False Angel

Torquay/Bessacarr #3

by Edith Layton

The lovely Lady Leonora Talwin had heard all the stories about the rakish Marquess of Severne and vowed never to become one of his victims. But she knew far too little about her foolish heart to daunt this lord who feasted on such feminine frailties.

Genres: Historical Romance, Historical, Regency, Romance, Traditional Regency, Fiction

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1985

About the author

Edith Layton wrote her first novel when she was ten. She bought a marbleized notebook and set out to write a story that would fit between its covers. Now, an award-winning author with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit, her criteria have changed. The story has to fit the reader as well as between the covers.

Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television.

Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same."

Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee.

Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League , the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy --adopted herself from a shelter-- is just one member of Layton's household menagerie.

Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lady Leonora was a beautiful 23 year old unmarried lady. Growing up adored her father and wanted to marry someone like him but at 18 and about to make her debut in London she caught him with another woman and that made her lose faith in him.
Her married sister told her then, that what she saw was commonplace. Disolutioned Leonora vowed never to get married.
For the next five years she'd been staying in the country.

Three months earlier a young woman knocked on the door and presented herself as a distant cousin who needed help.
Every person in the household did not like her aura except Leonora who took one look at the petite, fragile looking girl and wanting to help and protect her, took her under her wing and treated Annabell with kindness.

Jos, Marquess of Severn had a disreputable past. Eight years earlier, in his early 20's, had married a girl. On his wedding night he discovered at his consternation, that his new wife was a sweet child.
A childhood illness made her lose her ability to ever grow in the mind.
He'd obtained a divorce and with that gained notoriety.

Leonora decided to return to London accompanied by Annabell.
There she met Jos and the mutual attraction was palpable.
He thought her the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, he was attracted to her wit, spirit and style too.
A courtship ensued including passionate embraces and kisses and it was going fine until Annabell reard an ugly head.

Annabell embarked on a mud throwing campaign against Leonora who had no idea of what her cousin was up to.
The conniving Annabell proceeded with great skill and deviousness to make Jos believe that Leonora was cruel to her, denigrated and treated her like the lowliest, berated, abused, terrorised, oppressed her and that her days were filled with insults and tears.

Jos fell for her machinations and was angry at himself for been so attracted to Leonora who obviously had a bad and cruel character.
He proved to be an easy dupe for Annabell's duplicity.
He felt he should be a protector of the poor, innocent girl who looked so vulnerable borned him feelings of pity and compassion.

In the next few weeks he proceeded to ignore Leonora and court Annabell.
Leonora accepted with heavy heart the fact that those two wanted each other, "If you cannot get a horse to drink even after you've let him to water then there's nothing to be done ", she thought.

Jos was wondering why he could not bring himself to talk to Annabell about a mutual future. He'd been visiting her and raised her expectations.
The problem was he felt no desire for her only a mental connection.
He'd thought her intelligent, kind and very sweet but still he was not physically enticed by her as he was by Leonora, so he had to wait till he exorcised the passion Leonora aroused in him and he could not help be angry at her and himself for her hold on him.

He had another encounter with Leonora in which he kissed her again and Leonora told him that she was not to be used for his entertainment, if he wanted her cousin he should take her and leave herself alone.

Jos visited Leonora and in a conflicted state of mind and half heartedly asked her to be his wife, as, he told her, he'd compromised her and wanted to make reparation.
No word of affection or respect or admiration. Only because he had to.
Leonora refused him.

What happened thereafter is too incredible to spoil for potential readers.
The other woman is an evil force to be reckoned with and the situation did get ugly.

I would have given this book 5 stars if it weren't for the first three chapters which were quite boring, slow and tedious.
After that the story picked up and the rest of the book is amazing.
I urge readers not to let those first chapters dissuade them from reading the book.

[LuvBug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book at all. It had some good angsty moments that kept me interested, and I liked catching up with Jason from The Duke's Wager. The book doesn't really pick up until the middle though. I didn't even know who the other woman was going to be until then. I was surprised when I found out who it was. I didn't think the hero would have went there with all that he had been through. Honestly she was poor competition for Leonora in my opinion.

The hero came off as a gullible idiot at times for not realizing that the other woman was a nut job and was making a fool of him. It didn't put him in a good light. There also wasn't enough interaction with the hero and heroine because he was always out squiring the stupid other woman all over the place and not spending quality time with the heroine. I was thinking about giving this book an above average rating until I found out why the other woman wanted the hero so badly. Her reasons were a let down. I was also annoyed that she got off scot free after duping everyone. All in all this was an entertaining read, but nowhere near as good as The Duke's Wager.

