Review: A Song Of Secrets by Robyn Chalmers (2020)

This was an interesting and unusual diversion from the well-worn tracks of Regency romances. The hero is a vicar, for one thing, which is rare enough, but the heroine is an opera singer, of all things, and that really is different! The plot isn’t wildly original (house party… family tensions… snowed up…), but any author who has the chutzpah to wheel out the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, to play a role in the book has my admiration.

Here’s the premise: Sarah Haygarth is perhaps the most famous opera singer in London. However, she’s facing a bleak future, because within a few years she’ll be past her best and what will she do then? All her spare money has been sent home to her family, who have disowned her, so she has no comfortable bank balance to cushion her old age and nowhere to turn. Her only options are to become someone’s mistress, which she’s strenuously resisted so far, or to marry well, and how likely is that? But then a lifeline is thrown to her – the kindly old Earl of Wrotham invites her to participate in a musicale at his estate, where she will be treated as an honoured guest.

Sarah sees the opportunity. The earl’s heir is unmarried, she knows she’s a desirable woman who can twist susceptible men around her little finger, so why shouldn’t she have a stab at nabbing him? The only snag in this cunning scheme is the earl’s younger son, the annoying Evander Ambrose, who’s a clergyman and therefore likely to be highly censorious. He’s the one who’s sent to escort her to the earl’s house (oddly called Six Oaks Manor), and it seems he’s already on to her little scheme, and is determined to put a spoke in her wheel. The only snag is, he’s attracted to her himself, and him a vicar too, and a widower whose wife is still mourned. So there’s a lot of interesting banter between the two, with a certain edge on his part.

Sarah gives as good as she gets, but she’s an oddly unsettling character (for me as a reader, and not just for Evander and other susceptible males). On the one hand, she’s an opera singer so she’s not exactly welcomed into polite society. She’s regarded in the same light as mistresses (which she’s widely assumed to be), that is, someone who should never be allowed to mingle with respectable women. Yet she’s given this opening by the kindly earl, and she wants to use it to marry herself to the earl’s heir. So you’d think, then, she’d be on her very best behaviour at all times, wouldn’t you? She knows what’s expected of her. But no, she seems to relish stirring things up and throwing out wiles at every verse end.

Inevitably, she steps out of line and is exiled, but Evander just happens to have an empty cottage on his estate… (yes, the vicar doesn’t live in the vicarage, he has an estate of his own because reasons, although with no live-in servants, again because reasons). So off she goes, and everything is going along swimmingly until there’s a fire at Evander’s house and he and his sons are forced to bunk down with Sarah at the cottage. Cue massive scandal where the Archbishop of Canterbury in person tells them they have to marry. Which neither of them particularly mind.

After this the plot runs on the familiar rails, and wraps up nicely. For those who care about such things, there’s a steady trickle of minor historical inaccuracies (example: Evander wears a wedding ring, but men just didn’t then; that came in more than a century later). I didn’t mind. The book is well written, I loved the originality of pairing a vicar with an opera singer, and the banter was clever. There’s at least one passionate kiss, but nothing at all graphic. Four stars, and recommended.