The Daring Deception

by Barbara Cartland

Den unga och föräldralösa Perdita flyr från sin hänsynslöse förmyndare, sir Gerbold Whitton. Under flykten träffar hon den stilige charmören, markis Ivan Melsonby, som lovar att hjälpa henne. Och för att inte bli upptäckta låtsas de inför omvärlden att vara gifta. Sir Gerbold släpper emellertid inte sitt grepp om Perdita och inte förrän markisen ånyo räddat henne kan de andas ut och resa på "smekmånad" till Tanger. Men farorna är inte över. Perdita hamnar i en situation som kan betyda slutet för dem båda. Cartlands böcker äger rum i de finare engelska kretsarna och i exotiska miljöer. Kärleken är häftig mellan de passionerade hjältarna och vackra hjältinnorna, men gång på gång går de igenom prövningar. Men äkta kärlek är alltid starkast och det finns ingenting den inte kan besegra.

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Historical Romance, Historical Fiction

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Born in 1901, Barbara Cartland started her writing career in journalism and completed her first book, Jigsaw, when she was just 24. An immediate success, it was the start of her journey to becoming the world’s most famous and most read romantic novelist of all time. Inspiring a whole generation of readers around the globe with her exciting tales of adventure, love and intrigue, she became synonymous with the Romance genre. And she still is to this day, having written over 644 romantic fiction books.
As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, plays, music, poetry and several advice books on life, love, health and cookery – totalling an incredible 723 books in all, with over 1 billion in sales.
Awarded the DBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 in honour of her literary, political and social contributions, she was President of the Hertfordshire branch of the Royal College of Midwives as well as a Dame of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and Deputy President of the St John Ambulance Brigade.
Always a passionate advocate of woman’s health and beauty, she was dubbed ‘the true Queen of Romance’ by Vogue magazine in her lifetime. Her legend continues today through her wonderfully vivid romantic tales, stories that help you escape from the day to day into the dramatic adventures of strong, beautiful women who battle, often against the odds, eventually to find that love conquers all.
Find out more about the incredible life and works of Dame Barbara Cartland at www.barbaracartland.com

Reviews

[Kate]

I loved this book so much. It's horrible, naturally; Cartland's writing is excremental. (I don't say that because I think Romance Novels Are Bad--I like romance novels, when they're well-written--but Barbara Cartland wrote some of the most awful tripe.)

I've read a handful of her other books, and they were all bad, but they weren't a fun bad; they were just tedious and weak and full of bland (and yet, still irritating!) characters.

But this. Oh, what a masterpiece this is. First of all, the heroine's name is Perdita. I spent the entire book visualizing her as a liver-spotted dalmatian. Perdita speaks, like all Cartland's heroines, entirely in ellipses. She is incapable of finishing a sentence without pausing...at least...three...times. I began to wonder if she had a respiratory ailment.

The strangest thing, I think, was that Cartland apparently wrote a novella, decided it was too short, and tacked a short story onto the end to make it long enough to publish as a book. The "novella" plotline takes up most of the book and, as far as I can remember, is a pretty standard hero-saves-heroine-from-the-clutches-of-her-evil-guardian story. Once that's all wrapped up, which happens about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through the book, it's as if the author suddenly thinks, "Oh dear, I haven't made it long enough. Well, I have this short story handy; I'll just change the names and stick it on the end"--and THEN SHE DOES IT. The "short story" part is a spy story. That takes place in Turkey(?). It has absolutely no connection to what goes on before except a couple of paragraphs that Cartland stuck in to provide an explanation (such as it is) of how the couple gets from the first storyline to the second.

I only read this book once, years ago, which is why I'm so hazy on the details, but I do recall how much I loved it. It made me laugh and laugh and laugh. I kept checking the cover to make sure it really was written by Barbara Cartland, because it felt like a really nasty but painfully accurate (and gaspingly funny) satire. It took me ages to get through the last few chapters because by that time I was laughing so hard that I had to keep putting the book down.

I really must figure out what I've done with my copy of it and re-read it. Few books have provided me with such deep hilarity, even the ones that are funny on purpose.

[MissKitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 this is a much longer book than her normal fare.

The Hero, a confirmed bachelor is escaping from London because his current lover has just been widowed and now wants him to marry her. He flees to a house party in the country where he encounters one of his ex flames and takes up with her again.

Unfortunately, she is also resolved to marry him! This ex-flame is much more determined and aggressive than the other lady and she will go so far as to blackmail the Hero if he refuses.

The Hero escapes again but is caught in a snowstorm and needs to seek shelter in an Inn. He is contemplating his fate when suddenly a young girl enters his room and pleads w him to hide her. She is fleeing her evil guardian who has been beating her. She shows the Hero her back and he is horrified! So he helps her. The evil guardian even looks into the room but does not find her.

He helps her out the window, early the next morning so she can escape the Inn since her guardian is waiting in the main room. They agree to meet at another Inn. The Hero finds out that the heroine is an heiress and the evil guardian wants her and her money, so he tried to marry her but she escaped. She even snatched the marriage contract thinking it would buy her time if he needs to get another one.

The couple decide that if they pretend to be married to each other, they can thwart the people pressuring them. They will alter the marriage contract to show the Hero’s name instead. When they decide to separate, they plan to say that the parson who married them was fake so the marriage is invalid. 🤦🏻‍♀️ of course how the heroine will weather this with her reputation intact, is never addressed. Ergo their truly daring deception.

They go to London and all goes swimmingly, since they get along well and have quite a few interests in common. The Hero is pleased, since the heroine makes no demands on him, and he can continue his bachelor lifestyle, albeit a bit more discreetly.

The nasty ex-flame eventually shows up and tries to cause trouble, but since they aren’t really romantically involved, it doesn’t faze the heroine. However, ex Flame makes dire threats of revenge.

At one of the parties, the couple meet up w a lady who the Hero had the hots for, but she has a very jealous husband. She is suddenly receptive to the amorous glances of the Hero. The heroine was been doing her own thing and dancing w some partners when she suddenly looks for the Hero and sees him in a secluded area w this woman. She decides to give them privacy, but as she is walking along a corridor she overhears some gentleman talking, apparently its a trap arranged by ex-flame. The jealous husband will arrive home in time to catch the Hero InFD and shoot him!

The heroine rushes to find them but they have gone to the “lady” house, so she follows there. She enters and has the Hero called just as the jealous husband comes home. They barely make it out of there with a plausible explanation! The Hero knows he owes his life to the heroine but is still kind of irrationally peeved.

His sister arrives from India w her kids in tow. Her husband is ill and in hospital so she leaves the kids w the Hero and heroine to look after. The heroine is more than happy to do so since she loves kids. The Hero and heroine bond over the children, since he is fond of them as well and even take them for rides. But they send for the heroine’s old nanny to help w the children anyway.

The Hero needs to go to the country so he leaves the heroine w the kids to wait for her nanny to arrive. Suddenly a nun appears and tells the heroine that there has been an accident and her nanny needs her. The heroine rushes off with the nun, but its a trap! 😱

Evil guardian has found her. He intends to rape her, then blackmail her by telling her “husband” she has been unfaithful to him! He starts to rape her but thankfully the Hero comes in time and shoots him.

Normally the book would end here. Usually this is where the Hero and heroine declare their love for each other and HEA!

BUT NO… the story has not ended and we have a few more chapters!

To take the heroine away from her traumatic experience the Hero decides they will go on a trip. It will be their pretend “honeymoon”. While planning their trip, the Hero calls on the Prime Minister and is asked to check on a certain Sultan from Algiers. Apparently some young girls have gone missing, and they think its the Sultan. One girl is the Daughter of a nobleman who was snatched in the park.

The couple go off on their yacht and they even have fun learning Arabic. When they arrive in Algiers and make a call on the ambassador, he tells the heroine that the mother of the Sultan wants an audience w her. Now why the ambassador would think its a good idea to put the wife of a visiting nobleman in a perilous situation, I dont know 🤦🏻‍♀️ The heroine in fact feels like she is being watched and is in danger.

