Leonie Carter had a harrowing experience 4 years ago when she was 18 - she went on a few dates with this guy in London, not realizing he was a married man, when her step-brother Phil began blackmailing him and the guy (Jeremy) got her prosecuted for it! He aired all sorts of accusations in court via the barrister, John G. Noble - that Leonie was installed as his mistress in an apartment, that she was sleeping with and conspiring with her stepbrother, etc., essentially telling everyone in existance she was a slut. Now Leonie is working as an illustrator, living with the older woman who is an author of children's books. Her brother has just been released from prison the same weekend that the woman's nephew Giles comes to visit for the first time...and Giles is John Noble!
So upon seeing Leonie, Giles decides to make out with her, and then tells her it was to see if she would go for blackmailing him too! Clearly he has not forgotten the horrid accusations and he's still not in any mood to listen to Leonie's side of what happened (mainly that Jeremy lied - he and Jeremy have been friends for some time. But as Leonie is shocked to discover, she is falling in love with Giles, while he seems to just want to get her into bed whenever he's not taunting her with more accusations about her past behavior, including trying to find out about her late husband. Leonie wants him back but is afraid to sleep with him as he will recognize that she is a virgin! She proposes marriage as the only way she'll give in and demands $100,000 (well £ really) to be given to her brother - and then Giles announces their engagement! But can he ever accept the truth?
Reading this book my feelings were very conflicted about whether to applaud the way it defies clichés in many ways or to get offended by the ridiculous archaicness (is that a word?) the next second. Considering that it was published at the same time I was born (ok maybe a few weeks earlier), I do give it a pass for things that would upset me in something published today, for instance Giles' threatening to "break" Leonie, the dreaded not-having-had-sex, even-with-her-husband device (he was paralysed, only wanting companionship for his last year of life), Giles' threatening to break Leonie's wrist (well, I don't think it was serious but), and finally Giles' hitting Leonie when she hints that she's sleeping with Jeremy (to get Giles to break it off as she thinks he loves someone else). But all this is easily balanced out by the good: Leonie actually gets upset and feels angry and violent back, the book acknowledges that it could just use Leonie's virginity to disprove the lies (although why that didn't come up before her case got brought to trial I don't know), and even better Leonie actually doesn't respond the time Giles kisses her against her will! She gets ill and he acknowledges that and feels bad! How awesome is that?! This book also gets mad props for not using the heroine's virginity as a way to disprove her promiscuity - she doesn't even sleep with Giles til the epilogue (although it's really just a final paragraph, not divided into its own section) when they are already happily married. Giles has decided to accept her word on some things, his mother's on others, and just to accept her, past and all, "knowing" he wouldn't be her first - and he confesses to be in love first! Oh, and there's a cute secondary romance between Leonie's brother and Jeremy's daughter. Well done - a classic HP.
