young Scotsman and a Cavalry Officer embark on a forbidden love affair as the winds of war threaten to tear them apart.

When Robert Alexander Macdonald locks eyes with Captain Charles Wentworth at a social gathering in London, it's not long before they are also locking lips and engaging in a covert love affair. After an idyllic time spent together in a cottage on the windswept cliffs of Cornwall Charles receives orders to report for combat duty.

Britain and France are at war with Russia, and Charles, an Officer with the 11th Hussars finds himself part of the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, a military disaster that outraged the British population.

Robert, on hearing that Charles is missing, goes in search of him, but finds only the shell of the man he loves, a man damaged in body and mind, with no memory of his family or loved ones. Faced with the possibility of Charles never again knowing what he and Robert meant to one another, Robert decides to dedicate himself to Charles' full recovery.

Going against all medical advice, Robert removes Charles from the hospital and takes him back to Cornwall in the hope that the familiar surroundings of his old home will bring back some latent memory to his lover's mind. A hope, that as time goes by, becomes less and less of a possiblity.
This is a Novella that really could have used some more "story", especially in the beginning. I felt it was rushed. These two Gents meet at a Parry and fall madkly in love and in bed all in the same night.
I just didn't find it believable and would have liked to learn more about these characters and let them learn more about each other.
A fine story, a wonderful happly ever after ending...but rushed. ( )

The Officer and the Gentleman is a novella which starts in a good way and ends in a wonderful one. Robert is a wealthy scotsman: he inherited from his grandfather a good amount of money and this allows him to live as he likes without have to worry of what people think of him. But he is not a careless man, he was not brought up in a supportive and happy family, his late grandfather was not a caring man, and probably Robert lacks the warm of a family. Plus Robert is gay and his only lover left him for the New World: it's not clear if it was real love or simply a friend with benefits relationship, it seems to me that Robert misses more the friend than the lover.

Robert is in London to visit and he befriends a young girl without dowry he finds interesting but not in a sexual way; he is a lot more interested in that way in her brother Charles, a cavalry officer. The time is the 1854 and Charles is enlisted in the Eleventh Hussars of Lord Cardigan, The Light Brigade, but before the history takes its toll, Charles and Robert share two weeks of passion; it's love at first sight, and for them everything seems possible. Actually everything is possible since Robert has enough money to not worry about society, they can live apart from the ton in total happiness. But Charles has to return to his military duty and after some weeks it arrives the sad news that almost all the Light Brigade was killed in a battlefield with the Russian Army.

To Robert is enough a feeble hope when he discovers that some soldiers are confined in a battlefield hospital in Scutari, to face the travel and rescue Charles to certain death. But the man he finds his no more the man he remembers: Charles has been catatonic for weeks and so remains even after Robert takes him back to England. This is probably to part of the book I liked best, how Robert takes care of Charles with so much love, even if actually he knew the man only for two weeks before he left. The trial they face is hard and deeply moving, and I really was wondering if there was an happy ending at the end; at some point I even thought that, in some way, even if Charles never fully recovers, for me it was still a story with an happily ever after, since they were together and Robert was happy to have Charles with him in every way he could: never once Robert regrets to have to take care of Charles.

There is also a lot of sex, more before Charles' illness, but also after: obviously it was a different way to approach sex, at first they are passionate and free, also a bit careless, and then it's a more sad and longing way, but nevertheless romantic, maybe even more than before.

When I first approached this story I was perplexed: how it was possible for the author to concentrate all that events in a novella of only 74 pages? But it's possible, and at the end of the book, I didn't feel like something was missing: I had enough time to care for the characters and enough historical details to like the setting.

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/519434.html