THE FOUNTAIN OF DELIGHT

Weale follows her romance debut (ARMy Worldly Goods, 1989) with an equally forgettable sequel--set in the same country manor and featuring a modern-day American heiress and her adoring husband, the Earl of Corlyon. Their Rhett-and-Scarlett sort of tempestuous marriage neatly resolved in the previous book, North (the Earl) and his wife, Jane, have now settled down in Longwarden, the family estate, to have their first child. Sharing their abode are North's sister, Allegra, the best-selling author who still grieves over the death by drowning of her one true love; North's cousin Sarah, who's been left pregnant by a stableboy who ran off to re. join the Foreign Legion; and a new cast of lovelorn folk made up of Jane's newly hired personal staff. These include a snobbish if attractive female landscape artist who must hide her humble origins; a carpenter equally ashamed of his grandfather the baronet; a spinsterish personal secretary and a lonely male architect. The question of who will fall for whom substitutes for plotting here, and in any case the answers are disappointingly predictable. As each female finds distraction in the presence of her chosen male, illegitimate pregnancies abound at Longwarden--outnumbering the legitimate ones, by the end of this tale, by a ratio of three to one. An English country baby-boom hardly makes for breathtaking drama--and Weale's characteristically flat, meandering style adds the killing blow.