Nevertheless she goes to meet the Sultana. Of course its a trap! The evil Sultan who has been kidnapping white women wants her as well. She manages to convince him that she is still a virgin snd that she would be his wife. She will write a letter to her husband saying she will stay for a few nights. Of course its in “code” so she hope the Hero comes to her rescue. The Sultan admits that he hates the English for how they treated him when he was in school in England and thats why he has been kidnapping their women, raping them then killing them. The heroine knows this is what happened to the other nobleman’s daughter.

Just before the wedding ceremony, they dress the heroine in the diaphanous robes (thus the cover art) and the jewels befitting a wife. But the Hero, who had also sent a note to the heroine, creates a diversion with fireworks and manages to spirit her away. They get on a British ship and escape, along with all the jewels that were draped on the heroine 🤣 No problems they will sell them and give it to charity.

Finally the Hero and heroine are in love with each other and want to stay married. They convince the captain of their ship to marry them, and they give him their original explanation, that they think the pastor of their first wedding was fake! 😳

HEA ❤️❤️❤️

What happens to evil Sultan? Oh the diversion of the Hero was also used by the rival Sultan to kill his enemy once and for all!

[Bella Tika · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was my first book from this author and i was totally seduced by this new world of the ancient time.

[Rob Imes · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE DARING DECEPTION was book #1 in Bantam's popular Barbara Cartland Library series, published in November 1973. (My copy is a 2nd printing.) At the time Cartland also had a long-running numbered series coming out from Pyramid Books, and by the 1980s the Pyramid line would be replaced by two numbered lines from Jove. For many readers, the prolific Cartland was their introduction to the romance genre, and this first volume of the Bantam line was their introduction to Cartland.

The plot is about a young woman named Perdita who pretends to have married a man she just met (Ivon, the Marquis of Melsonby) in order to avoid being forced into marriage with her abusive guardian Sir Gerbold (who just wants to marry her to get his hands on her inheritance). Ivon agrees to the fake marriage (the "daring deception" of the book's title) for a reason of his own -- to avoid getting married to one of his mistresses who is scheming for a more permanent union between them. The story takes place in 1850, with Cartland noting that "the gay roistering days of the Regency were over" (page 14) and that "in the new strait-laced respectable regime of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert... the slightest breath of scandal was frowned on." Predictably, Perdita and Ivon fall in love, but are afraid to let the other know this fact out of fear of driving the other away for breaking their platonic arrangement.

The novel almost reads like two stories stitched together. Chapter 7 feels like the end of the book, with the resolution of the plotline about Perdita escaping the evil Sir Gerbold. Up to this point, the book felt like a 4-star book to me, occasionally getting into 4.5 territory (such as the adorable scenes with the children of Ivon's sister, or the climactic showdown with Gerbold when he kidnaps Perdita). The last three chapters of the book (Chapters 8-10) move the setting to Morocco in North Africa, as Ivon (accompanied by Perdita) is sent by the British government to investigate the disappearance of white women in the area. Perdita is captured by the sultan who has a hatred of the English due to time spent at Cambridge where he was called the n-word by his classmates. Perdita is forced to become one of the sultan's wives, but is rescued by Ivon before the ceremony can take place. Unfortunately these last three chapters contain stereotypes about Muslims that many readers will find offensive. These last three chapters were a disappointment for me and frankly a bit of a chore to read; on their own I would rate them only 3 stars at best. My 4-star rating for this book is based on the majority of its 220 pages, not the last three chapters which I found unnecessary and anticlimactic.

There is a tendency to dismiss the books of Barbara Cartland as entry-level romance, eventually dropped by readers for their sameness as they graduate to the work of more challenging and realistic romance novelists. And yet, when compared to other romance novels of the 1970s, I think this book has much that would appeal to readers today (aside from the last three chapters). We get to hear the thoughts and perspective of the hero in addition to the heroine; his motivations are not shrouded in mystery as is so often the case in vintage romances. While Ivon is promiscuous, he is honorable and likable -- not the "alpha-hole" commonly found in old-school romance. Perdita, too, while small and virginal, is not entirely helpless, despite occasionally needing Ivon to rescue her; she demonstrates strength, courage and resourcefulness in escaping from her guardian in the first place. In the middle of the book, it is Perdita who rescues Ivon from being shot by a jealous husband, using her quick thinking and actions. And she manages to outwit the sultan and escape, with Ivon's help from outside, at the end of the story.

