Hope, E. (1923). My Lady's Bargain. London, Nisbet and Co.

[treaseproject]

A Georgette Heyer style romance set during the Commonwealth, complete with forced marriage and identical cousins, but less snobbery.

Peter Williams fell in love with the daughter of the manor when he was but the son of the blacksmith. Now a General in the New Model, when offered land and a bride, he chooses the newly widowed woman who once struck him with a whip, and from whom he forced a kiss when he laid siege to her home.

She marries him to save her brother from the scaffold.

The marriage proceeds, and he falls genuinely in love with his wife, an adult love. But as he thinks she is yielding he realises that the new footman is not all he seems and his wife is hiding something. He sees her kiss her (male cousin) and then, having been given a warrant for the footman's arrest, he discovers his wife has flown with the footman--almost certainly her not-dead husband. He chases after them, and after a confrontation, lets them go, going back to face Cromwell's wrath and the surety that he will die in Lord Killigew's place. He ends up spending 8 weeks in solitary, when he is brought out it is to be given a choice of life imprisonment or service as trooper in Jamaica. He accepts the latter, and his sergeant begs to go with (and there is a funny bit where the sergeant's wife asks to go, is told "no" and responds. 

"But I am partly Irish, Your Highness."

"Well, what of that?" Enquired the Protector, knitting his brows with a puzzled air. "Is the climate of Jamaica more suitable for the Irish?"

"I do not know, Your Highness, but I thought perhaps it might be, as I have been told your Highness is sending out there a thousand Irish girls." (283)

Cromwell protests they are "women of loose and light conduct is of benefit to this realm" and she responds, "What a pity...that there should be no virtous women amongst them, to raise up a godly and manly race to the glory of our nation."

Privet Joy is not held to this in the end, because the Killigew's turn up, but not before it also turns out that Peter has married not Lady Kiligew, who knew about her husband's survival two weeks before the marriage, but her cousin, Una Lovett who looks just like her and has fallen in love with Peter (and whose family likes him too).

 

All ends happily with reprieves, the sale of the land to pay Killgew's fine, and the purchase of it by Una's father (which you would have thought would have caused more resentment, not less).