Georgette Heyer’s fiction is G rated. So we never even learn if this marriage has been consummated. After a perfunctory wedding ceremony, Sherry expects his bachelor life to continue as usual. He even tells Hero she can ‘discreetly’ carry on as she wishes as well. You see this marriage is truly one of convenience, a fact Lord Sherington makes plain to his new bride. He simply wanted his independence. Ironically he had to marry to get it. Taking a wife means he is now in charge of his own inheritance, not his annoying uncles; it also means his mother can be kept at arm’s length. This pleases the newlywed Lord no end. Of course, Lady Sherington senior is horrified he’s married a young thing with no background or fortune. Sherington only seems to take more delight in his family’s reaction, and his life continues as before - partying without responsibility. His new wife, however is at a loss. Seems she wants badly to please her new husband, but he spends too much time at the gaming tables to school her in the ways of society.
If Sherington was expecting a meek wallflower, he chose the wrong bride. Hero is no shrinking violet, nor does she worry much what others think. (I could not help but think of the young Princess Di, but the comparison stopped there. In Hero’s case, it isn’t willfulness or backbone so much as twittery.) Most of the book is taken up by Hero’s attempts to please her husband - by mimicking his public behavior. He takes a coach to a less than desirable person’s home? So does she. He gambles publicly? So does she. He goes with unsavory characters to public halls? So does she; and on, and on. She claims innocent mimicry each time. The problem is, of course, that these people live in the Regency era. Women were to stay at home with their needlepoint, not gallavant all over town kicking up their fashionable heels. Married ladies of society were not to take their own carriages (a hired one might do) to a bachelor’s home, etc. Women of society were expected to be above reproach. The new Lady Sherington instead fast becomes an item of gossip.
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