Charmian, Lady Vibart

by Jeffery Farnol Book 2 in the The Broad Highway series.

First published 1932

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3.2(14)

Twenty years after The Broad Highway, Peter and Charmian Vibart are confronted with danger through their nineteen-year-old son Richard. In Paris, Richard strikes a celebrated duellist after an insult to his mother and is challenged by a man reputed never to miss. Peter hurries across the Channel to prevent the duel, while Charmian, mistrustful of a purely paternal solution, follows with plans of her own.

The sequel shifts the family story between England and Paris while preserving Farnol’s mixture of romance, danger and comic misdirection. Peter and Charmian are no longer young wanderers discovering one another; they are parents whose old independence and courage are tested by their son’s impetuosity. The novel gives the earlier romance a generational afterlife and shows how ideals of honour can become lethal when inherited by the young.