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Title: The Bachelor's Wedding
Harlequin Enterprises
Item Number: 9780373034154
Number: 1
Product Description: The Bachelor's Wedding
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780373034154
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780373034154
Rating: 3/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/41/54/9780373034154.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9296 total ratings) |
Max Turgeon
reviewed The Bachelor's Wedding on September 04, 2020[Araminta Smith is one of Betty's small and supposedly plain heroines who works for a temp agency. She is hired to help care for the teenaged niece and nephew of our RBD hero, Professor Jason Lister, when his sister has an emergency. Jason pointedly keeps “Miss Smith” at arm’s length, civil but coolly aloof, although he is helpful with the kids. Araminta is attracted from the start, but our sensible girl tells herself it would be silly and pointless to develop any interest in him because she's clearly a nonentity to him.
Not so much. Our RBD is soon irritated to find himself thinking about her a lot, and finding that she compares favorably to the kinds of girls who bother him to take them out when he'd rather be home relaxing with Horace (in Latin of course): ... he found it difficult to dismiss her image from his mind…she was so unlike any of the women of his acquaintance. She had made to attempt to engage his attention; the reverse in fact….She was refreshingly undemanding and he no longer found her plain. How pleasant, he considered, to be able to read and study in his library without the fear of phone calls begging him to dine or escort any of his women acquaintances, wasting hours of precious leisure…a happy state which could be achieved if he were to marry a girl as undemanding as Araminta. He laughed aloud and dismissed the absurd idea. But the seed is planted…
Jason's sister returns, and Jason drives Araminta to her cheerless home. She thinks "that's that," and resumes her unsatisfactory life, picking up another assignment immediately because her sniping, ungrateful father and sister have run up the household bills in her absence. (They are up there on the list of shittiest relatives in a BN book--which is saying something.) The job she takes is awful, and she's still weaving daydreams around meeting Professor Lister again, to her self-derision. She thinks he must have forgotten all about her..."But he hadn't."
He's thinking about her even more--what an ideal companion she was, sensible and unobtrusive and that trait most desired by a BN hero (when they're not setting themselves up for disaster with convenient social butterflies): restful. He decides to look her up to see how she is doing--particularly since he has an inkling that her home life is not very happy.
He's waiting one evening when she finishes her work for the day and he more or less springs his offer on her: a typically prosaic and rather insulting RBD/RDD MoC proposal that Araminta is rightly a little indignant about:"I suppose that, like most men, I have hoped that one day I would meet a woman I would want to love and live with for the rest of my life, but she seems to have eluded me, so I must settle for second-best. After all, many love matches come to grief, whereas a marriage founded on friendship and compatibility may well prove very successful....I consider it right to explain my feelings before I ask you to marry me, Araminta."
She was to be second-best, was she? If--and the idea was laughable of course--she should marry him, she would make him eat those words, even if it took years. It was, in fact, a good reason for marrying him... She tells him she would like to think about it and will let him know the next day. She decides to talk to her vicar, who listens carefully and asks if she loves Jason. She admits that she doesn't but that she really really likes him and they are compatible in important, serious ways. She thinks they'd be happy. The vicar tells her he thinks she should marry Jason--trust, respect, and liking can grow to affection, and it would be good for her family to have to take responsibility for themselves.
When Jason shows up that night, they tell her father and sister together that they are getting married. Sister Alice's reaction: "Marry Araminta? But that's ridiculous…she's not even pretty, you'll be ashamed by her." Jason’s look scares her and shuts her down instantly. Dear old Dad goes with "We shall have to manage as best we can without you, Araminta," a remark which made her feel guilty, as he'd intended. Dear old dad doesn’t even plan to attend the very modest wedding to give his “lesser” daughter (in his eyes) away until the hero writes him a pointed note—and includes some money so the heroine can buy a decent dress for the wedding, which he tells Araminta’s father to pretend is his own money to avoid humiliating the heroine. Dad keeps back a good portion of the money—Alice deserves some of it, he figures—but does give Araminta a hundred pounds, which she uses to buy a nice wedding outfit.
Araminta and I both start to really fall for Jason from this point, as he becomes protective and intent on making sure she’s not unhappy. ”…I want you out of your father’s house as soon as possible…I do not mean to be unjust, Araminta, but they are rapidly turning you into a doormat. You deserve better than that. I don’t promise you an exciting life, but I shall do my best to make you happy.”
They marry, a very quiet church wedding. He does have to go to the hospital that night for an emergency, and she realizes that her life with him has begun as it will go on, but she’s happy when he talks to her about his work the next morning. He’s busily back to work, though, although he promises to go with her on a shopping spree in a few days. Our heroine gets the BN clothing makeover via Harrods to kit her out for her new life.
