Laura divorced Jason a year after marriage when her uncle showed her proof that Jason had raided their joint savings account to pay rent for and support another woman – a woman with a small boy who looked just like Jason. Uncle told Laura that Jason had asked for money, that he was a sponger and might have confused Laura with her cousin Celia who is Uncle’s heiress. Laura confronted Jason, who admitted that yes, he gave Laura’s money, the allowance she received from the business her father had cofounded with Uncle, to Clare Marshall. Laura never asked whether Jason had slept with Clare or whether the two children were his. She left, emotionally devastated, and returned to live with her uncle, uncle’s unpleasant housekeeper and beautiful, malicious Celia.
Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers
Act of Betrayal opens when Laura, orphaned she was small, and a trained cook, is called on to make a special lunch for her uncle’s company board members and a prospective customer who could make or break the firm. Jason is now the managing director of Tristan’s construction, the important customer, and he seeks her out after lunch. Laura knows she still loves and misses Jason but she cannot face marriage with a man who has a relationship with a mistress and hides her feelings to protect herself.
Jason comes by Uncle’s house where Celia co-opts him into a spur of the moment cocktail party that evening. Celia makes it clear to Laura that she intends to catch Jason. Laura had planned to go out that evening but her date, Alan, a food critic, stays for the cocktail party then invites Celia and Jason along with him and Laura to the new restaurant. Alan drinks too much and Jason sends Celia home in a taxi and helps Laura get Alan home. Jason pushes Laura aside when she kisses him, and later Laura sees Jason’s car outside Uncle’s home all night, and assumes he spent the night with Celia.
After about a month, when Laura avoids Jason and Celia as much as possible, she learns that Jason has bought Mill Cottage nearby, and that Clare Marshall – whom he calls his housekeeper – will live there too. Laura realizes she needs to leave the area, that she can’t face the ongoing hurt and heartbreak seeing Jason and knowing he is either with Celia or with Clare, and that if she were to come back to him she would be only one of his harem. Laura starts to look for a live in cook/housekeeper job, but her looks and youth are against her.
Laura drives by Mill Cottage and Clare flags her down, wants to talk and be friends. Clare doesn’t explain anything about her relationship with Jason, but makes it clear that she has separate quarters for herself and her children. Laura assumes that Clare’s single bed simply means she will spend most nights with Jason. Laura is going out when Jason comes in, confronts Laura, drags her upstairs and easily seduces her. Laura wakes up, starts to leave. Jason tells her that “I have you now, Laura, and you are not running out on me again.” Too bad, Laura leaves and spends the night at friends’ house.
The next morning her friend, Bethany, tells her she happened to hear about a job. Laura makes an interview appointment for that afternoon, goes back to Uncle’s house to pack and learns that Uncle is anxious for her to come to the office. Yes, her kindly uncle has some news for her. Laura had always thought her father was the junior partner, that her small allowance was a gift, not anything she was owed. In fact Uncle had diverted her trust fund income back into the business, had not increased the income when Laura married Jason, as he should have, and when Jason asked him for money he was not sponging, it was in fact the funds that were Laura’s by right. Uncle says that Jason is holding the contract up for ransom, that Uncle had to tell Laura the truth or Jason would walk away and Uncle’s company would fold.
Laura is dumbfounded at Uncle’s perfidy and when Jason asks her about it she pushes away and goes to her interview. The interview turns out to be with Jason’s mother who has an interesting confession. It was her husband, Jason’s father, who had the long term affair with Clare and fathered her children before he died. Mom used her health to blackmail Jason to keep quiet because she had the crazy idea that she had to pretend her marriage was perfect. She was willing to see anyone suffer, even her own son, in order to pretend that her husband loved her, not someone else.
Jason comes in then and he and Laura go off to remarry.
Characters and Emotions
I wanted to hit Laura and Jason and yes, Clare too, for keeping quiet about this cruel deception. I understand keeping promises and keeping secrets, but never at the expense of one’s marriage, at the cost of heartbreak.
Jason was angry at Laura, thought that she never really wanted to marry him, that she preferred being alone, and that was why she believed Uncle so fast without asking Jason to explain. Laura simply couldn’t. She should have asked Jason just why he was supporting Clare, gave him the opportunity to explain. Jason asked her to trust him, but he didn’t do much to present himself as trustworthy.
Clare too had the opportunity to explain when she showed Laura around Jason’s new home. She had to know that Laura assumed that Jason was the father but she didn’t bother to clear anything up.
Several times I wanted to yell at the characters to ask the question, to explain the problem. Jason could have voluntarily told Laura that he had to help Clare, that he wasn’t the father, hadn’t had an affair with her, but was morally obligated to help her on someone else’s behalf. He did not. He told Laura that she had never understood the obligation he had for Clare, but he never tried to clarify it for her either.
Act of Betrayal could have been improved if Sara Craven had spent time on the issue of trust. Laura did not trust Jason. She says several times that she never really felt she knew him, that he had always withheld something of himself from her. Of course Jason did not make it easy for her to trust him. He lied to her about going to his studio when in fact he went to Clare and he did not tell her he withdrew their savings. Uncle’s lies fell on ground that Jason himself had prepared and fertilized.
Jason did not trust Laura. He always felt she withheld something of herself, that she was glad to be alone again when she left him. In fact she was hurt and lonely, missed Jason whom she loved and regretted leaving him although she didn’t see how she could have stayed.
The author sketched these trust points but didn’t flesh them out. Instead she made it seem as though the physical attraction and need were the main drivers, when in fact they were sub points to loneliness and love.
Sara Craven is particularly gifted at showing strong emotions in her characters and connections between them. We see from the beginning how Jason’s return affects Laura. Craven shows this in party by sharing Laura’s thoughts, but it’s also obvious by how she avoids Jason, tries to hide behind Alan, how she decides to leave Uncle’s home and get a menial job.
It’s not as obvious how much Jason regrets losing Laura. He makes a lot of snide, sarcastic comments, hangs on Celia, makes it clear that although he might want Laura physically that he blames her for their breakup and intends to wreck revenge on her. That could be love or it could be dislike and basic jerk hood.
Overall Summary
I liked Act of Betrayal for the intense emotional connections and also because I wanted to see how Jason can square the circle of having supported a woman with children that look like him and even are named after him. The dialogue is good, the plot is interesting, the pacing is good.
On the other hand, I’m not fond of romances that hinge on not asking/answering questions or misunderstandings. Emotional cowardice keeps people quiet and it’s stupid. It causes immense hurt and harms marriages and friendships.
Using Jason’s mother as the deus ex machina left me unsatisfied. I felt that Jason could have done something before he and Laura divorced, that she should have asked more questions. Laura obviously still loves Jason, so either she or he should have taken the risk to connect beyond the physical. I loved Jason telling Laura that he has her now and she isn’t going to get away again, but then he lets her leave. Of course that’s the spur that has him forcing Uncle and Mother to confess all. I felt the confessions were the easy way out of the tangle, that Laura should have been able to trust Jason and Jason to trust her.
3 Stars
I got my used paperback copy from Thriftbooks. At this moment there is no E version; Archive.org does not have Act of Betrayal in PDF format nor is it available on Amazon.
On a side note, Jason in the cover picture is very good looking. Lots of times the hero looks like an arrogant jerk but this guy looks like he cares about the lady he is holding.
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