Someone to Honor by Mary Balogh

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

The heroine of Someone to Honor, the sixth book in Mary Balogh’s series about the Westcott family is Abigail Westcott, the younger daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale. She was approaching her come out and her eighteenth birthday when her father was discovered to have married her mother bigamously, meaning that she and her siblings – sister Camille and brother Harry – were illegitimate and that Harry could not inherit the Riverdale title (which passed to their cousin, Alex). Abby is now twenty-four, and has spent most of the six intervening years resisting her family’s urging to resume her life in society and find a husband. Although at the time, the news of her family’s change of status was hugely upsetting, she now realises that what happened has set her free in a way she could never have imagined being before. Without the pressure of having to conform to society’s expectations of the daughter of an earl, Abby has been able to take the time to discover who she truly is as a person and to work out what she really wants in life – and has found that the idea of remaining unmarried is no longer as scary as it was six years earlier when she was expected to make a match befitting her status. As her mother and siblings had to forge their own paths to happiness, so Abby has begun to forge hers – the trouble is convincing her loving, well-meaning but sometimes misguided family that she knows what she’s doing.

When the novel opens, Major Harry Westcott – who was badly wounded at the Battle of Waterloo – is finally returning home, accompanied by his dear friend Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Bennington, his cousin Alex, the Earl of Riverdale, and his brother-in-law Avery, the Duke of Netherby. Once news of his return reaches the ears of the rest of the family, they all congregate at his home at Hinsford, even though it’s the last thing Harry really wants or needs. The Westcotts are a close-knit, loving lot who would do anything for one another, but sometimes can be a bit overbearing; the intentions of the individual members are always good, but they sometimes lose sight of the fact that the object of their concern may not want or need the things they think they do. (Actually, I find this aspect of the series to be one of the best things about it; we’ve probably all been given unwanted advice with the best of intentions from family members at one time or another and I like that Mary Balogh shows the Westcotts to be just like the rest of us in this respect.)

When Abby first meets Gil, it’s a less than auspicious beginning. She sees him stripped to the waist chopping wood and mistakes him for a servant; flustered at both seeing a half-naked man and the stirrings of attraction she feels, Abby covers her discomfiture by reprimanding him – and when she later realises her error, he mistakes her embarrassment for hauteur and disdain and decides he wants as little to do with her as possible. So when the Wescotts decamp, leaving Abby behind, Gil isn’t best pleased and determines to do everything he can to avoid her.

But as the days and weeks pass and Harry begins to regain his strength both physically and mentally, Gil and Abby are naturally thrown together a fair bit and gradually fall into friendship. Abby learns that Gil is, under the forbidding exterior and sometimes brusque manner, a decent, gentle man who, despite his air of command and abilities as a soldier, has little confidence in himself as a person and regards his illegitimacy (his mother was abandoned by his father, a viscount, when Gil was a child) as an almost indelible stain. And Gil learns that Abby is not at all the haughty young woman he believed her to be at first, but is a compassionate woman with a good mind and heart.

Listeners learn fairly early on that Gil is a widower engaged in a custody battle with the grandparents of his four-year-old daughter, Katy, and during the course of their conversations, Abby learns it, too. Gil isn’t quite sure why he’s telling her; in fact, to begin with, neither of them is quite sure why they’re taking each other into their confidence, which I found a very effective way of showing the trust developing between them. But once Gil has told Abby, he realises he needs to tell Harry – and it’s Harry who, with his customary talent for putting his foot firmly in his mouth, then suggests that Gil and Abby should get married as a way of proving to the court that he is able to take proper care of his daughter.

I admit that I found the story was rather slow going until over half-way through; it picks up once Abigail and Gil are married and he embarks on his quest to win back custody of his daughter. And if you’ve not been following the series, the opening chapters (and some later scenes) which feature the Westcotts en masse are likely to be a bit confusing. The romance is pretty low-key – and seems to take a bit of a back seat, at times, to the custody storyline – and I felt that there was a step missing in the move from friendship to ILYs; Gil and Abby agree to marry as a matter of convenience and sexual attraction (Abby admits to Gil that she wants him) and it’s clear they like and understand one another, but we seem to go from that to love quite quickly. That said, their relationship works and when by the time we reach the end of the book, it’s obviously one that is going to endure; these are two people who don’t feel as though they fit in to the ‘boxes’ they should fit in to – he’s the illegitimate grandson of a blacksmith who holds a high military rank, she’s the illegitimate daughter of an earl who isn’t interested in the marriage mart – and yet, they find that sense of belonging with each other as they start to make the life both of them have dreamed of.

Although I’ve listened to Rosalyn Landor a lot, I haven’t done so for a while and I have to say what a pleasure it was to hear her beautifully modulated voice again and enjoy another wonderfully nuanced performance. Given the huge cast of Westcotts, it must be difficult to keep track of them all, but she is able to differentiate between all the characters effectively, and provide distinct character voices for all of them, male and female alike. Her interpretation of the two principals is excellent; she expertly conveys Gil’s insecurities and Abigail’s strong sense of self, as well as injecting a real warmth into their interactions which adds depth to it and enhances their affection and understanding.

Someone to Honor is a pleasant, uncomplicated addition to the Westcott series and fans will no doubt be pleased to meet the family again (Avery once again impresses with his insight and ability to get straight to the point). It isn’t my favourite book of the series, but it nonetheless made for an enjoyable and undemanding listen – plus, it very nicely sets up Matilda’s story, which is coming in Someone to Remember later this year.

Caz

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