we're half awake in a fake empire

The Mouse That Roared

Rosalind Lacey is a woman with a mission. Having sacrificed her youthful opportunities to family obligations, she's ready to make the most of her long-postponed London Season. Unlike most single ladies, Rosalind isn't husband hunting. She intends to enjoy all the attractions of the city - but on her own terms, for her own reasons. And her free-spirited Aunt Fanny is just the woman to show a girl all the nice - and naughty - things London as to offer...

Max Devenant has reached the top of his profession - if rakehood could be considered a calling. But he's grown bored with his dissolute lifestyle. His friend Fanny's niece, Rosalind, seems an unlikely cure for his malaise, as she's certainly the mousiest of women. Only one day after her arrival, however, Rosalind is transformed into the most attractive and vivacious creature Max has ever encountered. He cannot know the cause for the change, but its effect is undeniable...

Original Publisher: Signet
Original Year of Publication: 2001
Page Count: 213

Rosalind Lacey, eldest daughter of Sir Edmund Lacey of Wycombe Hall in Devon, is indeed on a mission. She believes that she has inherited her mother's terminal illness and thus, only has a few months to live. She has taken stock of her life: she is a 26-year-old spinster who stepped into her mother's role at 14 and has pretty much raised her siblings ever since. Her two sisters are married, one brother is off to university and the youngest boys - twins - have been settled at Harrow. It's time for her to have a chance to do something for herself, and she knows just what she wants to do. She wants to go to London, during the Season, and experience all of the sights, sounds, and delights to be had. She wants her father's sister Fanny to accompany her. Fanny has long been the black sheep of the family; she has lived an extroverted, extravagant life as a wealthy widow with a string of titled lovers. If anybody can show Rosie what the Season is all about, it's Aunt Fanny.

Fanny has not been close to her brother since his marriage, and is not looking forward to the arrival of a meek little country mouse. As the novel opens, she is complaining of her plight to her friend Max Devenant, a 36-year-old rakehell who is utterly bored with life. He is so bored, in fact, that he is seriously considering taking the self-same route as his best friend, Freddie Moresby, who killed himself earlier in the year. Max keeps Moresby's suicide note tucked into his waistcoat as a reminder that there is a way out of a life not worth living.

Max is the son of Fanny's one true love, Basil Devenant, and they have known each other for years. Max is a younger son dangling at loose ends. His parents are gone, his siblings are married and/or busy with careers, and he has no especial interest in anything. He supports himself by gambling, and has focused on pleasure for the vast majority of his life.

Neither Fanny nor Max are impressed when Rosie arrives, dressed in dowdy shapeless brown, but Max immediately senses there's something beyond country mouse when he makes an outrageous pass at Rosie and she does not swoon in fear in response. Indeed, after Max leaves, Rosie tells Fanny exactly what her plans are, and that the first thing she wants to do is make herself over.

The transformation is complete in under a week, and Rosie is so pleased and excited with all the possibilities that she considers herself to be playing a role, of the dashing Rosalind, doing all the outrageous, Society-breaking things that prim and proper Rosie would never dare attempt. She is an instant hit, with her scarlet red dresses, fashionably cropped hair, and her will to try absolutely everything in sight. She even has a list of things she wishes to accomplish before she dies, and it includes driving a sporting vehicle, visiting the great museums, attending every kind of event available (both fashionable and not), and being thoroughly kissed by a rake.

Fanny is a proud mother hen as she parades Rosalind all around town, and Max finds himself just as smitten with her as the rest of the population of single men. Rosie throws caution to the wind and makes a spectacle of herself, but she could care less - she's about to die, what good is it to constrain herself to Society's ridiculous rules? And Max is everything she could ever want: kind to her, but handsome and funny as well, with a wicked wit and practiced wiles. After being thoroughly kissed, she decides she wants more - and she gets it, in one perfect evening that she will never, ever forget.

Everything is going so beautifully that not even the appearance of her university-bound brother (or her odious uncle) can stop her momentum. Rosie has told no one of her medical condition, but does consult a London physician when a few troubling symptoms begin to reappear. Only then does she learn that she does not have her mother's fatal illness - that she isn't going to die - and suddenly everything she has done over the last few months comes crashing down around her. If she's going to live, can she live with the idea of thumbing her nose at everything and everyone, of bringing shame upon herself and her family? She decides she can't, and flees back to Devon to confess everything to her father and beg his forgiveness.

Sir Edmund has taken a bit of stock himself since Rosie has been in London, and realizes that he has been a horribly neglectful parent, lost in his own grief for his wife these last twelve years. He's put so much on Rosie that he never meant to, and when Rosie tells him of her fears of dying like her mother did, he feels even worse for keeping his wife's condition a secret from the children. Edmund is a pretty spectacular father here, because he does not shame or scold or do anything other than beg Rosie's forgiveness for his own transgressions, and tells her that she deserved to have the happiness she did in London.

Rosie is beside herself with shame, however, and retreats into her country mouse shell. Even after Max finds out why she left (he was so hurt and upset, thinking it was something he did to drive her away), chases after her, and begs her to marry him, she refuses. She doesn't believe she can be the wild and devil-may-care Rosalind that she was in London, not without the death sentence hanging over her.

Edmund and Fanny conspire to bring Rosalind back to London and reconnect her with Max, believing that if they put the two back in proximity to each other, the rest will fall into place. It is a dangerous plan, but it ultimately works. Remember that suicide note that Max carries around? He accidently drops it, Rosie fears that he is the one who wrote it, and rushes off to stop him from killing himself. If he ever tells her the truth about the note (that it was written by his friend), it happens off page. This was the only bit of the story that I didn't like.

Otherwise, I found this absolutely delightful! Rosie was determined to live every day as if it were her last, and she inspired Max to realize that life could be worth living - with the right person at his side. Even Aunt Fanny seizes the day and consents to marry her own lifelong admirer at the end.

I really enjoyed the way the characters were drawn: bright, vivacious, full of life. Rosalind in London did things and said things that so many others could only dream of doing; she got to see everything she wanted and even though she was not looking for a husband, she managed to find one anyway. Rosie and Max were nicely balanced; even though Rosie was a touch too stubborn, she didn't really spend a lot of time wallowing in her shame on page. Aunt Fanny was an excellent "chaperone" and very interesting in and of herself. Rosie's dash off to London made a lot of people realize a lot of different things, and I liked that the whole family was reconciled at the end.

The prose was airy and light, events moved along at a really nice clip, and the romance was, indeed, very romantic for a trad Regency.


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