Summary
Summary of The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 10 h 10 min8 h 5 min fast, 12 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 145,700 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by Gilbert Frankau
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
A small courtesy opens a door
Aliette Brunton rides out to the hunt carrying disappointments she keeps to herself. Her husband has been unfaithful, she longs for children, and she has never known love. Then Ronald Cavendish catches up on a borrowed horse and asks the way. He is shy with women, yet comfortable with her. When he lifts a locked gate off its hinges, her answering smile brings an excitement neither understands. An ordinary kindness begins to disturb two carefully controlled lives.
Key idea 2
Duty keeps Aliette beside Hector
Aliette married Hector expecting a home and children.
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Key idea 3
Distance cannot hide a growing love
After the hunt, Aliette notices that she has left Ronnie out of her account to the family.
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Key idea 4
Love first asks her to yield
Ronnie tries to master his feelings while working as junior counsel to Hector.
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Key idea 5
Restraint gives passion its shape
Aliette finally admits that she wants Ronnie entirely, not as a secret lover.
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Key idea 6
Their choice reaches beyond themselves
Tea at Ronnie's flat briefly feels simple and domestic, but the lovers soon face the harm their happiness might bring.
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Key idea 7
A refuge cannot remove the stakes
Aliette decides that love must be worth the leap and leaves Hector's house.
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Key idea 8
Open love carries a public cost
Back in London, Aliette and Ronnie discover that leaving is only the beginning of the cost.
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Key idea 9
Courage means facing the cost
At the center of Aliette's story is a woman learning to stop flinching.
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Who it’s for
You will love this if you enjoy romance and stories of marriage and conscience, English country life, and courtroom drama, and if you like a heroine whose quiet courage carries the book.
What this book is
What happens when two decent, orderly English people fall in love and one is not free? The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton begins on a frosty March morning in Oxfordshire. A woman on a chestnut horse rides to a fox hunt, and a stranger on a borrowed gray catches up behind her.
Gilbert Frankau wrote this romance of the nineteen-twenties as a study of love against the code of playing the game. Aliette is the wife of a powerful King's Counsel, Hector Brunton. Ronald Cavendish is a quiet barrister, raised on self-restraint like her. You get country houses, law courts, a boardinghouse and a first night at the theater, and a family with a claim on the lovers. Start with the hunt, because the whole story is already in it.
In this summary
- 1A small courtesy opens a doorFree
- 2Duty keeps Aliette beside Hector
- 3Distance cannot hide a growing love
- 4Love first asks her to yield
- 5Restraint gives passion its shape
- 6Their choice reaches beyond themselves
- 7A refuge cannot remove the stakes
- 8Open love carries a public cost
- 9Courage means facing the cost
A morning ride that starts everything
The story opens at Moor Park, the Oxfordshire home of Rear-Admiral Billy Brunton. Aliette Brunton, a small, poised woman in a black riding habit, rides out on a chestnut hunter named Miracle. She is going to the first March meet of the Mid-Oxfordshire Hunt.
It is the third spring since she learned of her husband's unfaithfulness, and she has kept her distance from him ever since. She wants children more than anything. She feels no love for any man, because she has never known it.
Then a man on a huge, rawboned gray overtakes her and asks the way to the kennels. He is Ronald Cavendish, a barrister near forty, shy with women, and oddly at ease with her. At a locked gate he lifts it off its hinges for her, and she smiles down at him. Both feel an excitement they put down to the sport.
Great changes in this book begin in small, ordinary courtesies.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
Why does Aliette remain in her unhappy marriage?
Right. “What holds her is the code she was raised in.”Not quite. “What holds her is the code she was raised in.”
What conflict must Julia face when she learns where Ronnie is?
Right. “When Julia learns where her son is, her beliefs and her love fight a week-long war in her mind.”Not quite. “When Julia learns where her son is, her beliefs and her love fight a week-long war in her mind.”
What social injustice does Frankau expose through the lovers' public treatment?
Right. “England excuses secret affairs, he says, but has no mercy for candor.”Not quite. “England excuses secret affairs, he says, but has no mercy for candor.”
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About 10 h 30 min to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 145,700 words
- Reading timeAbout 10 h 10 min
Questions about The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
What is The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton about?
It is a romance of the nineteen-twenties about Aliette, an unhappy wife in an English barrister's household, and Ronald Cavendish, a fellow barrister. Their love begins on a fox hunt and tests the code of duty they were both raised in.
Who is Julia Cavendish in the story?
She is Ronnie's mother, a respected Victorian-style novelist and churchwoman who writes against easy divorce. Her struggle between her beliefs and her love for her son is one of the book's major threads.
What does playing the game mean in this novel?
It is the old English code of self-restraint, self-respect and fair dealing that the characters were raised on. The author argues it is a good code, yet one that can weigh heavily when real love arrives.
Is the book easy to follow?
Yes, in the sense that the story moves through clear scenes with lively dialogue, vivid settings from hunting fields to law courts, and a narrator who explains the customs of the time as he goes.
Why is Ponto the Great Dane important?
Ponto is Aliette's piebald dog, who stays at her heel through scandal and change. He gives a touch of warmth and humor, and he stands for loyalty in a story about who belongs to whom.
Cite this edition
Frankau, Gilbert. The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-love-story-of-aliette-brunton.
Frankau, G. (2026). The love-story of Aliette Brunton. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-love-story-of-aliette-brunton (Original work published 1922)
Frankau, Gilbert. The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-love-story-of-aliette-brunton.
@book{frankau2026lovestory,
author = {Frankau, Gilbert},
title = {The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-love-story-of-aliette-brunton},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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