Heyer’s only collection, until a recent one was cobbled together from this and some uncollected pieces, which is not much of a surprise as her only published stories were contemporary, and the contents of Pistols for Two (1960, UK) appeared nowhere else. They are… condensed versions of Heyer’s Regency novels. Mostly.
Pretty much every story is a young woman, either nineteen or twenty, who finds herself in a situation with a man – of the Quality, of course – a dozen or so years older, and so comes to love him or realise she has always loved him, and they agree to marry. In some cases, Heyer holds back on the history of the characters in order to male the romance more, well, cuter. The two guardians who refuse to allow their wards to marry because they were once engaged and it all went wrong but they’ve carried a torch for each other ever since. The young woman who prevails on an unknown lord to prevent the duel between her brother and a known rake, only to discover the unknown lord is the rake and he’s fallen for her.
The only one that breaks the mould is the young cit gentleman who puts up at a country inn on his way home from working in Portugal, and finds himself the intended victim of murderous thieves. Fortunately, one of his fellow guests is a Bow Street Runner.
Short stories by definition allow less room for character development, and Heyer did tend to rely on a series of stock characters. So it’s a hardly a surprise the stories in Pistols for Two feature those self-same stock characters, and the plots read mostly like incidents from a novel-length work.
On the other hand, it’s Heyer and these stories are typical of her work. If you like Heyer, you’ll like these. If you like these, you’ll like Heyer’s other works.
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