One classic book I love is The Scarlet Pimpernel, it holds up very well. It's about a woman who finds something out about husband. Right after they get married, he cools to her, and acts air headed, leading her to wonder why he's so different. Before they wed, he was serious and intellectual.
The book is about Sir Percy's effort, under the fake name of a red flower [ie. the title] that is on his family crest, to save some mis-indicted, death row aristocrats during the French Revolution. His wife Marguerite slowly realizes what's going on behind the scenes and gets involved, knowing things that Percy doesn't.
The series is very moving, with tons of sequels. There are at least two great black and white films of the book as well. The man who plays Ashley in the film Gone with the Wind, Leslie Howard, plays Percy, and he's great in the 1934 film.
The best part of the book is that Percy truly loves his wife, but is horrified to realize after their wedding day that she's on the side of the murderous regime. The book shows how complicated the situation in, and how the whole thing had shades of grey. There were evil aristocratic people and evil revolutionaries who killed innocents. The many problems, contradictions and issues of the Revolution crop up.
One part I love is just a little moment at the end of chapter XVI when Percy and Marguerite talk and then walk on their separate ways, and both of them feel desperately unhappy and in love with their spouse, but not sure what to do to fix things. They are both romantics who are stuck and want back the love they feel the other has denied them. It's very heart rending, and laid out in beautiful prose:
With a quick, almost involuntary effort he would have taken her then in his arms, for her eyes were swimming in tears, which he longed to kiss away; but she had lured him once, just like this, then cast him aside like an ill-fitting glove. He thought this was but a mood, a caprice, and he was too proud to lend himself to it once again.
"It is too soon, Madame!" he said quietly; "I have done nothing as yet. The hour is late, and you must be fatigued. Your women will be waiting for you upstairs."
He stood aside to allow her to pass. She sighed, a quick sigh of disappointment. His pride and her beauty had been in direct conflict, and his pride had remained the conqueror. Perhaps, after all, she had been deceived just now; what she took to be the light of love in his eyes might only have been the passion of pride or, who knows, of hatred instead of love. She stood looking at him for a moment or two longer. He was again as rigid, as impassive, as before. Pride had conquered, and he cared naught for her. The grey light of dawn was gradually yielding to the rosy light of the rising sun. Birds began to twitter; Nature awakened, smiling in happy response to the warmth of this glorious October morning. Only between these two hearts there lay a strong, impassable barrier, built up of pride on both sides, which neither of them cared to be the first to demolish.
He had bent his tall figure in a low ceremonious bow, as she finally, with another bitter little sigh, began to mount the terrace steps.
The long train of her gold-embroidered gown swept the dead leaves off the steps, making a faint harmonious sh—sh—sh as she glided up, with one hand resting on the balustrade, the rosy light of dawn making an aureole of gold round her hair, and causing the rubies on her head and arms to sparkle. She reached the tall glass doors which led into the house. Before entering, she paused once again to look at him, hoping against hope to see his arms stretched out to her, and to hear his voice calling her back. But he had not moved; his massive figure looked the very personification of unbending pride, of fierce obstinacy.
Hot tears again surged to her eyes, as she would not let him see them, she turned quickly within, and ran as fast as she could up to her own rooms.
Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear—a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.
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