His Mistress by Marriage from Lee Wilkinson has a lousy title and a mediocre story. The main characters, Deborah and David, were engaged three years earlier before Deborah believed David was having an affair with her flat mate. She dumped him, claimed she wanted her fashion designer career more than him and left England for New York, all without asking David about it.
Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers
His Mistress by Marriage opens with Deborah and her new fiancé, her boss Gerald, driving through backroads England to visit her parents two weeks before their wedding. Deborah has not been home since she dumped David. Gerald is obnoxious, says right out that no one with any intelligence would live in a backwater like her folks do, and makes it clear he resents having to come over for the family visit. After all, Deborah must not be at all close to her family since she’s not been home and why should he have to waste time visiting unimportant people?
Gerald’s nasty tone and comments disconcert Deborah as does the fact that no one in her family nor her New York friends think he’s a good match for her. Deborah dieted down to fashion model gauntness to catch Gerald’s eye and she lives a life full of high fashion to keep him. She has not slept with Gerald although she slept with David three years before.
Gerald takes Deborah to California to see his parents the next week, and when they get back to New York he seems reluctant to take her home to her flat even though she is exhausted by the trip and asks him to skip dinner out. He takes her out anyway and drags his feet getting her home. We find the reason when she finally does return home.
David is there, waiting impatiently for her. He tried to contact Deborah but when her office said she was out with Gerald, called him directly. Deborah’s brother Paul is badly injured from an accident, in a coma, his very pregnant wife had her baby a bit early, and the family needs Deborah to come home. She and Paul are close and they hope that she can reach him since his wife cannot spend much time with him. Deborah is furious that Gerald did not pass on the message. She informs David she would have been on the next flight had he told her.
David uses his private jet to get them both back to England and to the hospital. Paul responds slightly when Deborah talks to him; even the tiny response gives hope. David takes her to the old family home where Paul and his family live now; David is staying there too. He makes lots of nasty comments about Deborah not caring, being hard, etc., etc., especially when Deborah asks who is running Paul’s company.
Deborah is shocked to realize she still loves David, there is a lot of sexual chemistry between them too, and she figures that she probably cannot marry Gerald feeling as she does. But she’s not sure and intends to go home on the Friday, just in time for their wedding. Gerald is rather nasty on the phone, angry that she left him, angry that she had her friend call him, angry that she felt it necessary to go.
Deborah is now leaning towards cancelling the wedding and wants to go back to New York to dump Gerald in person. David will have none of it. Instead of driving her to the airport as promised he takes her to the country house he bought when they had been engaged three years earlier. Now comes the blackmail. David is running Paul’s company and provided some interim financing to head off a take over. If Deborah leaves David will pull the plug. Deborah must stay in England as David’s mistress.
Deborah doesn’t believe this since Paul’s wife is David’s sister, but she’s not going to chance a rebuff. And she wants to regain the love she and David had shared. Finally, after a couple days Deborah tells Paul the reason she dumped him. Claire, her best friend at the time said she was having an affair with David, was pregnant by him and Deborah saw her going into David’s room at Christmas and getting a great big embrace and kiss.
David says nothing doing, he didn’t ever sleep with Claire, is not the dad and Claire staged the whole thing, threw herself at him and he threw her out but unfortunately Deborah was already back in her own room. He implores Deborah to trust him.
They sleep together, David is loving but never says he loves her or forgives her. Deborah promises to never doubt him, to trust him. They go back to Paul’s house in London and Paul has to go out for a business meeting. By chance Deborah ends up in the same restaurant where she sees Claire with David, acting as intimately possessive as one can in a restaurant. Deborah goes for a very long walk in the freezing rain, decides David lied to her and that she’s leaving.
She eventually gets back to Paul’s house where David gets her warm and puts her to bed. The next morning Deborah drops her bombshell. She knows David had and is still having an affair. David says OK, let’s go talk to Paul and tell him how awful I am.
Oops. It was Paul who had the affair with Claire before he met his wife. He hadn’t told his wife for fear she would not forgive him and Claire has been blackmailing him since. Claire wants money for her son because neither her ex husband nor current lover will have the boy. Paul got the business in trouble trying to pay her off. Paul’s wife arrives and he tells her the whole sad story. His wife offers to adopt the little boy and David offers to talk to Claire’s sister who takes care of him.
Deborah is sick. She doubted David and he’s pretty blunt that this was too much, he is done with her except for sex. She goes with him to Claire’s sister where they find the sister wants to adopt the little boy and is grateful when David offers to set up a small trust fund to help with the expenses. The little boy has brown eyes and both Paul and Claire have blue, thus the child is highly unlikely to be Paul’s son.
David reiterates that he wants nothing from Deborah now except her body, they are done. She pleads with him, she promises never to doubt him again, tries to explain how damning it looked. Finally she gives up and starts to undress. David relents. She should not have to promise never to doubt, he should not give her any reason to. Kiss and Happy Ever After.
Why Doesn’t His Mistress by Marriage Work?
The ending does not satisfy. David goes from wanting to kick Deborah out to suddenly they are in love. Granted three years ago she was all-too-easily suspicious of him, but in her defense, the situation was suspicious and her supposed best friend was all-too-plausible. David made it easy for the wanna-be OW to plant seeds of doubt and suspicion.
In the present time David made trouble for himself. He should have told Deborah that he was meeting with Claire and he could have asked her brother to explain the situation. Granted he is adamant that he never looked at Claire now or in the past but since he knows that Deborah has a wide jealous streak he could have avoided some trouble.
Remember, David blackmails Deborah into staying with him, that is bound to anger her, and he never says anything about love. She never should have felt she had to promise never to doubt him, that’s a teenage thing, not what an adult does. Adults may doubt but they check and resolve, not have tantrums.
Even those misunderstandings apart, this is not a satisfying story. The whole family is mixed up and it’s incredible that Paul was so eager to believe Claire’s son is his and never got a DNA test. David is all too eager to believe badly of Deborah the entire time and I was not feeling the love between them. I don’t give their happy-ever-after much chance.
2 Stars
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