Delabole, a somewhat smarmy man who seems to be acting as a companion to her beautiful young cousin, completes the household. She is surprised to know that the two men live in opposite wings of the house and seem to have little to do with one another. She meets Sir Timothy, Lady Broome’s much older and frail husband, and Torquil, her incredibly good-looking son. I can’t compel you – heaven forbid that I should – but I can beg you to take pity on a very lonely woman!’ ”Īnd so Kate goes off to spend the summer at the great manor. “Yes, so your kind nurse has informed me. “But I am of age ma’am!” protested Kate, feeling as though she were being swept along on an irresistible tide. Dear child, I’ve come to carry you off to Staplewood! I’m persuaded I must be your natural guardian! “ ‘You are too young to know what it means to have been an only child, when you reach my age and have no close relations, and no daughter! I have always longed for one, and never more so than now! It’s true I have a son, but a boy cannot give one the same companionship. Kate has never met her, nor had there ever been any correspondence between her father and his sister, but, interestingly, or strangely, enough Aunt Minerva, or Lady Broome, comes in to take Kate off to her home, Staplewood. Nidd, a woman of high energy and great resource, contacts Kate’s aunt. Kate runs to her old nurse, her only refuge, for a place to stay while she makes her plans for her uncertain and likely unhappy future. Kate has just been “turned off”, or fired, from her position as governess to three young children because their uncle, brother to their mother, had fallen for her and the old gorgon who was the children’s grandmother, disapproved. Young ladies who found themselves in such situations had few options: governess or companion being the best. At 24, Kate must support herself, because with no money and no family, she is not likely to make a good marriage.

His death was ignominious, and left his child not only orphaned, her mama having died when Kate was 12, but destitute. Her father, an Army officer, was more successful in war than in peace, where his propensity for gaming squandered what little money he had, since he had been disowned by his starchy father. She is the only offspring of parents who ran off and married without the approval of either of their families. Pretty Kate Malvern is in dire straits as the book opens.

Perhaps, like Jane, Georgette is too sensible and too amused by life’s foibles to take the Gothic seriously. Georgette Heyer takes her turn in Cousin Kate, and while this is a darker story than most of her romances, her Gothic tale is not so far-fetched as it is mysterious and uncomfortable for her heroine. Almost every writer of the Romance genre will try her hand at a Gothic tale even Jane Austen did it in Northanger Abbey, although to be really accurate, she was poking fun at her heroine rather than developing a scary tale.

Cousin kate by georgette heyer