A Bride For Bedivere

Book Details:

Hardback edition published by Harper & Row, New York, 1976. First edition.

Sleeve notes:

Following the success of Castle Malindine, Hilary Ford here gives us an engrossing romantic novel of the dark passions and cynical deceptions at work beneath the formalities of Victorian England. And in the story's heroine, Jane Cowper, we meet a wholly captivating young woman, spirited, loving, and far too stubborn for her own good.

At seventeen Jane Cowper is the oldest in a family of five fatherless and all but destitute children. It is she on whom the entire household leans for guidance and strength, and it is Jane who must make the cruel bargain proposed by their proud and icy cousin, Sir Donald Bedivere.

If Jane agrees to leave her home and go to live on Sir Donald's great estate in Cornwall, he will arrange for her young brother to enter the Royal Navy and will support her mother and the little girls. If she refuses, they can expect no help from him at any time. Given Sir Donald's forbidding manner, the choice would be grim one for any girl. To Jane, it is the first unthinkable, but as she weighs the cost of her refusal to those she loves she forces herself to accept.

Once her initial homesickness has lessened, Jane finds much that is pleasurable at Carmaliot, Sir Donald's ancestral residence: marvellous clothes, a new world of manners, learning to ride and dance. Sir Donald's wife is kind to her, and she quickly responds to the sympathy and charm of the younger of Sir Donald's stepsons. Sir Donald's own son, the invalid Michael, heir to the baronetcy and the estate, soon wakens her compassion. But when Jane learns the cold-blooded purpose she has been brought to Carmaliot, her resolution wavers. And before she can act - or even plan her course - her life is at risk.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins

Book Details:

Paperback edition published by Sphere Books, London, 1978. First printing.

Sleeve notes:

When young Jenny Cowper was offered a home by a distant relative Sir Donald Bedivere her impoverished family saw it as a stroke of great fortune. But from the beginning, Jenny had doubts. Carmaliot, the Bediveres' great Cornish houses was pleasant enough, and Sir Donald and his family went out of their way to make her feel at home. But Jenny soon learned that Sir Donald's kindly exterior hid an inexorable ruthlessness. And when he finally revealed his true motive in bringing her to Carmaliot, she was horrified. For not only was his plan repugnant - it also marked the beginning of a nightmarish ordeal that was to threaten her very life.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins

Book Details:

Hardback edition published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1976. First Edition ????

Sleeve notes:

Although Jenny Cowper rejoiced when her brutal and tyrannical father died, she was the first to admit that his death raised problems for his widow and five children. Life in mid-nineteenth century Portsmouth without a breadwinner was not easy and she discounted her mother's talk of help from rich relations as the rambling of a mind unsettled by grief. So Sir Donald Bedivere's offer to adopt one of the children and support the rest of the family in moderate comfort astonished her. She prayed he would choose pretty little Maud and not her beloved brother Harry.

But Sir Donald had a plan in mind and it was Jenny herself and no one else who could help him realize it. Unaware of this at first, she did, however, sense that this courtesy and kindness hid a ruthlessness she feared. At Carmaliot, his magnificent house in Cornwall, treated as a member of the family, life was pleasanter than she had anticipated, despite the unwelcome attentions of his second son, Edgar certainly his youngest son, the handsome John, was entertaining company. But the centre of Sir Donald's hopes was his eldest son and heir, Michael, who proved to be very different from the Adonis she had been led to expect. Once Sir Donald had revealed his plan for Jenny's future, however, her position was radically changed. What he proposed was not only repugnant: it involved her in a nightmarish ordeal which eventually threatened her life.

Once again Hilary Ford has written an enthralling and exciting novel, a splendid successor to Sarnia and Castle Malindine.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins