Throw His Heart Over, by Sebastian Nothwell (Aubrey and Lindsey 2)

[Ulysses]

Throw His Heart Over (Lindsey and Aubrey 2)
By Sebastian Nothwell
Published by the author, 2019
Five stars

Oh, to be in England in 1892, just three years before a notorious injustice ruined Oscar Wilde’s career and destroyed his life. One must always keep this historical fact in the back of one’s mind when reading gay romance set in this period.

Never was there a sweeter, more guileless romantic hero than Sir Lindsey Althorp. As if the first book of this series didn’t make that clear enough, once again we are reminded again and again of Sir Lindsey’s core innocence – which fits uneasily with his intelligence, but no matter. It is a romance, and somebody in it has to be innocent.

Most of this book takes place at the Althorp family estate, a massive house somewhere in Wiltshire. The fact that it doesn’t have a name, like every other great house in the rural United Kingdom, was a puzzle. I know it couldn’t be called Althorp Park or House or whatever, since that is the all-too-famous name of the estate where Diana, Princess of Wales, grew up. So, call it Ferndale Park or something. That irritant aside, it is a great central pivot in the plot – with the Althorp house in London, and Sir Lindsey’s new house in suburban Manchester, where he and Aubrey Warren are planning to live, as the other architectural points of reference.

As did the first book, “Throw His Heart Over” offers us the dual viewpoints of Sir Lindsey, twenty-year-old heir to a great fortune, and his beloved Aubrey Warren, raised in the Manchester workhouse and self-taught engineer. There is a consistent illumination of the class differences that color each man’s perspective on the world, and it helps us understand their essential characters. Aubrey, now more or less accepted by Lindsey’s autocratic sister Rowena and his fiancée Emmeline (indeed, Miss Rook clearly likes Aubrey better than she likes Lindsey, which is peculiar but fitting for the situation at hand). Aubrey must learn how to navigate the world of aristocracy, while Lindsey must learn to anticipate the hurdles a lower-class man faces in polite society. Aubrey also has to learn to live with his badly scarred face and body – something that is critical in the underlying plot threads.

The catalyst for the trip to Wiltshire is Aubrey’s promise that he’ll model for his old friend Halloway, the artist who once shared a roof with Aubrey and is also the paramour of one of Lindsey’s childhood friends. Thus the country house becomes a studio for the creation of a large-scale mythological painting, and we get to look on as Aubrey is taught the science, the mechanics, and the art of painting. It is fascinating, and forms a link between Aubrey’s hard-won scientific expertise and the artistic world of aristocratic patronage.

Since the story is set in the country, a second major plot line seems inevitable: horseback riding. Lindsey, a great horseman (being an aristocrat with a large stable), wants his dearest to learn to ride, something the British poor never experience. As with the art of painting, the art of horsemanship is explained in great detail, as Aubrey attempts to master the reality of an animal whose nose is as high as his face.

All the women are conveniently absent on a trousseau-shopping trip to Paris, which leaves the reader and the menfolk on their own.

The idea of a marriage of convenience is no surprise in Victorian England. Nothwell manages this social arrangement very nicely, although he keeps the wedding in the future (will there be a third book in this series that actually takes us to the wedding?). If ever there was a triangle that might just work, this is one – although one can’t help but ponder the moment when Emmeline has to face the reality of her marriage to a man – even a very nice man – like Lindsey.

Nothwell’s grasp of language and detail is really very good, which makes the little errors more annoying for a nitpicker such as I. Miss Rook will become Lady Althorp, but never Lady Emmeline. The formal entrance to a great house is simply called the hall, never the foyer, which smacks of suburbia. The Althorp carriage, with its silver coat of arms, is simply the carriage, not the family carriage. Victorian writers like Dickens and Trollope never even thought about details like this, so they serve as reminders that we’re dealing with a contemporary writer visiting the past. Otherwise, Nothwell does so very well in pulling us into his fantasy world – even given the nature of the central romantic couple. For an American brave enough to tackle this world, he has a great gift, which I am glad he shares with his lucky readers.