Crafts and Life

In The Reluctant Widow, Elinor Rochdale, a young woman of good birth but straitened circumstances, sets out to accept a position as a governess and ends up plunged into a tangle of foreign intrigue instead.

Elinor's adventure begins when she inadvertently mistakes the carriage waiting at the coach stop for one sent by her prospective employer, Mrs. Macclesfield. She finds herself carried to the estate of one Ned Carlyon, who Elinor mistakes for Mr. Macclesfield. Carlyon, meanwhile, believes Elinor to be the young woman he hired to marry his dying cousin, Eustace Cheviot, in order to avoid inheriting Cheviot's estate himself. Somehow, Elinor is talked into marrying Eustace on his deathbed and thus becomes a widow almost as soon as the ring is on her finger. What starts out as a simple business arrangement soon becomes much more complicated as housebreakers, uninvited guests, a shocking murder, missing government papers, and a dog named Bouncer all contribute to this lively, frequently hilarious tale of mistaken identities, foreign espionage, and unexpected love set during the Napoleonic Wars.

Elinor has been forced by circumstances to become a governess, but whilst going to her place of employment in the country she inadvertently ends up at the estate of a Mr Eustace Cheviot and is greeted by Lord Carlyon, his cousin (mind you the fact that at the beginning she is under the impression that he is Mr Macclesfield, the husband of the woman who had interviewed her, and Lord Carlyon thinks she is a lady who has been prepared to come and marry his erstwhile cousin, which leads to a slight comedy of errors on both sides!)

Due to an accident caused by both Eustace and Carlyon's young brother Nicky, Elinor ends up married and widowed within the space of 24 hours, from there on in we have treason and misunderstandings a-plenty, leading to a classic and (in my case at least) well loved Heyer story.