But she’s disappointed later when he doesn't seem to notice her new pretty outfits and at his habit of retiring to his study to immerse himself in work and reading, although she knows it was what she had agreed to. Ah well, there’s always tapestry work and knitting and the dogs to keep her occupied. But she is a little sad and before long has her Dawning Realization: she’s in love with him, and probably has been for a while. Now this was a pretty kettle of fish, since he had shown no sign of even a mild romantic thought about her. The obvious answer was to get him to fall in love with her….it seemed unlikely, but with patience [and the help of beauty products, hee—that BN faith in fashion!] she could at least have a good try.
Their placid, platonic life continues, although our limited hero PoV shows Jason becoming increasingly aware of and attracted to his bride. She likes his friends—except for Vicky, who has been making plays for him for years but never achieves OW status. His friends and family find her charming, he tells her after a party, and she’s glad but It would be nice…if Jason found [her] charming too. Love, if this was love, wasn’t at all what she had expected…Something would have to be done, and quickly…How, she wondered, did one get a man to fall in love with one—even show an interest….? Something which the professor was doing, if only she could have known…
He’s noticed something different about her—“as though she had made a discovery of some sort.” He is glad that she’s slotting so conveniently into his life and he looks forward to spending the weekend with her at his country cottage. We get critter rescue, always a BN bonding event: There’s a half-starved cat at the cottage, which they take in. They have a nice weekend, pottering in the garden and taking walks, and sharing domestic tasks. Araminta is carefully friendly but reserved, though which, while it might have concealed her true feelings, caused an awkwardness which the professor was quick to notice and wonder about. He had to admit to himself that in the short time in which he had known her, she had become a part of his life which was becoming increasingly important to him, but he was aware that…Araminta had retreated and he couldn’t think why.
Back in London, Vicky invades their domestic peace their first night home, to their annoyance, although they politely ask her to stay for dinner. “What a chatterbox you are, Vicky,” Jason tells her when she rambles on about people Araminta doesn’t know, and he shuts her down sharply when she sneaks in a few jabs at Araminta. Vicky is disposed of from that point on—“a wasted evening,” Jason says to Araminta afterward, and when she thanks him again for their lovely weekend at the cottage, he gets downright testy: “Thank me?” He sounded harsh. “Why should you thank me? I found every moment of it delightful.”
Only a few days later, our hero has his own Dawning Realization: He was staring at her so intently that she looked down at her person. “Is something wrong?” she asked him. “No, no, something is very right, and I’ve only just discovered it.”
Sister Alice shows up, “fingering the small silver ornaments set out” (which I wouldn’t put past her to pocket) and boasting that dear old dad got a better gig in Bournemouth and they’ve sold the house and are moving. Araminta says to Jason afterward that it seems like a miracle and then realizes he’s the miracle maker: “I wanted to make you happy, Araminta.” Her father doesn’t know Jason was behind this uptick in good fortune, and they agree it’s better that way. They meet dear old dad and Alice for dinner (one last time, hopefully!), and dad leaves his elder daughter with this charming farewell: “Of course, you have treated us very badly…I am surprised that any daughter of mine could be so coldhearted and ungenerous, leaving us to manage on our own.” Jason presses her later about what her father said, and although she glosses over it, he says harshly: “Unless you wish to do so, you do not have to see your father or Alice again. They have treated you badly, used you as housekeeper and bread winner and not shown one jot of gratitude. They do not deserve to have their circumstances improved but it was the only way I could think that would set you free.”
With Vicky and Araminta’s crappy family disposed of neatly, we have only the Big Reveal to get past. They sat, the pair of them, each concealing their true feelings, entirely at cross purposes, Betty tells us. Clearly we need a Precipitating Event!
And we get one—nephew Jimmy is missing during a big storm! Araminta insists on going with Jason to search for him. They find him in a well—no, just kidding!—with a broken leg near the rising river, where our RBD does some emergency first aid, taking a moment to hold brave Araminta close and kiss her cold nose, and take Jimmy to safety.
They arrive back home to the tender care of the FFRs, Araminta resolves that she’s done hiding her feelings: Something would have to be done. It wasn’t honest to go on as they were; she would tell him that she had fallen in love with him and leave him to decide what to do. She had never been good at pretending…
She flies downstairs the next morning, prepared to tell all, asking if he can spare a moment, and he tells her that he can spare a lifetime for her, his “own dear heart.” Awww. He confesses his love for her first, and she starts to do the same, but he interrupts her to kiss her “gently at first, and then with a fierce enjoyment that took her breath.” Our RBD has that gleam in his eye betokening the kinds of things that lead to babies, and Buller, our FFR, spying them in a clinch in the hallway, is only to happy to report back to Mrs. Buller: “Happy ever after, that’s what—didn’t I tell you?...Happy ever after, and about time too!” (hide spoiler)]
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