The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan
Novella prequel to The Brothers Sinister series
Published April 14, 2012
“You see,” Clermont muttered, “there was this governess.”
Hugo rolled his eyes. Any confession that started thus could
not end well.
Grade: A
Official Summary from Author’s Site:
SHE WILL NOT GIVE UP…
Three months ago, governess Serena Barton was let go from
her position. Unable to find new work, she’s demanding compensation from the
man who got her sacked: a petty, selfish, swinish duke. But it’s not the duke
she fears. It’s his merciless man of business—the man known as the Wolf of
Clermont. The formidable former pugilist has a black reputation for handling
all the duke’s dirty business, and when the duke turns her case over to him,
she doesn’t stand a chance. But she can’t stop trying—not with her entire
future at stake.
HE CANNOT GIVE IN…
Hugo Marshall is a man of ruthless ambition—a characteristic
that has served him well, elevating the coal miner’s son to the right hand man
of a duke. When his employer orders him to get rid of the pestering governess
by fair means or foul, it’s just another day at the office. Unfortunately, fair
means don’t work on Serena, and as he comes to know her, he discovers that he
can’t bear to use foul ones. But everything he has worked for depends upon
seeing her gone. He’ll have to choose between the life that he needs, and the
woman he is coming to love…
I own everything Courtney Milan has published because I
adore everything she writes. This novella is no exception. Despite its curtailed
length, it contains fully-realized characters, thought-provoking issues, and a
satisfying story.
The writing is elegant and incisive as ever. Take, for example, this
description of the hero and his sort-of employer:
An untutored observer would focus on the Duke of Clermont,
apparently in full command, resplendent in a waistcoat so shot with gold thread
that it almost hurt the eyes. This observer would dismiss the drab Mr.
Marshall, arrayed as he was in clothing spanning the spectrum from brown to
browner.
The comparison wouldn’t stop at clothing. The duke was
respectably bulky without running to fat; his patrician features were sharp and
aristocratic. He had mobile, ice-blue eyes that seemed to take in everything.
Compared with Hugo’s own unprepossessing expression and sandy brown hair, the
untutored observer would have concluded that the duke was in charge.
The untutored observer, Hugo thought, was an idiot.
The Duke of Clermont is the villain in this story, and a
rather pathetic one. He doesn’t try to kidnap the heroine or plot anyone’s
downfall—he actually spends most of the story whining and hoping that his
problems will go away. I appreciated this reminder that you can hurt people without
having an evil laugh or even evil intentions; bad things happen, and if you don’t
take responsibility and action you could become the bad guy.
The Duke of Clermont wronged Miss Serena Barton, and she wants
justice. Naturally, he wants to wash his hands of this whole “affair,” and asks
Hugo Marshall to deal with it quietly. Serena’s strategy has been to sit in
front of the duke’s residence, drawing attention without publicly airing her
grievances. Hugo speaks to her; at first, she does not recognize him, since she
only knows of his reputation as the Wolf of Clermont, the man who will do
anything to get the job done. The “mistaken identity” issue was intelligently
resolved, and over sooner than I had hoped—it drives me crazy when a Big
Misunderstanding is the major problem to be solved in a story. Here, however, the
revelation of identity is productive, and allows Serena to battle her “enemy”
face-to-face. This battle, of course, is verbal; although Hugo was a
prizefighter, he is insistent:
“I do a great many things, and I’m not proud of many of
them. But I don’t swear. I don’t drink. And I don’t hurt women.”
The banter in this book crackles; I was often reminded of Spencer
Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s
Rib. Like the movie, the book has many dark moments but is fabulously
witty. After a feisty back-and-forth exchange of letters one afternoon, Serena
and Hugo confront each other:
“I spent my day flirting with a beautiful, maddening woman,”
he told her. “How was yours?”
She snorted. “I spent mine receiving cowardly threats of
violence,” she tossed back. “Other than that, it was just lovely.”
Despite this being a novella, the focus was not solely on
the relationship between Hugo and Serena; we get to see a familial
relationship, between Serena and her sister, Freddy (Frederica). Serena and
Freddy display incredible contrast in personality, attitude, actions, and even
appearance. But despite their many disagreements they still love each other,
and it’s wonderful to see the complexity of sisterhood so skillfully
delineated. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Serena suddenly sees
things from her sister’s perspective:
Was that how she
seemed to Freddy? Some strange, impetuous creature, launching from disaster to
disaster, simply because she refused to give up? The vision this invoked of
herself was so alien that Serena was robbed of a response.
How could they be sisters? It seemed impossible that they should
view the world with such fundamentally different eyes.
The plot centers on an act of sexual assault, one which
occurs before the start of the story. Milan writes with a feminist sensibility
in all of her books, and discusses serious issues admirably. Two of the issues
covered here are self-blame and consent (highlight to read spoilers):
She had felt so helpless then, so utterly without recourse.
She should have screamed. She should have bashed the duke over the head. She
should have fought. In her memory of that night, her own silence mocked her
most of all. She hadn’t screamed, and because she hadn’t, she’d felt silent
ever since.
and
Somehow, what had happened seemed even worse than physical
violence—as if Clermont had taken not only his pleasure and her future, but had
robbed her of the right to believe herself blameless.
Hugo begins the book utterly devoted to his own ambition,
which means being utterly devoted to succeeding in fixing the duke’s problems,
but his own nature gets the best of him:
“Ruthless doesn’t
mean that I survey the available options and gleefully choose the cruelest one.
It means that I solve problems, whatever the cost. I’m good at that.”
Hugo is a problem solver, and he is the one who solves two
major problems—the solution to the governess affair as well as (spoiler)
physically consummating a relationship with a survivor of sexual assault—cleverly
and creatively.
Since this is a novella, everything wraps up pretty quickly
after the main conflict is resolved. The final chapter, however, is followed by
a section called “Aftermaths & Beginnings”—isn’t that so much better than “Epilogue”?—which
sets up the Brothers Sinister series. (“Sinister” referring to left-handedness
rather than creepiness.)
Bottom Line:
Read this book! It is eloquent, beautiful, powerful, and
introduces an amazing series. It's also currently FREE in the Kindle Edition
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