I totally saw this book in Target the other day. It was a little weird, since I always think of romance novels as things I hoard on my computer, because honestly, lowkey embarrassment aside, I could probably read a thousand of the same tropey stories and still be like, “MORE!” The idea of having physical copies never occurred to me because where the F would I put all of them? I will read ALL THE MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE BOOKS. ALL OF THEM!
Anyway: Helen Ravenel is shy and fragile and virginal, and Rhys Winterborne is driven and unemotional and totally a cold-hearted rake, except that title was already taken. You don’t even have to ask if they’re going to get married, and the vast majority of their development actually happened in the previous book. They’ve already gotten engaged and broken up before this book even starts (and then engaged again in the first chapter), so the entire plot is more like, “What could possibly keep them from getting to the altar, and how will they stretch their misunderstanding out for 200 pages before getting there?” Yet somehow, it’s the the best book in the series so far. Lisa Kleypas is really good at the whole “fragile wallflower marries ice-cold asshole” thing, and the strength of the relationship carries a lot of the fairly low-plot book.
Let’s go forth!
So hey, before we start, let’s talk about this interview with Lisa Kleypas in Cosmo. More specifically, let’s talk about how she torpedoes my pet ship, West/Cassandra, with extreme prejudice:
A lot of people were suggesting that I put Cassandra together with West, and I was like, “Uh, it might feel kind of incestuous and I can’t see a lot of sparks between those two.”
WHY YOU GOTTA DO ME LIKE THIS, LISA 🙁
Also:
So I’m really thinking about putting Cassandra together with Severin, the railroad owner, who is sort of like [Benedict Cumberbatch’s] Sherlock. He’s almost like a high-functioning sociopath. There’s something so sexy about a guy who is that into his brain and that smart.
Is it 2012? If I go look at my Tumblr dashboard, will I see a bunch of Superwholockians going on about how Benedict Cumberbatch is hot? Jokes aside, I guess I’m okay with that, if only because it sounds like it’ll be similar to the “fragile wallflower and ice-cold asshole” dynamic that’s present in this book, which I am grudgingly a total sucker for. Sexy high-functioning sociopath, though? Let’s not do this.
There’s also this bit, which I don’t mean to mock necessarily because she mentions she has issues with it, but I just want to draw attention her saying this:
The point where the author lost me on that, and this is partly because of personal issues that I have, is when he tells her fairly early on in the book that she has to eat everything on her plate. The idea that someone wants to control you and dictate how much food you consume, that just set off all sorts of alarms and red flags for me, because that’s not a mutually respectful relationship.
Like, girl, I remember this part in Devil in Winter specifically because it horrified me:
My lady,
This tray will be returned for my inspection within the hour. If everything on it is not eaten, I will personally force-feed it to you.
Bon appetit,
S.To Sebastian’s satisfaction, Evie obeyed the edict.
It’s actually overall an interesting interview, and she mentions a couple of times that her views on consent, romance, and what’s attractive have changed since she was 21. That’s totally fair, and I think there’s a distinct tone shift in her books starting with the Wallflowers series (a lot of people like the Gamblers series, but they still strike me as out of step, stylistically, with the books she’s better known for). Still, I get the impression that the Wallflowers series isn’t considered part of her more questionable output, so that just…jumped out at me.
Anyway, before we start, let me pour one out for West/Cassandra. We could’ve had it all!
So, the actual book. My general impression of romance novel series is that it’s helpful to start from the beginning, but you could start in the middle and have the main love story make sense, as the beginning and end points of the romance are self-contained. Not so here! Rhys and Helen met in Cold-Hearted Rake: he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious? He was suffering from major bodily trauma after a train crash, she was all gentle and nurturing and shit and nursed him through his illness. What more can I say. Devon was like, “Hey, the estate needs money, Rhys has money,” and decided they should get married. Rhys and Helen had heaps of UST and so were amenable to the idea; they got engaged, then Rhys tried to go further than like, Christian side-hugging, which gave Helen the vapours or some shit. Kathleen was like, “Aw hell no,” and went to go kick Rhys’s ass, then he made some lewd remarks about her and Kathleen’s boyfriend Devon was all, “You’re not the hero of this book, step off my woman,” and now nobody is friends and nobody wants anyone to get married. See what I mean about not being able to start this series in the middle?
