DEIRDRE AND DESIRE

Deirdre, daughter Number Three in Chesney's ""Six Sisters"" series of light-hearted Regency romances (Minerva, Taming of Annabelle), will eventually slide into the arms of a handsome eligible--although she's very muddled throughout above love, ""pure"" and lusty. That fox-hunting vicar, Charles Armitage, although now father-in-law of two wealthy peers, confides to his friend Squire Radford that--re daughter Deirdre--he has lost his faith ""just like the thingummy on the road to whatsit."" And, despite the Squire's disapproval, the vicar papa sets his sights on incredibly beautiful, wife-needy (for inheritance reasons), but not-too-bright Lord Harry Desire, proposing a union: ""I have this daughter, see. Deirdre. Eighteen. I ain't got the blunt, you need a wife. . .what say we strike a bargain?"" Harry is casually agreeable; the vicar is pleased. (""He's a gentleman, and your true gentleman is stupid,"" he explains later to brainy Deirdre.) But Deirdre has secretly formed a strenuously pure tendre for none other than that recurrent villain, Guy Wentwater, and she decides to go to London with the vicar, where she'll see to it that Lord Harry dislikes her. So, while a brace of villains plans trouble for the Armitage family, Deirdre and Harry formally agree to thwart the vicar's matchmaking plans. And, before Deirdre sees the light of true love, she'll have humiliating revelations about her lack of brains--with abortive trysts, looming violence (Deirdre holds off attackers with a slicing sword), and a dramatic plunge into ""ruin."" Not quite up to Minerva--both Deirdre and Annabelle lack her spine, coming dangerously near ninnyhood--but tauter and livelier than Annabelle.