Cecily

Cecily is one of the many books by Clare Darcy set in the Regency era and very much in the style of Georgette Heyer. Our heroine, Cecily, finds herself acting on the stage as a result of blackmail/low funds in order to support her family, and her beauty attracts many of the audience, including Mr Ranleigh who is a distant relative. Ranleigh finds himself helping Cecily out by setting her up as a governess in the house of one of his relatives, but unfortunately some of her admirers from the stage follow her to try to charm her - presumably into becoming their mistresses. Cecily's handling of these situations isn't exactly optimal and she ends up running away back to the theatre and finding herself once again a blackmail target and once again Mr Ranleigh has to ride to the rescue, this time in a more permanent way. This book was well-written and the setting and dialogue was good for the Regency period. A few Americanisms slipped through the editing process but overall this was one of the better American-authored regencies that I have read. However, I found the characterisation a bit flat - people acted and reacted but I didn't really ever understand their inner motivations. People seemed to fall in love/lust with Cecily because of her looks (I doubt it was her intelligence or conversation as she seemed a bit dull to me) and I never really understood why Mr Ranleigh fell in love with her - she was just a pain in the neck for him. So only four stars for this book for me as I believe it could have been much better.

The four stars are a reflection of this work in comparison with that of G. Heyer, one of my favorites! All in all though I found this to be a delightful read, clean and charming. Especially nice to see is the complete lack of sweaty love scenes that make modern romances so crass and tacky. A definate find for anyone who is a hopeless romantic and enjoys a little pure and light-hearted fun.

This book was the work of an entertaining writer who was not yet in control of her medium. There are huge blocks of expostion that might have been been better broken up into actual dialogue, but the writing is clear and grammatical and mainly a pleasure to read. The story begins with Robert Ranleigh visiting the theatre at the invitation of a hopeful Mama whose daughter had been lately receiving marked attention from him. Mr. Ranleigh, untitled but wealthy and well connected, is the quintessential regency beau-- the complete to a shade dresser, a dab hand at the reins, a lady's man and a crack shot. Of course, for most of this, particularlly the lady's man part, we have to take the writer's word for it. He presents himself as high handed, proud, and not sensitive at all. He also clearly has problems understanding his own feelings. On one hand, he is rather coldbloodedly contemplating marriage with a woman he does not care for and who he "knows" is not capable of a deep emotional attachement. On the other, he capable of quixotically involving himself in the affairs of a complete stranger.The heroine, Cecily, is about 13 years his junior. She was raised by her aunt, a lady of strong mind, and an alcoholic, gamester father. Her father dead and his entire estate taken for debt, Cecily and her aunt find themselves in dire straits with no more than the clothes on their backs. Fortuitously, they meet Mr. Jilson, an actor,who sees in Cecily his ticket to fortune. By mentoring her on the stage, he hopes to cash in on her striking looks. Cecily, appearing in the play that night, proves immediately popular with the young male section of the play going population which leads directly to a wager among certain of the young bucks, that Mr. Ranleigh would not be able to convince Cecily to come to dinner with him. Instead he ends up meeting Cecily and her aunt at the inn where they are staying the next day and discovers that Cecily is a connection of his by marriage. In his typical high handed fashion Ranleigh decides to remove Cecily from the stage and try to find her some respectable occupation. The first thought that occurs to him is to try to shame her disagreeable, disreputable, pinchpenny uncle into giving her a home. When this does not work out, he convinces his mother to involve herself in trying to educate Cecily for the role of governess and find her a situation.The plot then plays itself out in not unexpected fashion with the interference of various relatives, servants and a melodramatic (and thoroughly despicable villain). The secondary characters for the most part are well drawn. It might have been nice to see more of Ranleigh coming to terms with his feelings and maybe suffering a bit more. However, the good end happily and the bad end unhappily as the reader would expect and it's a very pleasant ride getting there.