[gottalottie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can understand why this book gets such a low rating because watching everyone get duped by the titular “false angel” certainly stressed me tf out but the love story was quite believable and angsty and had me in a chokehold

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intensely emotional love triangle regency tale, with a brutally honest examination of how infidelity darkens the lives of men, women, and children. Also, includes a truly vicious anti-heroine that gets her comeuppance. Loved the the literary references to Shakespeare and William Blake that permeate throughout.

[Aneca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I keep complaining about wanting to read more traditional regencies and not being easy to find them Ioana was kind enough to lend me this old one. She told me it was her favourite of Layton's books and I was immediately interested since I know she doesn't give good grades easily.

Lord Joscelin Kidd, Marquess of Severne, was the handsomest and most charming nobleman in London -- and the most notorious. Not only had he been divorced under shocking circumstances from a young and innocent bride, but since that disastrous event he had shown no scruples -- and met no refusal -- in conquering beauty after beauty.

The lovely Lady Leonora Talwin had heard all the stories about him and understood them only too well, having seen from her womanizing father's example how base and brutish men could be. Never, she vowed, would she fall victim to a rake like the scandalous Severne.

But if Leonora thought she knew all too much about men, she knew far too little about her own foolish heart to daunt this lord who feasted on such feminine frailities...

I'm really happy to say that I enjoyed it very much too. It had an original plot, engaging characters and a villainess the likes of which I never seen before.

Leonora seems to say the wrong thing every time she gets close to the Marquess of Severne. Decided to apologise she approaches him at a ball and soon they discover how much they have in common. There is however someone else interested in Joss, Leonora's cousin who she kindly treats as a sister and to whom she introduces every eligible party will soon find a way into the Marquess' good graces.

Leonora is a heroine with a strong sense of fairness, she feels she must not interfere if Joss and Belle are destined to be together but at the same time she can't stop being confused, and feeling miserable by his attitude. In contrast Belle shows herself with a total lack of scruples in trying to get what she wants. For a long while it seemed the heroine was reduced to suffer in silence but finally the hero, after being made to look the fool for half the book, decides to be honest with himself and choose between one of the two.

I think I was a bit upset when Leonora seemed to be destined to fall victim of her own ethics in not wanting to interfere, manipulative people always have a field day when they find someone who wont resort to lower tactics and that's what makes it so unfair. Fortunately someone else was suspecting the truth but I was happy that Joss reaches the right conclusions all by himself even if a bit late. I think Layton's has done a great job to make us dislike Belle's characters so much and she ends the story still very much irredeemable.

Grade: B+

[Jena]

Love triangle. FMF.

[Ilze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leonora, the daughter of Viscount Talwin, decided to never marry after a few misadventures and the destruction of her illusions about her father, among others, during her come-out year when she was 18. Now, 5 years later, she has returned to London for the Season in order to help a poor cousin, Annabelle Greyling, find a husband. Both of the women become involved with the Marquess of Severne. The Marquess is an unusual character - he is a divorced man, someone spurned by most of society, although Leonora actually admires him for this, feeling that he, unlike most men of the ton, is not a hypocrite who is willing to live in a miserable marriage or marriage of convenience alone.

The plot and characters are well developed, and there is a good, if superficial, historical feel to the story, but the writing style is difficult and ponderous - I actually had to force myself to continue with the story in a few places. The love story is believable, but it takes second place to some rather unpleasant plot machinations. I would have preferred more emphasis on developing the main relationship rather than the other, less enjoyable aspects of the plot.

Edith Layton has a rather unlikeable habit of coyly inferring that a couple are kissing or embracing without actually stating it. She does this in several places in the later part of the book, when the romance has been resolved - I think she got this style from Georgette Heyer, who does it in a couple of books, but it somehow works a lot better in Georgette Heyer's books than in this book, maybe because Georgette Heyer's books are a lot more humorous than Edith Layton's.

Finally, the back cover blurb about the story on the original Signet Regency edition is ridiculous (just ignore it if you see it), but the cover is great - a painting by the wonderful Allen Kass.

[Desi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much exposition by far, and the love triangle angle went on much too long for the protagonists to have spent sufficient time together. This led to a rather abrupt ending where suddenly everything was supposedly all fine and dandy and yep "It's wedding time now!". But it is worth the read if you can wade through the beginning chapters, which all had a rather weird way of referring to people as "the brunette" or "the blonde" or "the gentleman" as if this would somehow lend some rather uncalled for mystery to the proceedings.

