Forget-Me-Not is a retelling of the events leading up to the brutal 1847 murder of his wife by the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin, which was apparently provoked by his passion for his family's governess, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes. This event caused a public uproar, helping to provoke the 1848 Revolution and the subsequent abolition of monarchy in France. This material is also the basis of Rachel Field's novel, All This, And Heaven Too, famous as the source of the Bette Davis-Charles Boyer film of the same name. However, Field and "Joseph Shearing" (Gabrielle Long, better known as "Marjorie Bowen") put a very different interpretation upon these events. Shearing's anti-heroine, Lucile Clery, who calls herself Lucile Debelleyme, is the illegitimate granddaughter of a Bonapartist. Unacknowledged by her family, Lucile supports herself as a governess. However, none of her positions last long: though one of her few positive qualities is a real love for children, who love her in return, this has the effect of making mothers jealous and bringing about her dismissal, albeit with excellent references. When she hired as governess to the children of the Duc and Duchesse du Boccage, Lucile soon realises that she is living in a deeply unhappy household. The estrangement between the Duc and Duchesse is complete, much to the latter's despair. The children, frightened by their mother's emotional outbursts, soon turn to Lucile; while the Duc too begins to depend upon her - and does not bother to hide from interested eyes his preference for his governess over his wife. Scandal begins to brew: something that, given the Duc's position as an important prop of the shaky monarchy of Louis Philippe, cannot be allowed... Forget-Me-Not is an intriguing but uncomfortable novel. Shearing offers no sympathetic characters to the reader, instead presenting her central triangle as a clash of conflicting personalities that inevitably leads to disaster. All three are unlikeable, yet understandable. The Duchesse's passion for her husband is real and intense, but serves to repel him and make her ridiculous; while the Duc, married off by his parents when only seventeen, is finally driven to rebel against the suffocation of his ensuing life. Meanwhile, thrown upon the world and forced to fend for herself, and with a bitter betrayal by a man in her past, Lucile maintains a detached, calculating outlook, never allowing herself to be ruled by her emotions: her cool poise offers a cruel contrast to Duchesse's frequent hysteria, as Lucile is well aware. Though drawn to the Duc as he is to her, Lucile knows that her pose of unimpeachable virtue is the main weapon in her armoury and refuses to allow the line to be crossed---and it is this which finally brings about disaster. Shearing accepts that the governess was not the Duc's mistress (after the murder, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes was arrested as an accessory, but eventually released without charge), but ironically makes this the trigger for the bloody death of the Duchesse. When Lucile holds the maddened Duc at arm's-length and sends him away to take some decisive action, she is thinking ambitiously of divorce; but what transpires is very different...

    As she lay, warm and drowsy in her bed, it did occur to Lucille Debelleyme: "What would a good woman do under my circumstances? Is there such a thing as a good woman?" came the quick reflection. She would not leave the Faubourg St. Honoré. She would not say to herself: "I cannot be the cause of this terrible dissension between husband and wife, I cannot be a further instrument of torment to a woman already half mad with unhappiness, I cannot steal these children from their mother, this husband from his wife, I cannot remain here making my pleasure and my profit out of the miseries of another."
    She wondered, as she lay there, whether there existed any woman who would do this. She supposed so, there must be these ideal beings somewhere, women who were not absorbed in their own profit, who believed in God; women who, thought Lucille Debelleyme with a sneer, were afraid of God, who would argue: "This is wrong, I am wicked; I am, perhaps, condoning a crime, nothing but evil can come out of this situation and for my share in it the Father will surely punish me."
    Lucille Debelleyme had no such fear, she did not believe in God, she thought she had her own human destiny well in hand. She felt no pity for the woman whose place she was gradually, and with such cleverness usurping...