The very beginning of this book deals with the fallout from the breakup — Kathleen and Devon dumped Rhys on Helen’s behalf, so Helen’s come by to ask him to get back together. Helen is too shy to say it, but she wants Rhys’s body. Once she got over the horror of KISSING WITH TONGUES, she’s all ready to get engaged again. He’s passive-aggressive about how he knows he disgusts her because he’s Welsh and new money, but no! She’s just awkward, because she’s the most virginal of wallflowers and he’s all handsome and rich and obviously not a virgin, because this is a romance novel. Rhys is like, “She’s such a fragile flower! I must be gentle with her! If we had the kind of sex I usually have, I would RIP HER IN HALF!” I feel like I’ve been seeing this whole “hero legitimately thinks his dick is big enough to injure the heroine” thing crop up more often, and it’s pretty creepy. How much smaller is Helen supposed to be? Is she a Lilliputian?
So they make out, and agree to get re-engaged, hopefully with less miscommunication this time (spoiler: there’s just as much miscommunication). Helen’s like, “Well, since we’re being honest with each other now, this ring is actually hella ugly.” Rhys is like, “Omg…when you get married, you have to actually like, listen to your spouse instead of steamrolling over them. WHAT A CONCEPT.” He gets her a new ring and they’re all happy. Nothing’s in their way! Oh, except now Devon won’t want them to get married, because he’s mad at Rhys. Therefore, the only solution is for Rhys to ruin her. Yup, that is absolutely the only way they can get married. Elopement is out of the question, as is just like…talking it out. No, they have to have sex right now. Honestly, somewhere in the top five of my favorite erotica tropes is the flimsy excuses the characters come up with to have sex. Rhys throws Helen’s stockings into the fire because they’re all old and jank, and she lectures him on respecting her possessions. Progress! Anyway, they have sex — there’s a couple of weird remarks about how innocent and small Helen is, and naturally she’s never even masturbated in her entire life, but overall Rhys doesn’t do anything weird like ruminate on how hot she is when she doesn’t know what sex is, so I’m not too bothered. Helen is well and thoroughly ruined, and they’re going to get married! But not for another 200 pages still.
Rhys wants to get married right away so they can bang whenever he wants, but Helen insists that they wait until their original wedding date. Then she has to hustle back home before her family gets suspicious, where she’s greeted by Pandora and Cassandra. They notice she has a new engagement ring: “But the same fiancé,” Cassandra said with a questioning lilt. There’s this thing called a question mark, and when you end a sentence with it, it implies that someone is saying things with a questioning lilt. For future reference! Helen confirms that she’s engaged to Rhys again, and they made out, and it was awesome. Cassandra’s like, “I hope I get to mack it with someone someday,” while Pandora’s like, “Boys have cooties.” And yet, Pandora’s going to get married like three books ahead of Cassandra.
A few days later, Rhys meets up with Severin for business shenanigans or whatever the hell they do. Goddammit, now that I’ve read that interview, I can only picture Severin as this:
Isn’t Severin kind of old for Cassandra? West is about 5 years older than her; I think Severin’s at least 8 to 10, if not more. Anyway, Severin wants Rhys to buy some property, so they go to check it out. Severin makes a remark about the air quality, and Rhys is like, “Poor people have to breathe it all the time.” Severin’s all, “I’m too intellectual and cold-hearted to care about the poor!” That’s hot. Anyway, the property is all crumbling and falling down, and Rhys is moved to want to buy it and improve it for its tenants. Like, for example, the poor boy who’s sitting near the building when it starts to collapse. The pathos! Rhys jumps to save him, and part of the building crumbles on top of him.
He wakes up to see Dr. Gibson, protagonist of book #4, leaning over him. She starts dropping medical knowledge about his dislocated shoulder, while Severin’s like, “Giiiirls can’t be doctors!” Dr. Gibson takes Rhys to her practice and pops his shoulder back into place, and she and Rhys commiserate over experiencing prejudice in their professions (her because she’s a woman, him because she’s Welsh). Rhys decides to hire her to be his own physician. Everyone at his store is all like, “You hired a GIIIIRL to be a doctor?” and Rhys is like, “The future is now!”
