Grrrrace's Reviews > Three for a Wedding

From 1973, coming right after the sublime Cassandra by Chance, TfaW is a nicely paced story with lots of great "working together" hospital detail; a well-matched pair of very likable MCs; an utterly vile OW who does not, alas, get the comeuppance she deserves (an area where Betty usually falls short); and the usual assemblage of travelogue details, secondary characters, lavish food and surroundings, and fabulous cars that we've come to expect from our Betty. It's a fun ride overall, though some plot developments don't bear too much close scrutiny (something true of most Harleys, after all!).

The title stems from a variation of an old folk rhyme about the number of magpies spotted:

One’s sorrow,
Two’s mirth,
Three’s a wedding,
Four’s a birth,
Five’s a christening,
Six a dearth,
Seven’s heaven,
Eight is hell,
And nine’s the devil his old self.

Or HER old self--Betty pulls no punches in crafting a vile (view spoiler)[puppy abusing! (hide spoiler)] OW who's one of her most evil.

Our MCs--the charmingly absent-minded (sometimes, anyway!) Rich Dutch doctor Lucius and pretty, likable Poor British Nurse Phoebe--are terrific together. Lucius is a little dim when it comes to noticing that his adopted son's governess, the awful Maureen, is a day-drinking psychopath who keeps her charge in line with emotional blackmail and routine threats, but his heart's in the right place. He's one of Betty's sweeter heroes who actually courts our heroine (for once!). Too bad he doesn't notice that latet anguis in herba (as our learned Sir Paul, the hero of The Right Kind of Girl might say--the things I learn from Harleys!) who has infiltrated his household in the form of governess (and Phoebe's romantic rival) Maureen.

Phoebe is lovely--one of Betty's Beauties, with golden hair, sapphire eyes, a good sense of humor, a touch of shyness, and lots of smarts (she impresses the hero with her knowledge of botany and Latin, gleaned from her scientist father). A gold medalist of her year, like quite a few BN heroines before her, Phoebe reluctantly falls in with her (nice, for a change, if prone to dramatics) sister's scheme to have Phoebe pretend to be her and participate in a nursing exchange program in Holland for a few weeks. The scheme goes by the wayside pretty quickly, as our not-so-absent-minded professor sees through it immediately, but it does the trick to get our MCs together.

TGB seemed to have great fun with this one, cheerfully advancing the identity-switcheroo that the heroine admits is ludicrous and likely to fail (as it does, charmingly), an eeeevil OW, some credulity-stretching required with regard to the heroine's (and other characters') unwillingness to unmask our villainess to the hero, and an amusing declaration/HEA involving kitchen goods. Silly good fun for the most part, although the OW adds some pretty dark moments to the action. The hero and heroine are both pretty dense at points but they suit.

Car porn: hero drives an Jaguar XJ12, which the heroine drools over (as do I): "I love it. Only she's so splendid, she took my breath--"