pensnest | (no subject)

I have a great fondness for books on tape, and Phyllida Nash reads very well. The current book, which I listen to as I cook, is Georgette Heyer's "Cotillion". I've read the book a couple of times, but I have a bad habit of skittering over descriptive passages, and it was not, therefore, until I listened to the loving description of Why Freddie Is No Threat At All that I realised how very clearly the author seems to be saying that he's gay.

Freddie is a very proper gentleman, you see. He visits the places a fashionable gentleman should visit, and does the things a fashionable gent should do, but he doesn't indulge in those nasty, brutish, masculine pursuits, like boxing, except in so far as he does them because they're fashionable. He's always impeccably dressed, and is a great favourite with the ladies because he can advise them on their redecorating schemes. He's a very graceful dancer. He is known throughout the fashionable world to be No Threat to anyone's marriage—the most jealous of husbands will smile when Freddie Standon is escorting his wife. And Jack—the Corinthian, with broad shoulders and rakish habits, who is so very plainly coded as The Masculine Ideal—is enormously amused to find that Freddie (who, to be fair, has stated at least three times already that he is Not A Marrying Man) is engaged. It's, like, Bwahahaha, you're getting married? No way! Only in refined accents.

I'm charmed by this book, indeed. If you have not read it, give it a try.