Back at Ravenel House, Devon and Kathleen have returned from…somewhere. I think there was a thing with Kathleen’s dad at the end of the last book? Whatever. They’ve gotten married on their way back from wherever they were, and wax on about how in love they are for a bit. Then Rhys swings by to talk them about how he and Helen totally want to get married, and he’s not saying that they have to, but they kind of do, if Devon’s going to be picky about it. Devon and his fists of fury do not like that at all. There’s a brief interlude where he punches Rhys and they all have to cut him out of yet another shirt because he’s injured (again). Devon eventually consents to the marriage, on the condition that Rhys wait until their original wedding date. Rhys freaks out at the thought of going without sex for five whole months. That’s called a sex addiction, son, and you need therapy. Anyway, he reluctantly agrees and he and Helen are officially engaged.
The next day or so, Rhys reads through the paperwork for the buildings Severin wants him to buy. He’s all suspicious because none of the paperwork has the owner’s name on it, and Rhys knows Severin must be hiding the name from him, for ~some reason.
The Ravenels go back to their estate in Hampshire, Helen and Rhys make out before they leave, etc. Kathleen tells Helen that she’ll have to go through the house and pick out what she wants to take with her to London. Helen declines at taking any of Devon and Kathleen’s stuff, and Kathleen tells her that the house is her “birthright.” This upsets Helen, for ~some reason. She’s all emo at being separated from Rhys, and goes wandering around the house doing nothing. Helen is also emo because she has a dark secret: when her father died, he told her that she was the product of an affair her mother had. Oh snap! Helen never told anyone else in the family, and worries over how to tell Rhys that she’s not really a Ravenel. She finds one of her mother’s journals, and inside is a letter that she wrote to a guy named Albion about Helen’s birth. Helen realizes Albion must be her real father.
Rhys sends a bunch of presents to the Ravenels, which prompts snark from West:
“What can Mr. Winterborne be thinking?” [Helen] asked with a flustered laugh. “He’s sent enough food for an army.”
“Obviously he’s courting the entire family,” West told her. “I can’t speak for everyone else, but I for one feel thoroughly wooed.”
Heh. Although, frankly, I don’t really find West that interesting on his own — he’s funny and sweet when he’s interacting with the Ravenels, but tbh, if he’s not hooking up with Cassandra, I…don’t think I’ll be too into his story. (It sounds like he’s going to end up with Phoebe, another one of Sebastian and Evie’s kids — she was also an interesting background character, but again, I don’t think I’ll care too much for a book centering on her.)
Anyway, Kathleen gets a letter that her dad has died, and she cries all over Devon. Helen, Pandora, and Cassandra are like, “Awkward,” and leave the room. “I wish we’d brought the sweets with us,” Pandora fretted. Hee! I miss Pandora’s personality. Kathleen and Devon have to leave — again — to go to Ireland for the funeral. Devon sends for Rhys to come to Hampshire, as well as Lady Berwick, Kathleen’s mother figure. Rhys shows up the same day he receives the telegram, and Devon’s like, “You’re so fucking thirsty, jfc.” To be fair, Helen is equally thirsty: Devon tells Rhys that she’s trying to learn Welsh, and constantly chatters on about Welsh history to anyone that will listen. Helen’s all twitterpated when she sees Rhys, and he’s twitterpated that she’s twitterpated. Aw! Dammit, they’re so cute together.
The family gets together for Board Game Night, which leads into Pandora mentioning that she wants to make a board game. She drags Cassandra off to start planning, and the adults all start talking business. West mentions that Severin was going to visit and look over the railway and quarry on the estate, and Rhys gets all salty at the mention of Severin. Everyone’s like, “Por qué?” and Rhys tells them that he found out the owner of the property Severin wants to sell him. It’s some dude named Albion Vance, and Rhys is pissed that Severin would try to involve him in business with Vance, because Rhys HATES ALBION VANCE FOREVER, AND ALBION VANCE’S FAMILY, AND EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH ALBION VANCE. Helen’s like, “Yikes.”
Still, she’s like, “Maybe it’s some other Albion!” So she goes to Rhys’s valet and ex-Ravenel servant, Quincy, to ask if Albion Vance is her father. Quincy confirms, and mentions that Albion Vance is hella racist against Welsh people, in addition to whatever he did to Rhys personally. Helen’s like, “But we’re all in love, maybe Rhys will still be cool with marrying me,” and Quincy’s like, “I wouldn’t bet on it.” Hee. I can’t believe the entire conflict in this book is Quincy’s fault.
