REVIEW: The Maid of Honour by Dinah Dean
B Reviews / Book Reviews17th-century / English Historical / forced proximity / Great-Fire-of-London / Historical / plague / Restoration / Restoration England31 Comments
“Have you found that ideal man yet?”
There was only one man at the court of King Charles II that Miss Mary Hook could contemplate marrying — Prince Rupert was undoubtedly the most interesting, most intelligent, most honorable, chivalrous and handsome man at Court. If only she could find a man like him — but attainable, and country-loving, with no desire to spend his life at Whitehall. Perhaps she had — and thrown away her chance when she had refused to marry Francis Hartwell. He had saved her from the plague, but she would not marry him out of gratitude. Now she realized what she had thrown away — could she, dare she, say to him that she had changed her mind?
Review
I think the only other romance book I’ve ever read that features the plague is Paula Allardyce’s My Dear Miss Emma. But this one trumps that as it also includes the Great Fire of London (2 disasters for the price of one! What a bargain.). It was also one of my bargains of the decade as I found a cheap copy listed by an Aussie bookseller and only paid $30.00 at the time instead of the $450.00 that some dealers were asking. And it’s even cheaper now! Is it worth $450.00? Heck no. But it is definitely worth what I paid and a bit more.
At a court famed for its debauchery and licentiousness, Mary Hook is an anomaly, a woman of virtue despite the determined efforts of some of the court dandies. When the summer of 1665 brings with it the Great Plague, she decides to ask for a leave of absence from her duties as a Maid of Honour to Queen Catherine of Braganza. Once she arrives home in Woodham, Essex, she renews a friendship with the daughter of a neighboring family, Jemima Hartwell whose brother, Francis, Mary barely remembers from years ago.
And after their first meeting, when Francis all but accuses Mary of being a loose court woman, she’s just as happy to avoid him. He’s handsome all right, but cold and reserved. At least that’s what Mary thinks until fate takes a hand and strands her at their estate when a servant falls ill with the plague. Now unable to leave for six weeks to avoid spreading the disease further, Mary and Francis begin to take second looks at each other. Looks which might go nowhere when Mary realizes that she too has the plague.
Dinah Dean’s style is nice, quiet and gentle. She writes great beta heroes and Francis is no exception. He’s also the descendant of the h/h of one of Dean’s other books, The Briar Rose (set during Henry VIII’s reign). Dean often only shows the POV of one main character and in this book it’s Mary. I would like to have seen more of Francis’s thoughts but we are told enough to see what’s going on in his mind. There’s also only kissing and that comes fairly late in the book. Dean is very descriptive and that slowed down the start of Maid of Honour just slightly. Reading exactly what the estates looked like was nice but didn’t advance the plot much.
Now, having gotten all the complaints out of the way, why did I like this book. Mary is a believable young woman of her times. Not feisty or a 21st century person at Charles II’s court. She makes some mistakes but I can excuse them in a young, confused woman. She also grows and learns what it is that she truly wants. While Francis is reserved, he’s anything but cold and acts as an honorable man. They’re backed up by well fleshed out secondary characters and you truly get a feel for the rhythms of 17th century English country life.
Two characters I really enjoyed are Oliver and Dr. Gumble. Oliver is the Hartwell’s house cat who rules the place with a firm paw. I was delighted with him as I once had a cat named Oliver as well and Dean “gets” cats and how they relate to their staff. Dr. Gumble is funny as a medical man spouting incomprehensible medical Latin and ordering everyone around (gee, he could be a doctor today).
So, nice h/h who slowly but believably fall in love and a great cat = B for me.
~Jayne
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Dinah Dean is one of my favourite authors, although I have not read her whole backlist, because they are so hard to find. I’ve read a couple of her regency roms set in England (The Cockermouth Mail is a lovely story), and a few set in Russia. Her used titles are often so expensive. I’d love her books to be published in e-format. She’s subtle and slow-burn (pretty rare in today’s romance world) but I think that there would be a market for her stories & settings.
This is one I haven’t read, and now I’m dying too.
@AMG: I reviewed “The Cockermouth Mail” here years ago when we first got started and remarked that as it was reissued in the US, it’s easier for find for reasonable prices.
https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/the-cockermouth-mail-by-dinah-dean/
Right now, this website (Bookfinder) lists a number of copies of “Maid of Honour” for under $20 which is fairly cheap for a Dean novel.
https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t3_3&qi=mCpCaYmLEn1xVJJsd15oyLWT3lE_1497963026_1:7:12&bq=author%3Ddinah%2520dean%26title%3Dmaid%2520of%2520honour%2520masquerade
Sellers have some copies listed on Amazon as well.
