The Constant Heart

Rebecca Shaw, schoolteacher daughter of the late vicar, is engaged to be married to the current vicar, Philip Everett. It's a passionless relationship of friends who respect and like each other; it will be a marriage in which each does their duty to each other and to the parish. However, what Philip doesn't know is that Rebecca was once engaged to Christopher Sinclair, who, now widowed, is returning to the village...Seven years ago, Becky and Christopher had been crazily in love. Until he broke her heart when he came to tell her that he'd met a wealthy woman in London and he was engaged to marry her. He dumped Becky and married for money. And she'd never seen him since. Now, though, he's back. And she's running into him at every turn - in the village, at the school, in her home. And it's very hard to ignore him, so she has to be civil to him even though she loathes him. And Christopher himself doesn't make it easy; he talks to her, engages her in conversation, and even suggests that he still cares about her. And when he apologises for abandoning her, and even kisses her, one day after escorting her home, she doesn't know how to react. Quite apart from the fact that she's engaged to someone else, how could she ever forgive him for the way he behaved to her? How could she forget that he was a fortune-hunter, and that if he broke his promise to her once he could do it again? She is also hearing stories about Christopher's behaviour towards his wife which are not to his credit at all, which makes her opinion of him tumble still lower. And yet his behaviour since returning, combined with her knowledge of him before he'd jilted her, is completely at odds with these rumours about him. What can she believe? And does any of it matter anyway, since she's going to marry Philip?This is a book with a cast of secondary characters to match Jane Austen, and there are plenty of very delightful sub-plots, secondary romances and entertaining figures. The will-they-won't-they plot between Becky and Christopher takes us almost to the final page, and it's worth every second of the read. Balogh does separated lovers and angst very well indeed.