Rules of the Heart

In this sweeping and gorgeous tearjerker of a historical romance, Hadlow (The Other Bennet Sister) fictionalizes the scandalous relationship between Lady Harriet Bessborough and Lord Granville Leveson Gower against the turbulent close of the 18th century, when older married women often took young lovers while their husbands conveniently looked the other way. Looking back on the affair at 51 as a ruined woman with “all [her] beauty gone,” a bereft Harriet wonders whether Granville truly shared her grand passion. On the advice of her maid, Sally, she reviews his love letters, trying to understand the arc of their tumultuous 17-year relationship. At 33, after having four children in six years with clumsy and inconsiderate Lord B, Harriet felt she’d found “perfection in human form” in Granville, then a 21-year-old gambler with no title and no fortune. What starts as pure sexual gratification transforms into all consuming—and doomed—love. Along the way, Harriet endures four more pregnancies, which she must conceal, and numerous betrayals by society matrons. Hadlow makes both Harriet’s passion and her grief leap off the page, creating a stirring portrait of a woman driven by her heart instead of her head. Readers should have tissues at the ready. (Jan.)