Shadow of a Lady (Hardcover)

Helen, the only daughter of a naval captain, is sent to London for a season where she meets and rejects Charles Scroope, who at that time is not doing much with his life but promises to reform should she accept him. Returning home after she discovers that her dead great aunt has left her her fortune when she turns twenty-one providing that she keeps it a secret until then and that she 'behaves' herself. Her father, impatient with her wasted season, decides to take Helen and her mother to Italy to see if his wife, who he is not particularly pleasant to, can recover her health there and agrees to take Charlotte with whom Helen stayed in London and Lord Merritt (who Charlotte's mother hopes will propose to Charlotte) on board with him. During a naval attack Helen is forced to take refuge below decks with Trenche who is a young man attached to Merritt. Terrified by the attack he takes advantage of the situation and rapes her with the result that she becomes pregnant. Realising that she can no longer inherit her great-aunt's fortune she accepts Lord Merritt who has been importuning her to marry him since he learned that his own uncle will only leave to his fortune to him in the event of his marriage and producing of an heir, though she does inform him that she is pregnant. Her mother dead and married to Merritt, Helen lands in Naples with Charlotte after again meeting Charles Scroope who now regards her with disgust as a fortune-hunter. Her husband becomes close to the ineffectual King Ferdinand and Helen herself meets Lady Hamilton who is close friends with the Queen. Trenche is arrested with several Italians by the secret police though he innocent of the crime, thus relieving Helen of his presence, though now her husband comes under the influence of his sinister servant Price. Helen is recued from several situations by Charles Scroope who still has not forgiven her and gives birth to her son, who her husband now resents as his uncle seems likely to give his fortune straight to the child with the result that Helen fears both for her son's and her own life. Scroope is harmed in an naval engagement and Helen persuades her husband to let her look after him and during his delirium she discovers that Trenche, who escaped from prison blaming her for his arrest, had told him that she slept with him of her own volition. With Naples coming under attack Helen flees with the Hamiltons, her husband and son on the royal boat. Trenche, like Nemesis, reappears and kills Merritt and then turns to do the same to Helen but she is saved by Scroope, after Trenche reveals that he raped her. Helen and Scroope are now free to be together since her husband is dead and he has all his misunderstandings about her cleared up - a happy ending.

A good bit of light reading and better than some of her others, though Scroope's immediate distrust of Helen (in the same way as all Hodge's heroes unjustly mistrust the heroines) is a bit tiresome. Otherwise full of action and historically correct enough not to annoy people who prefer their historical fiction to be accurate.

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