@AMG: I would LOVE to see her books reissued, too. Years ago I emailed someone at Harlequin (don’t remember who, now) and asked if there were any plans on reissuing Dean’s books in any format. The answer, sadly, was no.
I love Dinah Dean’s books, and over the years have managed to track down most of them in used bookshops (The Cockermouth Mail is one of my annual Christmas must-reads), but my absolute favourite is The Road to Kaluga (sometimes called Flight From the Eagle). I first read that book when I was about twelve years old, in hardcover, at our local library, and fell head over heels for the story and the hero in equal measure. Years later, I managed to get that same library copy when it was released from the library’s collection, and I have it in on my shelves behind me now. It’s one of my treasures and I still sink into that world with every re-read. Thanks for giving Dinah Dean some recognition here. She’s a wonderful writer whose books hit a lot of the same chords for me that Carla Kelly’s do.
@Susanna Kearsley: Squeee! I know the joyous feeling of tracking down one of her books. Over the years, I think I’ve managed at this point to get my hands on all of them except some history of Essex and Waltham Abbey.
I’ve read “Flight from the Eagle” but need to do a reread as it’s been a number of years. I had always heard that “Road to Kaluga” is a slightly expanded version of it.
Try Diana Norman’s “The Vizard Mask” for another book set during the plague, in fact, the opening line is “Penitence Hurd and the plague arrived in London on the same day”. It’s not exactly a romance, and the story extends beyond the plague years, but it does have a central love story and Norman’s characters are richly developed against a fascinating historical backdrop.
@Susan/DC: Several people have recommended this to me and I need to finally take you all up on that and read it. Hmmm, I need to look at my reading calendar and find a space for it …
Lovely to see a review of Dinah Dean, who is one of my favourite authors. Her characters (cats included!) have a very three-dimensional feel to them. I’ve collected all her books over many years, with the exception of Bernstein and Bronze, but I doubt if my German’s up to that anyway. I still remember the thrill of spotting Daughter of the Sunset Isles at a book fair – I had a momentary impulse to drop everything I was holding and throw myself on top of it before it could escape.
She’s very complicated bibliographically. The Rd to Kaluga dropped some early chapters and turned into Flight from the Eagle. That Sweet Enemy appears both under Marjorie May and Dinah Dean. The Green Gallant is about some of the characters from the Russian series, but uses the name Jane Hunt. And Bernstein was apparently only ever published in German (alas).
@Suzanna: LOL – now I have a vision of you leaping and tackling a poor book that was just lying there, minding its own business.
@Jayne, nosey question (no need to answer): Do you really have a reading calendar to schedule which book you will read and when? This is a new concept for me. I can’t even manage to keep a list of what I have read.
@Suzanna: I just bought a used version of That Sweet Enemy. Her books are wonderful.
@Jayne: That’s too bad. The writing is impeccable and the connections between the main characters are lovely.
@AMG: I agree. I wonder who owns the copyrights.
@LML: I do – for the books I’ve got advanced reading copies of so that I don’t overcommit myself.
This author sounds interesting and I’d like to try her. How would you all rank the three books I list below?
The Country Gentleman
Country Cousins
The Ice King
@Janine: I have them but I haven’t read any of them yet.
@AMG and @Jayne: It’s actually around $14 (*including* shipping from the UK) for a copy in good condition. Jayne, I wasn’t familiar with Bookfinder, but I see that much like AddAll.used, which I use all the time, it’s a meta search engine. I’m adding it to my bookmarks.
I purchased The Ice King and The Cockermouth Mail. I may regret the latter since it’s Good condition and I usually prefer VG or higher (I hate underlining, and annotations, they are incredibly distracting).
@Janine: The Ice King is part of her Russian series. I’ve only read the first two and I know there are characters who appear in various of the books but I’m not sure if you ought to read the series in order.
Cockermouth Mail is a standalone.
@Janine – My first pick would be The Ice King, which has a lovely heroine. It’s part of the Russian series, but works fine as a stand-alone. The country cousins and The country gentlemen are both set in the same English village and share some characters. The Gentleman comes first, so I’d read that first. (I also like its hero better).
