A Perfect Gentleman by Candace Camp

Narrated by Gildart Jackson

I enjoyed A Perfect Gentleman in print when it came out last year, so I was pleased to learn it was to be issued in audio format. I was also pleased to see Gildart Jackson – who I last listened to in Caroline Linden’s The Truth About the Duke trilogy back in 2014 (where did that time go?!) – returning to the genre, and given that the novel combines two of my favourite tropes – an arranged marriage and a second-chance romance – I was looking forward to experiencing it again in audio.

The book opens with a short prologue set just after the marriage of Graeme Parr, eldest son and heir to the Earl of Montclair, and Abigail, daughter of the wealthy American industrialist Thurston Price. Abigail knows her new husband doesn’t love her and that he has married her principally for the dowry he plans to use to restore his family fortune and estate, but Graeme’s manner towards her has always been kind and gentlemanly, and she hopes that affection – perhaps even love – will eventually grow between them. So when, on their wedding night he accuses her of deception and of trapping him into marriage, all the while knowing he loves someone else, Abigail is devastated. She has no idea what Graeme is talking about and can only watch in shock as he storms out of their hotel room.

Ten years later, it’s Graeme’s turn to be shocked when he learns of his wife’s return to London following a decade spent back at home in New York. Even more infuriatingly, it seems that his errant countess is causing quite a stir in London society – and not just because she has been absent for a decade. She is highly sought after and surrounded by admirers wherever she goes, which doesn’t fit with Graeme’s recollection of the rather mousy, drab young woman he married. He doesn’t want anything to do with her, but he needs to know why she’s returned to England and knows he can’t put off meeting her forever. When Graeme finally sees Abigail for the first time since their wedding, he understands why she is so much admired; the intervening years have seen her grow into a vibrant, confident and captivating woman whom even he –with very good reason to dislike her – is attracted to. Their initial meeting is cordial, but Graeme is still unable to see Abigail as anything other than her father’s daughter; manipulative, deceitful and complicit in the scheme by which Thurston Price blackmailed Graeme into the marriage (a fact of which Abigail had been – and still is – unaware).

After leaving London on her wedding night, Abigail travelled to Europe before going home to America, where she proceeded to make life for herself independently of her father and his continual scheming. Ten years later, Abigail has realised there is something missing from her life – and tells Graeme that she wants a child. He’s stunned by her matter-of-fact request and horrified at the thought of sharing a child with a woman he dislikes – even though the baser part of him recognises he’s not averse to taking part in the activity required to actually make a baby! He refuses – until Abby points out to him that he needs a legitimate heir, and that at present she’s his only means of obtaining one. When Graeme continues to baulk, she asks for a divorce – which brings him up short. All his life, he has striven to do the right thing and has no wish to besmirch his family name with the scandal a divorce would bring, so he and Abigail reach an agreement. They will live as man and wife until she conceives, and their child will be brought up in England.

While establishing the grounds for the couple’s coming together after ten years apart, the author also sets in motion a secondary plotline that concerns Graeme’s search for information relating to the charity for invalid soldiers that his father set up and maintained until his death – which was also the subject of the blackmail Thurston Price had used to make sure that Graeme went through with his marriage to Abigail. Ms. Camp weaves the two plot-threads together quite nicely, although the execution of the mystery leaves something to be desired and the villain’s motivations are somewhat flimsy. The strongest part of the book is undoubtedly the gradual rapprochement between the estranged spouses, who quickly establish their compatibility in bed (and lots of other places!) as they very enthusiastically embrace the task of procreation. Their physical discovery of each other paves the way for the development of a greater intimacy between them, and the way they come to a greater understanding of each other and what has led them to this point is very well done.

Gildart Jackson could read me a moment-by-moment description of the process of paint drying and I’d listen to him quite happily – he’s got that sort of rich, dark and velvety voice a friend of mine describes as the auditory equivalent of melted chocolate, so there’s no question it’s very easy on the ear. His performance here is generally good, although there are a few weaknesses that prevented me from awarding a higher grade. Narrative and dialogue are well paced and clearly enunciated , and his character differentiation is, on the whole, effective, although there are a few places his portrayal of Graeme slips into a different register and he sounds a little too similar to James, who is the other principal male character in the story. This doesn’t happen often though, and for the most part, the two men are easy to tell apart. Mr. Jackson’s female voices are not quite so successful, however, and this is something I recall mentioning in my earlier reviews of his work. His portrayal of Abby starts well; he opts to differentiate via timbre rather than pitch, giving her a soft, husky tone that, together with a slight American accent, creates an image of an attractive, confident woman who is a little more mature (she’s twenty-eight) than the average heroine in an historical romance. The trouble is that both timbre and accent are inconsistent; sometimes the accent disappears, sometimes the timbre becomes harsher, so that I occasionally had to rely on dialogue tags or think hard about who must be speaking when Abby was in conversation, usually with Graeme, but at times, with someone else. Inconsistency is also an issue with the portrayal of Abby’s maid, Molly. The text explicitly states that she’s Scottish, but her accent veers back and forth across the Irish Sea, sometimes within the space of a single sentence! For the vast majority of the time though, the narration was strong enough for me to be able to, if not ignore, then at least bear with, its flaws, and to put it on the ‘win’ side of the equation in the end.

A Perfect Gentleman is an entertaining second-chance romance in which the protagonists – most refreshingly – generally communicate well and work together to solve their problems. There’s a bit of eleventh-hour drama when their wires become crossed, and the resolution of the mystery is weak, but there’s still much to like in terms of the story. And although Mr. Jackson’s narration is somewhat uneven in places, I enjoyed it overall and am looking forward to listening to A Momentary Marriage in the near future.

Caz