants in ballrooms, but their passion ended in disaster. What kind of
disaster, you ask? You’ll have to wait several more flashbacks to find out.
Hetherington is a dick to Elizabeth throughout the visit,
flirting outrageously with the naïve Cecily and an aristocratic woman (who says
almost everything “shrilly,” by the way) just to provoke her. Through gritted
teeth, he makes icy comments about her stubborn, mercenary nature and
eventually threatens to sabotage Elizabeth’s relationship with William Mainwaring,
who has developed a tendre for her. Understandably, Elizabeth isn’t very
well-disposed towards Hetherington, either. Their animosity grows until the
whole thing devolves into Punishing Kisses on a deserted hillside. You know, as
these things tend to do.
Yet not everything is as it seems. After Elizabeth gets an
urgent letter about her little nephew’s potentially fatal illness, Hetherington
offers to take her to her brother’s house in his carriage. When Elizabeth’s
employers and neighbors object to the impropriety of this scheme, Hetherington
tells them that it’s not improper at all, because…DUN DUN DUN…Elizabeth is his wife! And he’s not
lying or anything! She’s literally the Marchioness of Hetherington and nobody
knew it!
In fact, Elizabeth didn’t really know it, either. She’s been
under the impression that he divorced her shortly after their elopement years
ago, shattering her heart into a million bits. She’s very confused, but she
also wants to see her dangerously ill nephew, so she just goes with it. Later,
though, after her nephew has recovered and she’s had time to think, she wonders
if it might be possible to give her marriage another go, given that
Hetherington was so kind and she might, you know, still actually be married.
She writes Hetherington some cautious letters of inquiry;
however, they go unanswered. Taking another job as a governess, she resolves to
lock up her heart and throw away the key, but then Hetherington shows up and is
like, “Just wait five fucking seconds, Miss Havisham! I didn’t get your letters
because I was busy investigating the true cause of our tragic separation. Let’s
live together as husband and wife, for real this time!”
(It turns out that his Shady Titled Uncle deceived him into
thinking Elizabeth had run off and then paid her Mercenary Father to trick her
into thinking they were divorced, in case you were wondering. And it only took
the two lovers six years to figure it out, even though divorce during the
Regency was always a scandalous and very public affair. What a couple of
menschen!)
“No, I can never believe in love again!” Elizabeth protests,
because of…well, reasons, I guess.
Exhausted by the machinations of the plot, Hetherington simply
tricks her into going on a second honeymoon with him, banishing her doubts
about love forever. They both live happily ever after, or at least until he
goes out for a beer and she assumes that he’s turning into a werewolf,
condemning their love to the shadows because Regency England isn’t yet ready
for werewolf/human marriages. Puritans.
Is It Any Good?
A Chance Encounter is
an interesting book, in that it manages to be clever and stupid all at once. The
parallels with Pride and Prejudice
and Persuasion, another Austen novel
about reunited lovers, aren’t derivative so much as they are fun. Balogh only
uses little details from the two books—the heroine’s name, the dynamics of the
Rowe family, and the two incidental rivals, to name a few—and the end result is
a charming Austen pastiche. The ending, although potentially problematic,
functions well as a reference to an earlier Regency romance, Georgette Heyer’s Black Sheep. The twist that comes in the
middle of the story is genuinely surprising and imbues previous events with new
implications. For example, Elizabeth isn’t just jealous of Cecily when Hetherington
flirts with her; she also wants to protect her sixteen-year-old charge from a
man she believes to be a proven deserter. Innovative touches like these, as
well as the genuinely sweet relationship between Elizabeth and her brother,
make it easy to believe that Balogh wrote amazing books like The Secret Pearl just five years later.
The plot, however, is held together by rampant stupidity or,
alternatively, laziness on the part of the characters. Hetherington and
Elizabeth were deeply in love, newly eloped, and having awesome, discreetly-depicted
sex, but they apparently never thought to look each other up after their
relatives told them, “Nope, she/he suddenly wants nothing to do with you ever
again.” Wouldn’t they at least want to yell at each other? Furthermore, why
does Elizabeth persist in believing they’re divorced when she has so little
proof? It’s understandable that the devastated, innocent eighteen-year-old
Elizabeth was too confused to figure it
out, but didn’t she ever wonder, in the six years that followed, why Parliament
never got involved at all?
Come to think of it, Hetherington’s uncle’s dastardly scheme
doesn’t make much sense, either. I can see why he’d want his nephew to marry a
richer girl, but a poor, genteel young wife is hardly worse than essentially no wife, which is what Hetherington
gets. He’s still married to Elizabeth, so he can’t marry somebody else and
beget an heir to the title. There’s no motive for the uncle to pay Elizabeth’s
family to keep her away, unless he wants his nephew to be unhappy—or is
incestuously fixated on him, I suppose—but he’s not portrayed as spiteful or
creepy; he’s just a status- and money-obsessed aristocrat.
Despite these contrivances, A Chance Encounter is generally an enjoyable book. I might not recommend
it to the general romance fan, but if you’re a traditional Regency aficionado, a
Balogh completist, or an appreciator of ludicrously contrived plots, I think
you’ll have quite a good time.
Next Time: A Promise of Spring