Cartland's writing takes a little getting used to, since by this time she had settled into her style of using only short paragraphs consisting of one sentence each, apparently to make the text read faster. She began churning out novels on a monthly basis, like the writers of pulp magazines in the 1930s, making it easy to dismiss the results as hackwork. And yet, the top pulp fiction writers of other genres are often affectionately regarded by fans of those genres, their output admired for its economy, the simplicity of the style giving their prose a punch. In romantic fiction, there is a tendency to overwrite in order to evoke a specific emotional response in the reader, but Cartland allows the reader to draw her own conclusions from the description without belaboring the point. An example is in Chapter Two when Perdita removes her wet clothing in the presence of Ivon, whom she has just met. Another writer likely would have made the eroticism of her undressing more obvious, perhaps adding descriptions of Perdita's embarrassment or the stirring of the Marquis' loins. Cartland however describes it matter-of-factly, and so it can be interpreted by the reader as completely innocent (if one prefers) or implying an intimate scene with an unstated sexual undercurrent.

The famous Cartland ellipses ("...") are also present here, limited only to the heroine's dialogue in order to indicate a reticence to speak or a breathless response. Cartland uses them so that the reader will "hear" the heroine's voice the way that Cartland wants it to be heard, or as how Cartland herself voiced the dialogue aloud (since I suspect that many of her novels were simply dictated to save time). Admittedly, though, those ellipses -- as well as the one-sentence paragraphs and the suspicion of a writer simply dictating the tale -- can be off-putting. Reading the first few pages of this book, I wanted to stop reading it (even though I've read two of her novels before), thinking it was a dud. But gradually I got accustomed to her style again and was able to appreciate the story despite its style, and eventually to wonder why I would criticize a writer for having her own unique writing style in the first place. Having her own distinct voice ought to be a virtue, not a defect.

[Alene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't have very high expectations for this older, vintage romance novel, but it was actually surprisingly good. No steam of course, this is from 1973 after all! But still it was a sweet story, with plenty of intrigue and entertainment, and an enjoyable plot. It was also a quick read, so it didn't bog me down for many days. I had read that this author's work wasn't considered to be all that great, and maybe that is true, but I found this book to be well worth reading.

[Jeanne-chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

From all of her books this is my totally most favourite one. Just love it...

[Jane]

Filled with stereotypes and language we would never use today but several plot twists kept it moving.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Handsome and dashing, the Marquis of Melsonby finds himself bored by the attentions of Society beauties, especially those of the undeniably beautiful and irritatingly ardent, Lady Karen Russell, who is trying to blackmail him into marriage.
Then, as he is caught in a fierce snowstorm and stuck for the night at a lowly wayside inn, Fate puts in his way a lovely young waif called ‘Perdita Lydford’, who throws herself on his mercy.
She is on the run from her cruel would-be ‘Guardian’, Sir Gerbold Whitton, and with good reason. Not only does he beat her sadistically, he is totally bent on marrying her and her sizeable inheritance by force to pay for his large debts.
Since they are both in the same boat, the Marquis and Perdita then begin their daring deception and dupe their respective pursuers with a fake marriage that appears on the surface to be legal.
But Sir Gerbold is not so easily daunted and he tries again to abduct Perdita.
Escaping on the Marquis’s yacht to Morocco, poor Perdita is imperilled once more, ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, of a lecherous and murderous Sultan and his Harem, where she prays that love in the form of the Marquis can save her life and her virtue yet again.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Marquis of Melonsby takes offense at being proposed/trapped by one of his lovers into marriage. Perdita arrives to seek shelter from her uncle who is arranging a marriage for her. Neither wants to be married and find a solution of "The daring deception".