To Have and to Hold: 7

After spending ten years in prison for killing her husband, the newly released Rachel Wade is picked up for vagrancy and brought before the magistrate, Sebastian Verlaine, Viscount D'Aubrey. Bored, debauched, selfish and quite willing to admit it, Sebastian is intrigued by Rachel, who seems old beyond her years and beaten by the world. From the first, Sebastian admits that his attraction for Rachel has something a bit perverse about it--an odd theme that runs the length of this romance set in 19th-century England. To save Rachel from another jail term, he hires her as his housekeeper, a position, everyone assumes, that includes more intimate duties. After it becomes obvious that Rachel suffered at the hands of her husband, Sebastian continues to force Rachel to submit to his own selfish desires. Gaffney tries to justify this by the fact that he wants only ``to give her pleasure,'' while her dead husband had found ``pleasure in giving her pain.'' The explanation is not enough to take the bad taste from one's mouth, nor does it help endear a hero who in one scene allows his jaded London friends to spend an amusing evening in tormenting Rachel about her past. Gaffney may have written a different kind of romance, but it is also unsavory.(Sept.)