Favorite Romances Series: To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney

To Have and To Hold Patricia Gaffney 1995   Romance novel Rating: A+

When I first began to read romance again and discovered All About Romance, I noted the books that I'd read and loved and looked for DIK reviews by other readers who had enjoyed the same books.  To Have and To Hold kept coming up on lists of beloved books.   It didn't actually sound like a book I'd enjoy very much, but eventually I decided I'd give it a whirl.  It became one of my most favorite romances ever, almost from the first paragraph. 

Sebastian Verlaine, Viscount D'Aubrey, is not your run-of-the-mill romance novel hero.  He's not even your unusual romance novel hero.  It's for his type of character that the word protagonist was invented.  Sebastian, our protagonist, is a man of moderate wealth and immoderate habits who has recently inherited a title and a rather rundown estate the in the small village of Wyckerley.  All of it is a trifle shabby and a bit beneath him, this son of an earl, but he condescends to visit his property because he really has nothing more entertaining or pressing to do.  His current mistress, a French actress, is boring him, and all the other usual vices have also ceased to entertain.  Acting as Lord of the Manor would at least be a change.  So he plays at being one.  

As part of this new role Sebastian is asked to be a local magistrate and serve as judge in hearing local cases.   This is how he comes to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Rachel Wade, convicted murderess, currently paroled and being tried for vagrancy.  

Rachel Wade has only very recently been released from a ten-year sentence in a Dartmoor prison.  She finds herself in an impossible situation.  Though she is willing to work, no one will employ her because of her history, but without employment she will be found guilty of vagrancy and be sent back to prison until the authorities can determine by which authority's dole rolls she must be cared for.  Rachel's time in prison has numbed her to everything but the fear of going back to that terrible place.  She feels little emotion, she has become physically nondescript, with her pale skin, transparent eyes, and graying hair she is almost colorless in appearance.  Sebastian sees her helplessness, her complete vulnerability and finds it strangely piquant.  To all the onlooker's shock and dismay, he offers her employment on the spot as his housekeeper.  He offers the rationale that her acceptance will solve two problems, her lack of a position and his household chaos.  But the real reason is - he wants to play with her.  

Sebastian's ideas of what constitutes amusement would appall almost any woman in Rachel's position.  But she has experienced much worse than he can do in prison.  Her acknowledgment of his designs on her person, both carnal and psychological, is immediate and mutually understood.  She can be stoic.  She is stoic.  She is a survivor.  What neither of them understand, as she sets foot in his domain, is that stoicism is the last thing Sebastian wants from her.

This is a dark book.  The first half is very, very dark.  Rachel's last ten years have been horrific, and Sebastian's have been pointless. The beginning of their relationship is almost painful to watch, with Sebastian calculating all the time what will action will wring the most violent reaction out of her.  Trying this, trying that, observing, modifying.  Yet while the reader aches for Rachel and her painful transition from mute numbness, it is Sebastian who has the most fascinating appeal.  He is a rake, a roué, a person without meaningful function.  He uses people and is amused to do so.  He has no expectation that he will do better in future.  Yet in all this, he is astoundingly self-aware, even self-deprecating.  His observations are astute, amusing; and he does not spare himself in that amusement.  I laughed on the very first page at his lovely black inner monologue.  He is like a 19th century, aristocratic Dr. Gregory House - the most brilliant, unkind man in the room, and the one you can't keep yourself from watching.  He is brilliant in his own unambitious, untried way.  

Rachel, on the other hand, is kind.  She can't - and doesn't attempt to - compete with Sebastian in wit or nastiness, but she surpasses him in every humane way.  Her inner monologue is quiet but also observant.  Sebastian doesn't catch her by surprise.  Cynicism doesn't come to her naturally, but she had a thorough enough schooling in it to understand where he's coming from and what he expects from her.  

Many, many readers have objected to this book, have said it's not romantic and that what Sebastian puts Rachel through is physical and mental rape.  And it is.  Although he is never physically brutal with her, his psychological domination of her and her lack of recourse results in what is definitely a violation.  The book and Sebastian, however, break mid-story, and how the reader enjoys the book overall depends, I suppose, on how much she hated Sebastian in the beginning and how much she can believe in rehabilitation.  Personally, I always liked Sebastian, perhaps even more so before his radical shift.  And his tender, relentless compassion with Rachel in the book's second half - that is something to read.  He never grovels.  It's beneath him, and what would be the point?  Instead he makes it up to her.  With panache.  Oh, to be this Rachel in the book's second half.  Hedonism, thy name is Sebastian Verlaine.  

There are so many things I love about this book.  The writing is so rich and so lovely, so elegant and yet accessible.  Reading To Have and To Hold is like sleeping in the most luxurious, crisp-linened feather bed.  When you wake from all that loveliness you wonder how you could ever have slept on a motel mattress or camp cot and thought you were well rested afterward.  Anything else feels like a comedown.

I love Rachel.  I love how strong she is and how gentle.  I love how she stands up to Sebastian in her own small rebellions, how she forces a change in him just by being herself.  I love the metaphor for her Gaffney creates in Lynton Great Hall - how Rachel the character participates in her own renovation (but does not initiate it or provide the means to do so - Sebastian does).  I love seeing Anne and Christy (from To Love and To Cherish) again.  Anne is such a delightful character, gregariously asocial, and so consistently drawn.  The perfect friend for a pariah like Rachel.  Wyckerley is well drawn too - rural, charming, full of complex, upstanding, often unkind citizenry.  

I realize this novel won't work for quite a number of readers, but for me, it's so emotionally and mentally satisfying a read, I can't help but recommend readers try it, just in case.   The book is worth reading just for Sebastian's proposal which memorably amusing - and not terribly romantic - but most in character.  Have I gushed enough already?  Go - track this one down and read it!

For more commentary on this book, including Gaffney's, go here (and scroll down).  

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