Once past these rambling bits though, things do rather pick up and the tale improves significantly. Characters themselves were fantastic and real-seeming. All this book probably needed was a better editor, as well as some tightening up and parallel guidance on where the story needed expanding. This is one of those books the author, at a more mature writing stage, could have jiggled and played around with a bit for more splendid results.

[T from Istria 💛💚 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Splendid!

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

You could see from almost the beginning where this plot was headed, so no surprises there. I kept getting confused with Leonora's thinking processes. She seemed to bounce back and forth between never planning to marry to wanting Joss's attention, so I don't know where she thought the latter would head. Joss himself was a bit confusing bouncing back and forth between Leonora and Belle. I was glad when everything was resolved, since I was getting dizzy.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept expecting there to be some big reveal about what caused the rift between Leonora and her father, and why it was so traumatic. I expected him to be a murderer, or something equally dreadful. Instead he's head of the spies? Ah well, it was a decent read.

[Spazfungus · Rating 3 out of 5]

very engrossing, it was interesting to read, but slightly uncomfortable because the villain was so devious

[Ksenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Edith Layton, you've had some mad writing skill.

EL's world is populated with flawed, real people. It's almost like she time traveled and have had a peek behind a curtain at a world long gone. Her very first book, The Duke's Wager, was a tour de force and, at least for me, have raised a bar for Historical Regency books very, very high.

I understand why some readers are not enamored with Layton's books; her books can be quite disturbing to read. You will not get warm and fuzzy, quite the opposite, you'll get chilled and spooked at human cruelty, pathology even. The romance is present, of course, but it develops very slowly and more realistically. The stage where all the drama has been played out is set far away from Almack and lemonades; you'll find there not a one blushing debutante. Instead, you'll find cool and cynical men and women, dysfunctional families. The only light in the darkness are flickers of romance that only rare, only the luckiest of them, get to have. Love is a rare commodity in high society of the Regency time; it's a unicorn, it's a redemption.

To fully appreciate the excellence of False Angel, it's best to read without knowing anything about the book.

[Laine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Old-fashioned, wordy, sterile romance. Heroine Leonora is TSTL - taken in completely by a distant manipulative cousin while the hero is only slightly smarter by being true to himself instead of uncovering the devious plot to lie him into marriage (and we're supposed to believe he's talented in spy work). How many hours does Leonora do all the reading in her supposed intellectual sessions with her cousin Annabelle without even suspecting the truth? Even when the conniver admits her perfidy, Leonora is such a wimp and goody two shoes she can't rouse herself to foil her vicious cousin's plans despite coaching by an older sister with less scruples. She relies on her father's wits and strategy to reunite her with her true love whose proposal she had stupidly rejected earlier. Annabelle is in fact rewarded for her villainy with a financial settlement and departs for her next victim. The sketch of her interior life as a sociopath is well done, making her slightly more interesting than her dopey marks.

There's a truly ugly sub-plot when the hero takes on the scandal of divorce admitting impotence on discovering his wife has the mental capacity of a 5 year old child resulting from a youthful accident. She is remarried by her monstrous father to a less scrupulous husband and dies in childbirth and agony. That moral pygmy of a sire then repairs his friendship with the hero's father (and hero) instead of being shunned as beyond the pale.

[StMargarets · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of triangles.

The heroine's distant cousin was the false angel of the title - and was she ever an OW from hell. She was an opportunist who decided to go after the hero, knowing the heroine had a huge crush on him.

Hero was unlucky in love (He married the woman his dead brother was bethrothed to. She was cognitatively impaired and he didn't feel he it would be ethical to bed her. So he had a scandalous divorce and is now a social parirah). He will be just as unhappy if the OW engineers an engagement.

So the stakes for the H/h are high and it's the psychopath OW who is the problem. It's not my favorite premise, but the lower rating is for how tedious the writing is. So many long passages and opining by the author.

[Beebs · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can't get past the heroine's humble-brag, endless description of herself: Not only does she have pale skin and rose-red cheeks, her eyes are large, her nose is straight, and her lips are too rosy and full. Oh noes!!!

But wait there's more! It's horrible! She's 'high and full-bosomed" with a tiny waist and rounded hips, with long slender legs!

Why, oh why, must she be cursed with being so ridiculously good looking?!?

