The Incomparable Countess

by Mary Nichols

BETRAYED...For one long, hot summer Frances and Marcus had meant everything to each other. And then he betrayed her by marrying someone else. At seventeen, Frances had possessed an inner fire, a joy of life. Now, years later, Marcus, Duke of Loscoe, is confounded by the ice-cold society hostess she has become.Having learned how to suppress her youthful dreams and desires, Frances, Countess of Carringham, can't deny she's pained to hear that Marcus is looking for a new wife to care for his motherless child. Nor can she disguise that she is still susceptible to his charm....

Genres: Historical Romance, Romance

ebook

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Born in Singapore to a Dutch-South African father and an English mother, Mary Nichols came to England when she was three and considers herself totally English. Her father, like many people who learn English as a second language, would have no sloppiness, either spoken or written, and Mary puts her love of the language down to him. He was also a great reader and there were always books in the house so that Mary learned to read at a very early age. She read anything that came to hand, whether it was suitable or not! By the time she was nine or ten, her one ambition was to be a writer.

Her first novel, handwritten in several school exercise books, was completed when she was fifteen. Not having any idea of how to go about finding a publisher, she wrapped it up and sent it to the editor of the woman's monthly magazine to which her mother subscribed. It says a great deal for that editor that she took the trouble to read it and sent Mary a long and very encouraging letter, which put her ambition into overdrive.

Finishing her education and finding a job took over in the next few years, followed by an early marriage and a family. When her children were all at school she joined her local writers' circle. Publication of articles and stories in a variety of periodicals and magazines followed, but the ambition to be a novelist never wavered and throughout the time she was writing and selling short pieces she was working on her novels.

Mary joined the Romantic Novelists Association in the 1960s. Her first novel was a contemporary one published by Robert Hale in 1981 and that was followed by nine more. Mary sent her first historical romance to Mills and Boon in 1985 and was delighted when a telephone call three weeks later told her it had been accepted. Since then she has been a regular writer for the historical series. Among these is a miniseries about a group of gentleman in the mid-eighteenth century who form a club to track down criminals, a sort of private detective agency, which naturally leads each of them into romance.

She is also the author of family sagas, published by Allison and Busby. She has also written a biography of her grandmother, entitled The Mother of Necton, who was the midwife and nurse in the village of Necton in Norfolk from 1910 until the advent of the National Health Service in 1948.

Apart from when her children were small, Mary always had a 'day job', being a school secretary, an editor of a house journal and an information manager for a database of open learning courses. Now writing full time, Mary spends part of every day at her computer producing her novels and divides the rest of the time between reading and research and gardening. Occasionally she gives talks about her writing to groups and societies. “Writing for me is an addiction,” Mary says. “I am not happy if I haven't got a book on the go and if my readers enjoy what I have written, then that is an added bonus.”

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

well written book, however I will state that I loathed the hero, or the lead male character who was supposed to be a hero. That male character is pretty un-heroic, he meets the heroine when he is 23 and she is 17, despite being betrothed to another, he leads the heroine on in such a way she is left shamed when he leaves her to marry THE OTHER one. He marries has two children and our heroine marries a older man who has two children that she helps raise. Then suddenly she is a widow and he is a widower and comes to the city with his daughter Livinia who hates him as he is at best a absentee father cast in that role by his wife who loathed him, I am guessing this is where we are supposed to feel sorry for him... I did not...ever. I found him a unscrupulous cad, who excused his bad behavior and un-gallant exit from her life that she was just a child and since she wed quickly after their break up that he was off the hook. I was not happy. He shows up with assumptions and manipulates the heroine into taking his daughter under her wing and then whenever she does anything to displease him he revokes that relationship, he is a lousy man, a worse father and by the end I keep hoping Frances's longtime best friend Percy would shoot him and win her heart... unfortunately it was not to be.


spoilers

the unheroic male character gets everything he wants, the woman he devastated, his daughter turned into a lady, with no character of his own he uses Frances to make him appear heroic...and a perfect ending , he even manages to give his new wife a baby despite her being barren with her husband and that husband in fact having two natural children with his first wife..it is explained away his elderly state....uh he was never described as elderly until the miraculous pregnancy at the end...so the unheroic male has super sperm as well.... he is not the worst male lead but he was so damn blasé and unrepentant about his behavior I loathed him more at the end after his redemption than I did at the beginning...

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frances was a great character, Marcus not so much until the very end. High-ish stakes in this plot. I enjoyed the imagery and the characterisation.

[Fiona Marsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This actually wasn't all that bad. Which probably isn't a good start to the review. Marcus and Fanny fell in love when she was 17 and he was 23 but unbeknownst to Fanny, his family had already arranged a strategic marriage to Another. Fanny was left desolate and embarrassed as her mother had been dropping hints all over Town that her debutante daughter was about to become affianced to a Marquis who would be a Duke eventually. Pushed by her mother, Fanny married an older widower with two children and had ten years of mediocre marriage to a kind but uninspiring husband. Marcus of course married Another and had two children of his own.

Now they have met again, seventeen years later, both widowed and neither intending to marry again. And so the story goes. It was quite a nice story with two mature aged protagonists. Fanny is now pushing 35 and Marcus is a solid 40.

So why was I not overwhelmed with eagerness? I usually don't like tropes where two lovers marry others and have a whole life before conveniently losing their other partners and get back together. The redeeming feature on this one is that Marcus did not actually seduce Fanny. Though he probably thought about it. Being a 23 year old male.