Scandal and innocence at Ham House

Now, I know you all been on tenderhooks (what are tenderhooks, by the way?) waiting for me to give you some more of Scandalous Innocent. Let’s do a quick recap.

It started here with Phoebe and Leo. They hated each other and had a duel to sort things out. It didn’t really sort anything out. She was supposed to marry him if she lost. Instead he carried her upstairs, kissed her then he was like, “Whatevs. I’m not even going to marry you.” She’s like horrified and embarrassed cause she was totally getting into it when he was kissing her but pretending not to.

Then she realised she quite liked him and had quite wanted to marry him. So she goes to Ham House to find him. When she sees him, she starts flirting with someone else. He’s like, “What a div, get over yourself.” She harumphs about a bit then flounces off.

On her way home, he kidnaps her. Kind of. Says she’s staying until she agrees to marry him. She goes, “Never!” And he goes (paraphrased), “O please!” So she goes, “Ok.”

Then she’s like, “I hope you are not going to dishonour me before marriage, Sir Leo!” And he goes, “Nooo! No, of course not, my lady! Would I? Would I ever?”

They spend a few days faffing around making changes to the house and getting builders to do the garden up, etc. Then he snogs her in the little summer house gazebo thing and feels her boob and she’s all like, “….O, go on then!”

So they go upstairs and get friendly and then he’s like, “So I guess you’re going to marry me then?” And she’s like, “Totes!” So all that nonsense about him not dishonouring her before marriage, that was nonsense. Whenever she says something to him, he just goes, “Yeh but what about doing my idea instead?” And she’s like, “Sure thing.”

Next, they go to a jewellery shop in London that her parents used to run before they died and then her brother ran it for a bit but died in the Great Fire Of London.

Someone else is running the shop so she goes in and says who she is and the new owner is like, “Maybe you can help me figure out the mystery.” He brings a wooden chest thing out and hands her a parcel. She unwraps it and inside is a little gold heart with pearls set around the edge and the name “Phoebe” engraved on the back. She’s like, “That’s me. My brother must have made it for me.” He’s like, “Ah! The mystery is solved!”

Now, come on. If we’re going to call it a “mystery”, there’s got to be more going on than a gold heart with “Phoebe” written on it. It wouldn’t have even been that hard to solve. The shopkeeper only needed to check out the people who owned the shop before him and their children. One would have been called Phoebe. Mystery solved. (They do talk about the records and the shopkeeper says they survived the fire.)

When the shopkeeper said there was a mystery to solve, I really thought the book might get going. Maybe there’d be a suicide note. Or a small dirty child found living under the floorboards. It maybe the king was hiding in the chest. Or a skeleton in the wall. Or a diary from an Anne Frank-esque character.

Instead he goes, “There’s a pendant with Phoebe written on it.” She went, “Yeh, that’s me.” He went, “Fab. Here you go. Have it.” She went, “Thanks.”

Now, if THAT is the big mystery of the book, I’m going to be really gutted. Cause we’ll be back to Phoebe and Leo and their silly nonsense before long and I really need more story than that if I’m to keep reading.