Published in November 1923 – the same month as her fourth novel Instead of the Thorn – “Love” would prove to be the only tragedy among Heyer’s short stories. It would also be the only one of her historical shorts published in the 1920s; she would go on to write several historical shorts in the 1930s and 1940s, most of which would eventually be included in her 1960 anthology, Pistols for Two and in the 2016 reissue, Snowdrift and Other Stories.

“Love” was the culmination of an intense writing period for the young Heyer. Between September 1922 and October 1923 she had written and successfully published three novels, seven contemporary short stories and this historical short. She had also written the bulk of the novel that she described as “a sequel” to The Black Moth. This draft manuscript, which she had nearly finished in January 1923, would eventually become her perennial bestseller, These Old Shades (1926). At the age of just twenty, Heyer was already demonstrating her remarkable ability to slip easily from one genre to another; from historical to contemporary and back again.

Though set in the same era as Heyer’s novels The Black Moth and The Transformation of Philip Jettan, “Love” is very different from those light-hearted romances. It is the story of Henry, a married man trapped in a loveless marriage; his wife is capricious, demanding and given to fits of uncontrollable hysteria. He loves another woman, Mary, and she loves him, but Mary’s brother is smitten with Henry’s wife, Sophia. When the story opens, Mary is desperate to see her brother freed from Sophia’s clutches before he is ruined.

This is a story about love – true love and fickle love, love of things, love of power, and love’s sacrifice. It is not a happy story but it is very well-written and, like the ending of These Old Shades, the reader believes in these people and in the melodrama that is their lives. It is, however, a departure from Heyer’s usual type of story and it is possible that a recent stay in hospital had turned her mind to tragedy rather than comedy.

She’d had serious surgery in the first week of September, just two months before “Love” was published. She’d written a story on the eve of her operation and it is likely that the story was “Love.” The surgery kept her in hospital for three weeks and had left her with “a very hot line in tubes sticking out of my neck. When I eat I can feel it move inside! Perfectly filthy!” She’d sent the story to her agent after the operation and later wrote to him to say:

I don’t know in the slightest what the story is about! In fact, I never even read it through! When my surgeon heard how I spent the eve of my operation he was filled with awe and wonder! But it reads like that, doesn’t it? The operation was entirely successful and you'll be relieved to hear that I behaved like a perfect lady throughout. I also managed to shake off that chewed banana feeling quite quickly, and am now quite well and cheery, if a trifle exhausted.