Casting Georgette Heyer's Black Sheep

My friend Courtney did the seemingly impossible: she gave me a book as a gift.

This is usually hard for people because they never know what I have or have not read ( I have read pretty much everything it seems) or what I will like and they generally shy away from tempting me with anything but a Chapters/Indigo giftcard.

Not Court. Nope. She found a winner (a few years ago, it would seem ) and held on to her treasure and just knew that she could pop it out at the right time and I would love it.


And I did.

Ladies and gents, I give you the Regency Barney Snaith ( of LM Montgomery's The Blue Castle) Miles Caverleigh from Georgette Heyer's DIVINE Black Sheep

Now Miles, adorable Miles, is part Barney/ part Rhett Butler- --- all delicious regency fun: his boots are too tall for society; his cravat too loose and he has this infuriating habit of making our prim and bright heroine, Abigail Wendover, giggle at the most inopportune moments.

Oh Miles!


But Miles, dear Miles, sees a spark in dear Abby ( who is actually eight and twenty and very very much on the shelf. You see, bloggosphere, no one has "made up" to her ---or out with her in 20th Century vernacular---in EONS and she is being left to wither away whilst caring for her invalid, hypochondriatic sister and the neice who wants to run away with a scoundrel! a rake! a rogue....


oh it is DELICIOUS! and it is all about mature love ( because Miles once eloped with his heart's desire all but twenty years ago, don't you know, and he knows that Abby and he have a preternatural connection and..... )....and I WISH L M Montgomery had been alive to read some of these sentences:


I give you:


"He had nothing to recommend him but his smile, and she was surely too old, and had too much commonsense to be beguiled by a smile however attractive it might be. But just as she reached this decision he spoke, and she glanced up at him, and realized that she had overestimated both her age and her commonsense"



AH AH AH

and there is MORE.....


"She was aware suddenly that her heart, in general a very reliable organ, was behaving in a most alarming way"


and then....


"She had been attracted by his smile, but no smile, however fascinating it might be, could cause a cool-headed female of more than eight-and-twenty so wholly to lose her poise and her judgment that she felt she had met, in its owner, the embodiment of an ideal."




Abby is smart and resourceful with a winsome sense of humour; Miles just enough parts rakish and gentleman with a hidden fortune and a desperate need to win the heart of fair maiden ( and with a dash of sarcasm and a sardonic smile which screams Barney!) and the whole blasted thing is bloody enchanting.

Seriously.

I timed it out so I didn't gobble it wholly and spread over a few pints in the Distillery ( here in Toronto ) on a train ride for work, on the subway and before bed and, seriously chickadees, I am going to start again. From the top.


BECAUSE I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK!

It is precisely what this woman of eight-and-twenty ( who has fallen hard for a smile more than once, don't y'know) needs to subdue the January chill.


I am all aflutter...

and the best part.... THE CASTING!


why yes!


Jack Davenport as Miles Caverleigh. Won't he be divine?



( I realize this post has no real literary merit and I don't very much care... I have jelly beans aside me, a friday evening devoid of commitment and a heart full of love for a fictional man.... again)