Those Endearing Young Charms

Those Endearing Young Charms is a Regency romance by the English writer Marion Chesney, published in 1986. It is set in Regency England, where a marriage between two great families is as much an arrangement as an affection, and it is a short novel about a promise made a decade earlier and the trouble caused by keeping it.

After ten years away, the Earl of Devenham comes home to marry Mary Anstey as he swore he would. The two of them find that what they felt for each other has cooled, and both put on a bright face for the benefit of their families and friends rather than admit it.

Mary's younger sister Emily is not deceived. She is prepared to sacrifice almost anything rather than watch her retiring sister married to the haughty earl, and she settles on desperate measures: a sleeping draught in Mary's wedding-morning chocolate, the veil taken by Emily herself, and an annulment to be forced once the trick is discovered. It is the kind of plan, the novel notes, that is guaranteed to get a young woman into trouble.