Lisa's Reviews > Lady Folbroke's Delicious Deception

I really enjoyed this book. I thought Emily’s behavior and reactions were realistic and justified given the circumstances and Adrian grew as a person and redeemed himself by the end. When the book closes out their relationship is one of mutual love and respect such that I believe they’ll live happily ever after. There were a few plot holes and anachronisms that might have bugged me in normal circumstances but since the story was so well done I didn’t pay them any attention.

Ok so the story goes that Adrian and Emily are married but haven’t seen each other for three years. Their families have adjoining estates and the two of them were betrothed at birth. Emily has been in love with Adrian for years but so in awe of him that she could barely speak in his presence. He avoided the marriage for as long as he could, even joining the military and going off to war, but eventually did wed her as he was expected to. However, after only visiting the marriage bed on three very unsatisfying occasions, he took off for London and never returned.

Emily assumed that the reason he’d abandoned her in the country was because he’d found her so terribly lacking in some way and has spent the last three years desperately lonely. However, she’s also blossomed into a more confident woman than the girl he’d married, taking on the running of his estate and making all the decisions. The one thing she hasn’t been able to take care of, however, is Adrian’s cousin, Rupert, who will inherit the title and lands if Adrian dies without producing an heir. Since Adrian hasn’t been seen in public for years and is always “out” whenever Rupert or anyone else goes to see him, Rupert has started suggesting that Adrian is actually dead and Emily is attempting to hide that fact in order to maintain her position as countess. In order to get rid of Rupert and disguise the fact that her husband refuses to see her, Emily lies and says that not only is Adrian alive and well, but that she’s expecting his child.

While that gets rid of Rupert temporarily, Emily now has to produce a baby in a few months or the jig will really be up so she packs up and heads for London unannounced so that her husband won’t have a chance to avoid her. When she makes this trip, Emily is very angry with Adrian for his selfish behavior. She expects to find him drinking and whoring full time while she, his faithful wife who still carries a torch for him, has been rusticating in the country and responsibly handling all his affairs. And she intends to demand he do his duty to her and the estate by begetting her with child.

I liked the way Emily behaved in this scenario. She had every reason to be angry with Adrian for abandoning her the way he did and avoiding all contact with her for years. And she’s thinking about what will happen to her if, through no fault of her own, she fails to produce the next Folbroke male and the title passes to Rupert. She’d be driven out of her own home and forced to live as a dowager, alone and childless.

When she arrives in London it’s to find that her worst fears were true and Adrian is indeed drinking and whoring his way through life. When she finds him, he’s drunk and in one of the worst sorts of establishments where he apparently lets a room so that he can just stumble upstairs in his drunken stupor and then start again the next morning without having to bother with going home. She also realizes at this meeting that Adrian is mostly blind. And much to her dismay, he doesn’t even recognize her as his own wife. He’s extremely forward with her, however, and makes no secret of the fact that he wants to get her into bed. She’s torn between hurt at his lack of recognition and elation that he’s finally responding to her as a woman, the way he failed to do in their marriage bed.

She manages to get him back home, with the help of his faithful secretary, Hendricks, and tells him that if he wants to see her again and hopes to bed her, then he’d best be washed, shaved and sober the next time they meet. As she heads home that night she thinks about the events and how her erstwhile husband thinks she’s another man’s wife and yet is so keen to get her into bed. In a way, she’s disgusted by the notion that he’s so free with his favors and so immoral as to desire such an affair, but in another, she feels it might be the only way to reach him. He’s so convinced that his blindness makes him worthless as a husband and man that he’s trying to kill himself through his behavior. Deliberately drinking and gaming in rough places, knowing that someday he’ll get a knife in the ribs or a bullet to the back of the head. Emily still loves him, but is so angry that she feels her first priority must be to get with child by him, so she decides to continue the charade of being this other woman and allow her husband to unknowingly seduce her.

I liked the way this played out. After reading the back of the book, I was curious as to how the author would be able to establish things so that they were believable for a husband, even a blind one, to be unknowingly sleeping with his wife. And what scenario would prompt a wife to perpetuate such a ruse. And Merrill’s explanation did a nice job of giving me that believable scenario. I did find it a little hard to believe that Adrian couldn’t recognize his wife’s voice when he had no trouble identifying other people he’d known for far less time and much less intimately, but Merrill did give the explanation about Emily always being breathlessly tongue-tied in Adrian’s presence so we’ll let that slide.

The rest of the book also plays out believably with Emily and Adrian having romantic trysts while also confiding in one another about their marriages. Adrian fails to recognize his own behavior when Emily explains that her husband has abandoned her, which is a little hard to believe. As time passes, Emily works to get Adrian to realize that his life doesn’t have to end just because he’s blind. He meets most of her efforts with hostility because he fears being pitied above all else, but usually reconsiders that position after his initial outburst. In just a few days Emily has gotten him to rejoin society and start thinking of the future. As part of that revelation, however, is the notion that he needs to reconcile with his wife and therefore must give up his mystery lover.

Along the way there is some drama over Adrian believing that his wife has finally cracked under the years of loneliness and taken another man as a lover. Particularly as he suspects the man in question is none other than his trusted secretary, Hendricks. And of course there is the inevitable showdown when Emily finally reveals that his wife and mistress are one in the same. It was all handled very well and people had believable reactions throughout.

The one place where I felt the anachronisms really got out of hand was in how blatantly sexual Emily behaved. When she played the part of this mystery woman she greeted Adrian in either her robe and nightdress, or a gown under which she was stark naked. For a well-bred Englishwoman in the early 1800’s that’s a level of wantonness that just can’t be believed. She also engaged in overt sexual acts with Adrian in the middle of the doorless sitting room with servants running around the house, and even had sex up against the wall in her brother’s salon with him just down the hall. It’s too much to be believed. Also, she received Hendricks, a man who is not her husband or a relative, in nothing but her robe and nightgown and was so scantily clad that she flashing him not just a view of ankle, but of her naked calf as well. It’s completely unbelievable for a respectable woman to even consider receiving a gentleman caller dressed that way.