Venetia (novel)
Encyclopedia
Venetia is a Regency romance
Regency romance
Regency romances are a subgenre of romance novels set during the period of the British Regency or early 19th century. Rather than simply being versions of contemporary romance stories transported to a historical setting, Regency romances are a distinct genre with their own plot and stylistic...

 novel by Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer was a British historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer...

 set in England in 1818.

Plot summary

The beautiful Venetia Lanyon, thanks to a reclusive and over-protective father, grew up in the country, away from the world with only her younger brother Aubrey, bookish and lamed, for company. Her peace and quiet is one day disturbed by the rakish Lord Damerel, who arrives to spend time at his ancestral home next to the Lanyon's house. At first, she sensibly keeps away from him, but when Lord Damerel finds an injured Aubrey and not only takes him into his home to recover but also treats him with great kindness and strikes up a friendship with the awkward young man, she revises her first opinion of him and they soon become the best of friends.

When Venetia and Lord Damerel fall in love, however, Damerel is convinced that marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

with him would cause Venetia's social ruin and insists that it would be wrong to inflict this upon her.

When Venetia's older brother's wife and mother-in-law, about whom he had failed to inform the family, descend on the Lanyons, Venetia's domestic situation becomes intolerable and she is invited to stay for a London season with her aunt and uncle as a way to escape the awkwardness and also to find a husband. During this time, she discovers through a chance encounter that the mother she had been led to believe was dead is actually very much alive and had simply left her father for another man when the children were very young. Venetia realises that this is the cause of her relatives' over-protectiveness - they are concerned that she might follow in her mother's footsteps.

Venetia, however, still very much loves Damerel and sets about creating her own happy ending, seeking the help of her disgraced and estranged mother to convince both her uncle and Damerel that the marriage should take place.
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