Title: The Gentleman’s Gambit
Author: Evie Dunmore
Published: December 2023, Berkley
I don’t think I’ve anticipated a book this much since the Harry Potter series. I loved the previous novels in Dunmore’s excellent League of Extraordinary Women series, and the fourth and final, featuring the booking Catriona, one seemed to be ages coming.
Everyone who read the series so far expected Catriona to land up with the Duke of Montgomery’s brother, Peregrin, who she had helped out in the first novel. However, Dunmore revealed in the run-up to the book’s release that Peregrin wouldn’t be the hero of this story, after all.
Instead, Dunmore introduces a stranger – from the East. As Catriona tells her nursemaid turned chaperon Mackenzie
There are three kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey; a stranger comes to town; and a man hunts a whale…Where are the women in this?… Women rarely leave town. Our stories tend to begin with the arrival of the stranger.”
To which Mackenzie mutters:
Yer hunting plenty of white whales in yer study …There’s yer story, no need for an entanglement with an outlander.
Indeed. Catriona is the daughter of an earl, whose estate is crumbling, and so should have been found a wealthy husband. Instead her father – after a truncated attempt at turning her into a lady by sending her to boarding school – has encouraged her academic ambitions. She is, he says as he sends her off to Oxford with said stranger to pore over artifacts, “my best man”.
Catriona meets this stranger in the most ignoble way possible – without a her clothes on. She is literally naked before him, and therefore he knows “she was a woman too”. This rhetorical device is shocking, but also necessary. Catriona is so controlled and closed up that the only way to really see her is to strip away her metaphorical defences. With Elias, we get to see the various facets shimmering under Catriona’s tightly wound control.
When Elias Khoury, ostensibly visiting Professor Campbell, Catriona’s father, first sets eyes on Catriona, he believes she is a selkie, the mythical shapeshifter of Scottish lore. He sees her without the high-necked dresses with their stiff collars and the tartan shawl she wraps tightly around her so the world – especially the academic world – will see a scholar, not a woman.
Catriona only sees a Peeping Tom and is outraged, but later she feels the telltale signs of attraction in her belly. For a woman so controlled, Catriona has no say on who she feels the spark of attraction to. This has happened three times in the past, all unrequited, and she is determined not to cultivate false hope.
Of course, Elias decides to woo Catriona with a game of chess and of course he finds himself impossibly distracted. He has an ulterior motive – to wiggle his way into her affections to get to her father, but he finds himself in too deep.
A gentleman would have left her alone in her fortress, yet here he was, his muscles humming with the desire to scale the walls.
Catriona meanwhile is practising “emotional innoculation”, exposing herself to the virus of affection in small doses in the hope that her body will someone overcome it. Yeah, that worked. (*insert eyeroll*).
Her chaperone is not fooled:
“It’s not the chess,” Mackenzie said with a speaking glance. “It’s whatever else is being played. The gentleman was rather flirtatious.”
Catriona’s brows pulled together. “We discussed the effect of international capitalism on women’s position in society.”
“That’s right.” Mackenzie nodded gravely. “Sweet music to your ears.”
Elias has an agenda: to return to the East artefacts that have been stolen by wealthy Westerners. Basically, the Elgin Marbles story. Or the Kohinoor. I have never cared too much about the Kohinoor. I think its return would be symbolic, but hardly alleviate the suffering of people who could have benefited from its wealth. I also think about origins and how far back you have to go to decide whether a thing belongs to a people. Does the Kohinoor belong to “India” or the southern region it originally came from? Does it belong to the descendants of the ruler of the time, or the local people, and who are they?
The Elgin Marbles are simpler -they were carved onto a particular wall in a particular location and a chunk of them was removed and shipped to Greece. It’s clear they should go back.
Elias’ clients have a similar claim, and when he confesses – or is forced to confess – his agenda to Catriona, she quickly understands. This where the whole Peregrin backstory has relevance. It is explained that Catriona helped Peregrin not only because she was attracted to him, but because she thought he was in the right.
As I said, this whole controversy didn’t particularly resonate with me, but this book, in which the arguments are laid out, and the Western arrogance and acquisitiveness laid bare – we can take care of these things better than you – convinced me.
Because this is a feminist story, the roles are reversed and it is Catriona, with her ingenuity and her connections, that saves the day. Elias is mad because she didn’t confide in him before going ahead – although she didn’t because she knew suspicion would fall on him. (I frankly don’t see why she should apologise). Also, when Elias leaves it is Catriona who chases him across the oceans to an unknown land.
Elias is essentially a refugee, and the bombardment of Gaza made it all the more poignant reading the novel at this time, especially towards the end when Catriona is in hometown. Dunmore has done a great job in choosing a hero from outside the comfort zone of the Western world and making him work spectacularly. Yes, Elias has acquired the trappings of the English gentleman but as he explains at an awkward dinner party, he is very much from his mountain back home. To himself, he admits, that he is forever adrift, never quite at home anywhere.
Catriona’s objections to Elias are not cultural differences – she speaks Arabic, for one – but fear of what marriage and children will demand of her: compromise of her intellectual ambitions, even though she has three friends who have been through exactly this journey and found their own path to balancing the demands of head and heart.
We meet these friends again, of course. There is a subplot about the need to rescind the writ of restitution, which forces women back to their husbands. We get to meet Annabelle, Lucinda and Hattie again, update ourselves on where they are in their lives, and see them work together and support each other. If I have a quibble here it is that Annabelle and the duke are somewhat neglected (just like the duke in the Bridgerton series when the Rege-Jean Page departed after the first season), except towards the very end – when there is an off note (for me) when Annabelle asks the duke to take care of some loose ends in their plan for her, and he preens.
I am an ardent fan of Catriona – of all these women – and I was so looking forward to this book, but it didn’t engross me like the other three. Maybe I read it at the wrong time, when I had too much going on. I appreciated it, and enjoyed it, but I did not drown in it.
What I kept going back to reread was the epilogue in which the four extraordinary women get together to watch the culmination of their struggles – women gaining the right to vote. They are in a cavalcade with their children, and grandchildren. There is a poignant moment when Annabelle returns to the spot where it all started with her handing a pamphlet to Sebastian Devereux and her son acknowledges that this is her victory day.
Indeed, but now all children cared to understand their mother’s battles
I wish there was more of the series (a queer Peregrin novella, anyone?), but I also feel a sense of completion that is rare.
Have you read the series? Did this last novel live up to your expectations?
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