Obviously the only thing for her to do is to get her cousin/companion married off and retire to the country forever where men aren't forever being attracted to her looks.

[Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like watching the movie “Play Misty For Me. I almost felt like I should be reading it through my fingers. The villain was very disturbing and very well developed. I liked the older sister very much and all of the contributing characters. I didn’t know whether to give this book a two or a five. Shiver.

[Shanze · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked both the main characters, and the story was a bit different, but there were too many inner monologues and not enough dialogues.

Also, I just don’t like silly misunderstandings.

Three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very slow start, but I enjoyed the twists & turns of this novel. The title of the book is awesome foreshadowing. Such an evil cousin. She had me fooled the beginning. Great instincts, Katie!

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike others I liked the plot devices and found the evil character a finely drawn piece of work.

[Nanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally love EL but this one dragged on. I didnt care for the plot and the motivations and I predicted how (and which character) the conflict would come from. I skimmed a lot.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up ebook reissue of an old Layton Regency due to Willaful's rec. Can't say that I appreciated it as much as she did, alas.

Leonora (Nell) can't seem to stop herself from constantly putting her foot in her mouth--especially when she is speaking to the scandalous Joscelin Peter Kidd, Fifth Marquess of Severne. Though he is one of her foreign office father's spy proteges, Severne is shunned throughout the ton due to his divorce. A few years earlier, when Nell spied her own father trysting with a woman not his wife at Vauxhall, Nell vowed she wouldn't ever marry, and did everything she could to get her parents to send her home to the country, including some pretty outrageous stunts. Severne rescued her from one such stunt (visiting Mother Carey's prostitute house), although she hasn't had much to do with him since. She's back in London now, though, determined to help her distant cousin, Annabelle, find a proper mate.

Severne has a sympathetic reason for his divorce, and proves to be a charming, if rather obtuse, hero. For as soon as she realizes that Severne and Nell are beginning to care for one another, Annabelle decides to go after Severne herself. Severne, angry at himself for being so attracted to Nell despite her obviously poor character, proves a more than willing dupe.

When Nell discovers the extent of her cousin's duplicity, she knows she has to rescue Severne from Annabelle's clutches. But can she trust her cheating father to help her untangle the ridiculous web she's woven?

This is one where I felt as if I was meant to laugh at Nell, and not always in a kind-spirited manner. And the characterization of Annabelle was pretty ugly (enough, already, with describing her "small sharp breasts"!)

[Reforming · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very slow in first half, picks up with interesting plot twist later.

[Elen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Layton's books on principle. In fact, I LOVE the first book of the series(it's not precisely out as a series, but I guess Layton wrote those four books as a quartet), The Duke's Wager. But this book lost me from the beginning(I thought Layton usually employs much simpler, clear sentences, not this portentous mess), and the only reason I continued reading was because it had Torquay in it so it's supposed to retain some good qualities the previous books had. Only thing I can say, the author knows how to retain readers' interest. The melodrama was intriguing, for sure. But that's what the whole book was, a melodrama. Everything goes perfectly, so out of nowhere a psychopath must be thrown in to draw out the storyline. And of course a saint should put up with all the bullshit so the problem can't be solved. Had the psychopath been represented more accurately I might have more patience with this attention trap, but how this supposedly cunning villain made a mistake showed psychopathy was researched only cursorily. I was more angry at the author and myself for falling for this trap and unable to quit reading more than at the villain. Well, the added complication did stop "she had this trauma from the past, he had that trauma from the past, so their love is aaalll about those two traumas" sort of stupid simplification so it was a nice change.

[penelopewanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

On loan from Ioana.
I tried to see which of the four Laytons lent by Ioana were published first and will read them in order.
It took me a bit to get back into Layton's style (too many fast-paced contemporary novels recently, I guess), but once in, it was like wallowing in a lovely bubble bath.
I found the story interesting, and was intrigued by the total shallowness and lack of moral fiber on Belle's part - no effort on Layton's part to explain or justify (ok, Papa mistreated her, and mama left, but that is mentioned soooo in passing). Of course I gnashed my teeth waiting for Nell to cotton on to Belle's antics and tried to imagine how Severne would discover the truth. I couldn't help wondering how it would have been (happily) resolved if there hadn't been witnesses to the scene in the library...
I like the fact that Layton does not make her characters, not even the good ones, angels (the title is no coincidence), that for example, the father is indeed fairly guilty as charged,after all... Anyway, I stayed up way too late reading this pretty much in one sitting. So glad to have had the opportunity to read it.