@Jayne – Not to worry, my copy of Daughter of the SI has been loved, cherished and well-looked after ever since I captured it! I’m sure it’s happier with me and its related books than it was rubbing pages with any old books in a cartoon on the floor.
@Jayne: In case it makes “The Vizard Mask” move up on your reading schedule, Prince Rupert plays a major role.
Dinah Dean’s obituary – loaded with ads but interesting reading.
https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/4514239.print/
@Suzanna: Thanks for that. Yes, lots of ads. Is “Bernstein and Bronze” the German title for “Silk and Stone”?
@Jayne:
I didn’t realize The Road to Kaluga had been shortened to turn it into Flight from the Eagle (which I’ve only ever seen in paperback but never read). I’ve only ever read the hardback version of Kaluga, the one that I first read and own now. I actually included it in my blog on first romance loves for The Word Wenches way back when: https://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2019/02/first-loves.html#more
As for The Ice King, which Janine was asking about, it’s also really good. Set in St. Petersburg. Lucy Parker is a big Dinah Dean fan as well and The Ice King is of her favourite romances. We both love one particular scene in the book that has to do with a mouse hunt, which is all I can say about it without giving anything away.
@Suzanna: I’m sure your copy of DotSI is happier back with relations rather than being out on its own. ☺
@Susanna Kearsley: That’s what I’ve heard about “Road to Kaluga” and “Flight from the Eagle.” But since the cheapest copy of “Road” I see now is $78 (US) and I already have “Flight” I just can’t justify buying it to see for sure.
Mouse hunt, huh? Now that sounds interesting. Is there a cat involved?
@Jayne:
No cat involved :) Just a beautiful, emotional, brilliantly written scene that will live with you a long, long, time, if not forever (as it has with Lucy, Nicola Cornick, and me–we all ended up discussing it on Twitter a couple of years ago).
A lovely romance, well worth reading. I knew it was my kind of book after the first pages described the heroine, Tanya, becoming an orphan and going to live with her great-uncle, “the General”, a former artilleryman, whose education of her is unique:
“By the time she was eighteen, Tanya could calculate the charge and elevation necessary to fire a shell from a Unicorn howitzer on a given trajectory, or plan a route of march for an army from Brest-Litovsk to Barcelona, and could have found her way about the principal buildings of Moscow or St. Petersburg, if she ever managed to visit either city, which seemed unlikely as the General and his wife never travelled.”
I just knew, after reading that, I was going to love both Tanya and her story. And I did.
Thank you all, I am looking forward to The Ice King.
@Jayne: It’s a bit of a mystery. Here’s a description from a German fan site (it’s referring to the Geman book – Google translation) :
Dinah Dean – Amber and Bronze
Original title: Iron and Amber (1997)
ECON Taschenbuch Verlag / Translation: G. Weber-Jaric / ISBN: 3-612-27351-5
Content: England in the era of the Crusades. Roger Fitzhugh, a knight of the nobility, moves across the country to collect taxes for his king. When a debtor threatens to sell a young lady in his care into slavery, Roger decides to undertake a highly unusual act. To prevent the beautiful Rohese from ending up in a brothel, he buys her from the debtor – and proposes to her. Little does Roger suspect that a conspiracy is developing around his young, silent wife that has reached the highest circles at the royal court. Because Rohese is the granddaughter of one of the most powerful and richest men in the country – if only she could prove her true origins …
It’s described as a translation, but I’ve never been able to find any English original. The British National Bibliography doesn’t list anything. I would LOVE to read that book!
@Jayne: Flight from the Eagle is essentially Road to Kaluga with the first two chapters chopped off, and a short intro paragraph added. It was republished by Mills & Boon, which seems to have very exact length parameters, so they cut it down to fit. Also renamed it – I guess “The road to Kaluga” isn’t a very M & B title.
@Suzanna: Yes! I want to read that book, too! But I don’t speak any German, darn it. And I just can’t see myself Google translating an entire book. Maybe half of a book …
But I asked because when I was reading the obituary, it didn’t list this book nor that Dean spoke German so … yeah, a mystery. Thanks for translating that bit.
@Suzanna: After following a link in the old “Good Ton” website (sadly missed) I discovered that “Bernstein und Bronze” appears to only have been published in German.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050404045458/http://cantua.canterbury.ac.nz/~staf005/dean/iron.html