These Delights

by Sara Seale

Luke Merit's engagement to Diana was presenting him with some problems, not the least of them being how to retain his independence in the face of his wealthy fiancee's well-meant but unthinking interference.

And when three young cousins - Lou, Pauline, and the warm-hearted, impetuous Vicky - arrived on his Devon farm as unexpected guests for the summer, they did nothing to improve the situation.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Sara Seale was the pseudonym used by Mary Jane MacPherson (d. 11 March 1974) and/or A.D.L. MacPherson (d. 30 October 1978), a British writing team who published over 45 romance novels from 1932 to 1971. Seale was one of the first Mills & Boon's authors published in Germany and the Netherlands, and reached the pinnacle of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, when they earning over £3,000/year. Many of Seale's novels revisited a theme of an orphaned heroine who finds happiness, and also employed blind or disfigured (but still handsome) heroes as standard characters.

Mary Jane MacPherson began writing at an early age while still in her convent school. Besides being a writer, MacPherson was also a leading authority on Alsatian dogs, and was a judge at Crufts.

Reviews

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty rich Diana is looking forward to taking control of Luke's farm. It's such a great project: she can modernise milk production and do things with fields and yields. Even the house can be improved with walls coming down and undesirable family members and servants removed.

She'd be having so much fun if Luke didn't keep trying to touch her (gross!) and would accept some of her money so they could start the improvements now.

Luke is 35 and lives with his older sister. He rather likes the way he's running his own life, and it's almost impossible to work out exactly why he's interested in Diana. He's not holding out for her cash, and while he does try for a couple of kisses, I can't read in a whole heap of repressed sexual desire. I think he’s simply lonely and would like some children. He's mild mannered and gentle and thoroughly beta. He's very likeable, but ... Beta. If you imagine Matthew Cuthbert from 'Anne of Green Gables' but 10-15 years younger, and Matthew not quite as shy, that's almost what Luke is like.

Since the book starts with Diana, I had wondered if she was the heroine. Even though she turned progressively more flawed as I turned pages, I still had a soft spot for her until she turned completely unforgiveable. Then the real heroine turned up and everything settled into a much more comfortable track.

Luke's French cousins are coming to visit because their father is very sick. Diana thinks this is a terrible idea, and it becomes more obviously terrible when they are discovered to be adorable and the eldest, Vicky, is discovered to be 19. And sort of pretty. Born English, but very French though, as English authors love to present French people, as charming but at times bafflingly down to earth about subjects the English don't like to discuss. In English books of a certain era, if you want someone to say something that implies sex, or a ruthlessly practical attitude to a relationship, you make it come out of a French mouth.

A tiny slightly spoilery warning: the children have a pet rabbit. Diana has a dog.

Vicky is very sweet, Luke is sweet, Diana turns more coldly nasty, and everything ends up as it should.

This is a charming and funny novella length book, or at least it was for me. I have a different copy to the ones on Goodreads, it’s 78 pages, copyright 1965 and published by the Worldwide Romance Library. Luke’s on the cover in a brown turtleneck with a pipe in his mouth. Vicky is in his arms wearing a yellow dress with short puffy sleeves. She has the worst haircut and I think I can see a bobby pin. And she has blue eyeshadow. Dianna is in the background in a big floppy pink hat and a dress the character would not be caught dead in. I’m intrigued by how this story was either abridged or expanded for the Mills & Boon edition. I’m assuming the children have more adventures in the English countryside, with Luke rescuing them and Diana looking on disapprovingly.

The romance is very light touch. I get the feeling Sara Seale doesn't quite approve of the age gap between her hero and heroine. She doesn't present an overwhelming passion, and mostly implies that the hero, while involved, knows that whatever he's getting at the end of the story is still a long way from a loving relationship between equal partners.

What I can't quite work out is why you would go to the trouble of arguing this out in a romance novel. Luke is a genuinely nice man who has reached 35 and is still single because he's focused on building his farm. While an alpha would only select someone like Diana as a form of sub-conscious self-punishment, a beta isn't necessarily a doormat, and Luke would have worked out for himself that their match wasn't going to work.

Vicky's role isn't even as catalyst. What she does do, is give Luke a taste of what it's like to be a bit alpha, to protect and care for his woman. There's this subtle argument that this is exactly what Luke needs, that only a young girl will do, that a strong woman with a formed character and formed opinions will never work for him. I don't like this, because it feels weak, as though he needs someone he can gently and easily override. Someone to at least make him feel alpha, when he’s not.

I might be overthinking it.

The title is a quote from Marlowe's the Passionate Shepherd, which at first had me raising my eyebrows, until I realised I was conflating this poem in my memory with Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' which is a great deal rougher as a form of loving persuasion.

This is a short book for people who like charming French children, Devon, and seeing beautiful horse riding women defeated by sweet girls.

[Margo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ignore the description of this book. As a modern person reading it, you'll get another vantage point.

The h is a 19-year-old woman who has moved in, along with her younger siblings, with distant relatives during her father's illness. From there, she sets her mind to breaking up the H's engagement, and she embarks on a brilliant campaign to do it.

Sensing that the fiancee is an overly money-conscious cold fish who is hamstrung by a sense of dignity, she plays the naive child of nature, gushing over larks and admiring the beauty of nature. As someone who is unsophisticated, she makes provocative comments about H's relationship, but gets away with it because it is just her naive wonder and desire for everyone to be happy that makes her ask it, not because she's trying to stir up trouble.

She throws herself in the H's arms when there is a thunderstorm. She is relentlessly physical with the H, constantly hugging and kissing him. She admires everything about him, and backs him entirely in even the smallest difference he has with the his fiancee. Slowly but steadily she wins over the entire house, including the H, with no one suspecting that she is anything but the sweetest Mary Sue ever in existence. The fiancee, who has been trying to work around the schemes of the h, has no chance. Brilliant work.

[MissKitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a lot. I read it since I was intrigued by the write ups of the other reviewers.

The heroine is a lively young, ingénue who completely charms the Hero, and crawls her way into his unsuspecting heart. The Hero is a bit clueless, even with regard to his fiancée. The author does a good job of showing that they are basically incompatible, though they’ve drifted into a relationship. The Hero wants a move passionate loving relationship, but his fiancée is a cold fish. It’s not hard to see him begin to fall for the demonstrative and loving heroine who has no inhibitions about openly hugging and kissing him.

This is a very slow burn romance and for most of the book, the Hero is engaged so someone else, but they were both such lovely people that I found myself rooting for the couple. The fiancée was a cold spoiled woman, but not as evil as some I’ve come across. I thinks she was a wealthy lady who was just used to getting her way and decided that the Hero would do for her. She wasn’t in love with him. Nor he with her. It’s implied but not directly stated that they drifted into a relationship through mutual respect and admiration. The Hero was probably the most suitable in the small town where they lived.

The Hero is a gentleman though, so it takes him a long time to break off with his fiancée, even if he is starting to realise that it’s not working out for them.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5. Sweet, old fashioned. The heroine, a typical Sara Seale ingenue and a distant relative, comes (with her siblings) to stay at the farm whilst her father is ill. The hero is engaged to a stiff upper lipped woman, part of the local gentry (ow). She wants to make him over as well as his farm plus remove his sister and his workers as they are not her people. She has plenty of cash to do this. Luckily the hero escapes before she really gets her claws into him.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published 1949. Reissued again in 1965 and this issue in 1976 which I had a copy of. I enjoyed it very much at the time I read them.