The Velvet Promise

The Velvet Promise is a historical romance by the American writer Jude Deveraux, published by Pocket Books in 1981. It is set in medieval England and it belongs to her series about the Montgomery family.

The novel begins with a wedding. Judith has been married to Gavin Montgomery in an arrangement that is about land and position rather than the two of them, and she goes into the marriage with a promise to herself about what she will concede. Gavin is a soldier and a lord with the expectations of his rank, which include a wife who will do what she is told, and the book follows the marriage through its early years, with the couple's families, the disputes over property and the ordinary business of running an estate all pressing on them. Deveraux writes the story as a contest over the terms of the marriage, and the setting provides the obstacles: a church and a set of laws that gave a wife very little, and a set of relatives with interests of their own.

Deveraux has written in several periods and genres over a long career, and the Montgomery books, of which this is one of the earliest, remain among the best known of her historical romances.