So even were there no other issues, the marriage is fraught with difficulties for everyone – Neville and Lily, poor abandoned Lauren, and all the horrified friends and relations, who don’t know what to make of Lily and her scandalously unconventional ways.īut it soon becomes clear that there is a ray of hope, for this was a love match. What’s more, she’s been a prisoner of war for many months, and has been repeatedly raped. What an appalling situation! Lily, the wife, is uneducated and illiterate, a child of nature who loves to run about barefoot and hasn’t the least idea how to be a countess and move in the high level of society that Neville occupies. Now this is all sorts of delicious, right from the start. She’s his wife, his sergeant’s daughter that he married on the battlefield and thought had died. And then the unthinkable happens – a simply-dressed poverty-stricken woman rushes into the church and Neville recognises her.

Neville is happy about it, his bride is thrilled, since she’s been in love with him for years and waited while he went off to the war in Portugal, and all their friends and relations gathered in the church are thrilled for them both. She’s Lauren Edgeworth, friend and neighbour, educated and accomplished, a perfect English lady, exactly suited to becoming a countess. Neville Wyatt, the Earl of Kilbourne, is awaiting his bride at the altar. Hmm… I suppose I should write a bit more than that.

Mary balogh a summer to remember