Helen goes to Rhys’s room at night to confess her parentage, but they just end up sleeping together again. Hormones, man. Helen unlocks some of Rhys’s backstory: he once had a crush on a girl named Peggy, but she was in love with his friend Ioan. They got married, but Ioan worked too much and Peggy had an affair…with Albion Vance. Oh snap! She died in childbirth, and then Ioan was so upset that he committed suicide. Dang, this shit is intense. Helen wants to know what happened to the baby, but he’s like, “I don’t want a single thing to do with anyone even remotely related to Albion Vance.” Once again, Helen’s like, “Yikes.” Well, now she definitely isn’t gonna tell him the truth.
Lady Berwick shows up and is immediately critical of everything and everyone in Ravenel House. So she’s basically my grandma. She’s particularly not fond of West:
“Cousin West may seem a trifle irreverent,” Kathleen began, “but I can assure you—”
“There is no need to explain his character, which is indeed a trifle: nothing but sugar and air.”
“You don’t know him,” one of the twins said beneath her breath.
I choose to believe that twin was Cassandra! I AM GOING DOWN WITH THIS SHIP.
Anyway, Lady Berwick is all upper-class and snippy about Helen marrying a Welshman, and how Pandora and Cassandra don’t have appropriately stiff upper lips, blah blah 19th-century English people blah. Rhys shows up, and Lady Berwick is all, “Dang girl, NEVERMIND.” Devon suggests that they all head back out to London (again) so that Lady Berwick can supervise the twins while dealing with her own business. Rhys invites her to see his store, and she accepts as long as they don’t have to shop with the plebes. When the revolution comes, I hope she loses her head first.
Rhys and Helen have sex again. The phrase “rampant erection” is used without irony, and I die laughing. Rhys doesn’t like that Albion Vance is Lady Berwick’s nephew, and Helen takes the opportunity to ask about Peggy’s daughter again. Rhys says he doesn’t care what happened to the child, because all of Vance’s kids are “demon spawn.” Helen’s like, “Yikes x3.”
So they go to London, Pandora and Cassandra wreak havoc, Lady Berwick is affronted, et cetera. Then one day, Albion Vance visits. Awkward! Helen meets him, and they exchange veiled barbs about morality and paternity, as you do. After he leaves, she and Lady Berwick have a tête-à-tête about her parentage, and Lady Berwick’s like, “Yeah, he’s totally gonna blackmail you now. Good luck.” Helen decides that she has to tell Rhys that Vance is her father, and she has to do it soon. I’m going to spoil it for you and tell you she totally doesn’t.
Vance indeed blackmails Helen; he wants her to use her ~feminine wiles~ to get Rhys to donate money to one of Vance’s shady charities (not that Rhys knows that Vance is in charge of it). Helen gets her snark on about how Vance is less of a father and more of a sperm donor, but he’s like, “Whatever, blackmail, whatever.” Helen reluctantly agrees, in exchange for information about Peggy’s child. Then she’s all, “Now I’m really going to break up with Rhys!” (She totally doesn’t.)
Helen, Pandora, Cassandra, and Lady Berwick all go to Rhys’s store after hours. Lady Berwick’s all, “Ugh, consumerism is so gauche,” but she soon learns what we all know, which is that buying stuff occasionally makes you feel better about the gaping emotional void that being a powerless cog in the wheel of capitalism leaves within you. Helen’s meant to be picking out her wedding dress, but all the stress has given her a migraine, and she ends up getting high off of painkillers that Dr. Gibson gives her. By the way, she and Dr. Gibson are adorable together:
“From now on,” Helen told Dr. Gibson, “I will send for you whenever I need a doctor”—she paused and gestured to the curved-handle walking stick hooked over the edge of the counter—“or a bodyguard.”
The other woman laughed. “Please don’t hesitate. At the risk of being presumptuous, you’re welcome to send for me if you need a friend, for any reason.”
“I will,” Helen exclaimed cheerfully. “Yes, you are my friend. Let’s meet at a teashop—I’ve always wanted to do that. Without my sisters, I mean.”
Helen barely features at all in Pandora’s book, so I hope she shows up a lot in Dr. Gibson’s and the two of them run around London drinking tea and beating people up with canes.
