"Second Best Wife" is an old school Harlequin Romance. I'd first read it way back in high school and it stuck in my brain all these years because it had seemed just a tad different from the other Harlequins that I'd read.

Recently, I had come upon the title in a search for another book and nostalgia demanded that I buy it.

For once, my memory served me well.

At the opening of the story, Georgina Perry makes no effort to hide her dislike of William Ayres. Although he is five years old than she, they grew up in the same English town. When she was 10 and he was 15, he made a bit of fun of her by calling her "Georgie Porgie" after the fiery brunette punched him.

It is with this in mind that she goes to see William to advise him that her sister, Jennifer, will not be marrying him after all.

This being 1978 and William being a Harlequin hero (of sorts), he takes the news in irritable stride and simply tells Georgina that she'll take Jennifer's place.

Yes, it is a bit of a stretch, but romances often are. Yet the enjoyment of "Second Best Wife" is what follows. The witty repartee between busty brunette Georgie and her unrepentantly straightforward William is that they are categorically well adjusted for the most part. Georgie fights with William who knows well that it is an act although he isn't sure how far she'll take it.

There is a reason that he needed a wife in Jennifer and it wasn't for love. As a engineer in Sri Lanka, he needed help with a young woman he promised to take care of when her father, his friend, was unexpectedly killed.

So while Georgie and William are trying to work out the arrangements of their marriage, Georgie is also getting to know the beautiful but innocently troubled Celine and her whacked out companion who hates her, Miss Campbell. Add a dapper, young Stuart Duffield to the mix and you have a nice little cast of characters.

Compared to today's category romance, the love scenes are tame, but the dialogue is pure wicked yum. For all William's teasing of being fine with his Victorian views, he seduces Georgie with a refreshing amount of respect for her choice without sacrificing his alpha male charm. Georgie, for her part, uses her dislike as a shield but once she gives in, she does not linger much on old hostility. Even when her spoiled sister comes to claim her fiance from his wife, her sister, Georgie does not act stupidly. She takes measure of the situation and acts accordingly.

With any romance, we already know that the two leads will be together at the end and with "Second Best Wife", they are married by the end of chapter 3. The surprising joys of this little novella is the alacrity with which the frank and confident William and the spirited but cautious Georgie come to terms with marriage and the possibility of happiness it could bring them.

Some times there are books that stay in the memory and you re-read them and wonder what you were thinking was so great about it (I'm looking at you, Judy Blume's "Forever"!), but then there are those obscure nuggets that become rediscovered gems.

For me, "Second Best Wife" was one of those rediscovered gems. ( )