Rhys takes her upstairs to recover, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. He shows her that he’s built a glasshouse for her orchids on the roof of his store, and she starts get all weepy about how she has to break up with him and she’ll never date a man who’ll build her an entire greenhouse on the freaking roof ever again. At this point even Rhys is like, “DUDE, what is UP with you.” Helen distracts him with her vagina, and once again does not tell him that Vance is her father.
Vance tells Helen that he gave Peggy’s daughter to a servant to raise; Helen writes to her and finds out that the servant gave the daughter (“Charity”) to an orphanage. And so Helen waltzes off to the orphanage in the bad part of town, with Dr. Gibson with her for protection. HEE! I want their adventuring-around-London antics so badly. Helen spills to Dr. Gibson that Charity is her-half sister, and Dr. Gibson is sympathetic, re: Vance being a douchebag: “I see the vicious consequences of such sport, if we’re to call it that, whenever I visit the women and children who are suffering in workhouses. To my mind, castration would be the ideal solution.” God, I love her. They bribe and threaten the orphanage matrons into letting Charity go with them, and head on back out to the mean streets, where men with missing teeth and bad hygiene catcall you. Sadly, pepper spray hasn’t been invented yet, so Dr. Gibson has to take them down with her cane. Some guy leaps to their assistance, and Dr. Gibson is all tsundere about how they didn’t need his help, thank you very much. This is clearly Mr. Ransom, hero of book #4 and secret Ravenel — although I have to wonder if that was intended at this point, because Helen notes that his eyes are blue, but somehow fails to recognize that they’re the same eyes of every single other person she lives with.
Lady Berwick is pissed, of course, that Helen’s ruined her reputation by bringing home a child who looks pretty much just like her. Helen’s all touched that Lady Berwick cares about her reputation. Personally, I’m not too won over that her reaction to adopting a helpless orphan is, “BUT THE SCANDAL!” Victorians, man. Especially because her solution is to invite Vance over to take Charity away, like that’s ever been the solution to anything in this entire book. Helen is all offended, and decides she has to run away to Eversby Priory, and then probably leave England altogether. She’s foiled by Rhys, who’s been busy stalking Vance — or hiring Mr. Ransom to stalk Vance for him, whatever* — so he knows Helen’s been running around having secret meetings with Vance and going to the Bad Side of Town, and he would like to be having some answers now.
* Ransom’s a detective with the Scotland Yard by next book, so I feel like he shouldn’t be having all this free time to be a hired stalker? Whatever.
Helen FINALLY spits out that Vance is her father and Charity is her half-sister, and she understands if Rhys doesn’t want to marry her anymore, on account of him saying (frequently, with feeling) that he hates all things associated with Albion Vance, including small helpless infants, so she’ll just be leaving England now. And Rhys is all like, “Wait, what made you think I’d hate you for being Albion Vance’s daughter?” SIGH. He backpedals that when he said he hated anyone who might potentially be related to Albion Vance, he didn’t mean her. I mean, I hope he can see how she came to that conclusion, though. Rhys gets over her parentage pretty quickly and agrees to adopt Charity, too. It’s nice of him and all, but it would’ve been helpful for him to feel any kind of way about disavowing Helen to her face for the first 200 pages of this book. There’s a whole thing about how Charity is a very obviously institutional name, so they rename her to Carys.
So Helen’s happy, Rhys is happy, and they finally just decide to fuck it and elope, since every time they’ve gotten engaged it’s ended in disaster. They run away to Wales, and then we’re hilariously deprived of the actual wedding scene. Dude! It’s the title of the book! Really, to be accurate, the title should’ve been, “Lying to Winterborne,” or possibly, “You Will Get Pregnant and Die.”
In the epilogue, Pandora’s completed her board game and Rhys is sure it will sell. Helen’s happy for Pandora, but then she’s like, “But how will she be emotionally fulfilled without a man?” Rhys is sure Pandora will get married eventually: “Speaking from experience,” he said, taking her waist in his hands, “the success will make Pandora very happy at first. But eventually she’ll become lonely, and realize there’s more to life than financial gain.” Huh. That’s fair enough — God knows it’s a common trope among heroes — and it makes me think that Devil in Spring would’ve been less of a zig-zagging mess if it had been set a little later, after Pandora was already a board game impresario, instead of torturing me by making her forfeit her dream to get married to Lord St. Character Changes As the Plot Dictates. WE COULD’VE HAD IT ALL.
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